The difference between meditation and therapy
The first time I meditated, at one of meditation teacher Tara Brach’s Wednesday night gatherings in Maryland, was an awakening of sorts.
After 15 or so minutes my mind settled as emotions began to well up in my chest. There was some embarrassment for trying this new age, hippie practice, but also a refreshing appreciation for being able to finally do nothing but rest.
For the first time I could remember, someone was encouraging me to feel my emotions rather than do something about them, repress them, or explain them away.
I chased that experience for a few years, starting a daily practice and digging deeper into Buddhist teachings. But, as is often the case, it took the urging of someone I loved to try psychotherapy. There were wounds and patterns that were causing issues in my relationship and that meditation could only illuminate in the present moment but not unravel and investigate.
There’s still part of me that hopes that meditation is all I’ll need to navigate life’s ups and downs. But a deeper, wiser part of me knows that’s absurd.
Meditation isn’t therapy. Sure, it has no equal in illuminating our relationship with others and ourselves in the present moment, which makes it a powerful tool alongside deeper therapeutic work. It can wipe the dust from our eyes, as the Buddha said, so that we can see our habitual patterns and change how we relate to them.
Therapy shines a light on what about our past and our plans for the future impacts our lives. It attends to the content of our storylines, while meditation is about dropping the storyline altogether. We explore how our parents’ anxiety, anger, and other emotions — their humanity — shaped how we relate with our own emotions. We learn how our patterns of relating with trauma show up in our current relationships, during sex, at work, and so on.
Borrowing words from yogic teacher David Deida, therapy helps us function better within dysfunction — in a relationship, with our family, at our job, in society, and so on. Too bad there’s a stigma against it in American society — therapy really should be a public good, provided to everyone free of charge.
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Don’t doubt the allure of meditation (and other spiritual practices, like yoga) as a cure-all. There’s even a term for it: “spiritual bypassing,” which psychotherapist John Welwood coined to name the tendency within spiritual communities “to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks.”
There are countless spiritual gurus who, while enlightened in many ways, weren’t dealing with their impact on others. Tibetan teacher Chögyam Trungpa was an alcoholic. Zen teacher Katagiri Roshi was accused of sleeping with many of his female students.
We are particularly susceptible to spiritual bypassing in American society. As British Buddhist teacher Thanissara writes:
“Many…entering the Buddhist path — particularly Westerners, with our particular historic conditioning — are attracted to Buddhism’s cool aesthetic and individuated practice precisely because it gives us the rationale, in teachings like non-attachment, to bypass our psychological wounds.”
I’d say we’re susceptible to something like “social bypassing” too, a tendency to overlook the impact of politics and economics on our personal lives. But that’s a story for another post (or a full-on book).
This is not to say that meditation isn’t powerful. If you’re thinking about trying it, it might be the first time in a long time you’re allowed to just be. But just don’t pretend it’s everything.
