Meditation

[emwc]

New to the forum.  Has anyone tried meditation to help with hyper vigilance?

[radical]

Hi emwc,
I've been meditating off and on for a few years now.  I find it beneficial for most ptsd problems, including hypervigilence.  The more regularly I meditate the greater the benefits.  However, there have been times I've stopped because my symptoms were too severe and going inwards seemed to heighten the symptoms.  I always come back to it though.

I was talking to my neuropsychiatrist about hypervigiliance last week.  I had realised how illogical it was and how when I'm frantically trying to be aware of everything going on around me to be alert to any danger, I seem to be less able to recognise genuine threats.  Despite using up mental resources and a lot of energy it had never protected me from harm.

He said "of course not - it's not a self-protective behaviour it is a brain dysfunction,"  he seemed amazed that I had ever imagined that this behaviour was a protective adaption, rather than counter-productive to being able to protect myself from danger.

I felt a bit of a fool.

All the best.  I hope you can find a teacher or group to learn and practice with.  Meditation is extremely simple, but that doesn't mean it is easy.  It's common, even for people who have trained in a meditation practice to go off course and think they are meditating when they are not.

[Three Roses]

Hello and welcome to the forum,  emwc! Thanks for joining.

[bee]

Want to chime in here, because my experience is different.

For the longest time I thought I was meditating wrong. Whenever I tried I would end up going to a very dark place. Very unpleasant. I finally figured out that how I was meditating was triggering an EF.

The reason. When my abusive mom raged at me I was expected to keep still and not react. So when I kept still while meditating, the physical stillness set off an EF.

Now when I want to meditate I make sure that it is while I am moving in some way.