Meditation practice can induce anxiety and panic through many multiple pathways, including sensitization, somatosensory amplification, and relaxation-induced panic. Meditation-induced anxiety is often best treated by mental health professionals who specialize in anxiety. Below are some evidence-based books and resources to help you work with anxiety, panic and other forms of nervous systems dysregulation.
The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for Anxiety: Breaking Free from Worry, Panic, PTSD, and Other Anxiety Symptoms
by Alexander L. Chapman PhD RPsych, Kim L. Gratz PhD, 2011
DBT is a therapy that is particularly good for high levels of nervous system dysregulation. While it includes mindfulness, it also includes other emotion regulation skills, and when is the best time for different strategies.
The Anxiety and Worry Workbook
by David Clark, PhD and Aaron Beck PhD
This book is grounded in cognitive behavior therapy (CBT), the proven treatment approach developed and tested over more than 25 years by pioneering clinician-researcher Aaron T. Beck. Now Dr. Beck and fellow cognitive therapy expert David A. Clark put the tools and techniques of cognitive behavior therapy at your fingertips in this compassionate guide. Carefully crafted worksheets (you can download and print additional copies as needed), exercises, and examples reflect the authors' decades of experience helping people just like you. Learn practical strategies for identifying your anxiety triggers, challenging the thoughts and beliefs that lead to distress, safely facing the situations you fear, and truly loosening anxiety's grip--one manageable step at a time.
Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (ABCT) Self-Help Book of Merit
Exercise for Mood and Anxiety
by Michael Otto Ph.D. and Jasper Smits Ph.D.
Exercise has long been touted anecdotally as an effective tool for mood improvement, but only recently has rigorous science caught up with these claims. There is now overwhelming evidence that regular exercise can help relieve low mood-from feelings of stress and anxiety to full depressive episodes.
With Exercise for Mood and Anxiety, Michael Otto and Jasper Smits, well-known authorities on cognitive behavioral therapy, take their empirically-based mood regulation strategy from the clinic to the general public. Written for those with diagnosed mood disorders as well as those who simply need a new strategy for managing the low mood and stress that is an everyday part of life, this book provides readers with step-by-step guidance on how to start and maintain an exercise program geared towards improving mood, with a particular emphasis on understanding the relationship between mood and motivation. Readers learn to attend carefully to mood states prior to and following physical activity in order to leverage the full benefits of exercise, and that the trick to maintaining an exercise program is not in applying more effort, but in arranging one's environment so that less effort is needed. As a result readers not only acquire effective strategies for adopting a successful program, but are introduced to a broader philosophy for enhancing overall well-being. Providing patient vignettes, rich examples, and extensive step-by-step guidance on overcoming the obstacles that prevent adoption of regular exercise for mood, Exercise for Mood and Anxiety is a unique translation of scientific principles of clinical and social psychology into an action-based strategy for mood change.
The Anxious Truth Podcast
A podcast dedicated to all things anxiety,: stories, symptoms, recovery , treatments, and anxiety-related referralsMany meditators have found some episodes helpful, especially:
Episode 83: Intrusive and Obsessive Thoughts
Many meditators find themselves harassed by intrusive thoughts or questions, often related to religious ideology and/or meditation practice instructions. These can be treated like an other intrusive thought or obsession.
Episode 89: Breathing and Breath-Centered Anxiety
Does breath-focused anxiety make you anxious? This podcast is for you.
Anxious Truth Facebook Discussion Group
The OCD Stories Podcast
Episode 197: Existential-Themed OCD
A number of meditators have come to understand their intrusive and obsessive thought symptoms as spiritually-themed anxiety disorder, or spiritually or existentially-themed OCD. Some say they feel like they can’t be happy or relax until certain existential or spiritual questions will be answered. Many report that the anxiety and obsessive rumination was triggered by mindfulness or Buddhist philosophy podcasts “ the self is an illusion”, movies that question reality like the Truman Show, the Matrix; or science shows about cosmology, the Big Bang, Evolution.
Do these thoughts take up a lot of your time and energy?
What is everything? What is real or not real?
Is there free will?
What is the self? What does it mean when people say it’s an illusion? I can’t be OK until I understand it’s an illusion
What is Enlightenment? I can’t be happy unless I am Enlightened, or have certainty until I understand “the way things really are”
Has practicing mindfulness made you hyperaware of the process of thinking, breathing, your heart beating, blinking or some other sensation or thing that you never noticed before you were mindfully aware of it? This is called hyperawareness or sensory-motor OCD, and its not that uncommon. Regrettably the person that has written the most about it ( Jon Hershfield) prescribes mindfulness to fix it, so that might be a turn off for some, but others have found Dr. Hershfield very helpful.
The FearCast Podcast
Sensorimotor/Hyperawareness OCD
Has practicing mindfulness made you hyperaware of the process of thinking, breathing, your heart beating, blinking or some other sensation or thing that you never noticed before you were mindfully aware of it? This is called hyperawareness or sensory-motor OCD.