Meditation Side Effects: What They Are and How to Practice Safely

Most of what you read about meditation sells you one side of it. Calmer, happier, sharper, kinder. I’ve taught meditation for years and I believe in it. But if you’ve ever come out of a sit feeling more anxious instead of less, or oddly detached from your own body, or raw in a way you didn’t expect, you’re not imagining it, and you’re not doing it wrong.

Meditation can have side effects. Most are mild and pass quickly. A small number of people have a genuinely hard time. The honest answer sits between “totally safe” and “secretly dangerous.” This is a real practice that does real things to your mind, and like anything that does something, it can occasionally do something you didn’t want. Here’s what the research actually shows, who tends to run into trouble, and how to practice so you stay in the gentle end of the pool.

Yes, Meditation Can Have Side Effects

For a long time, nobody measured this well. Studies reported the benefits and mostly stayed quiet on the downsides, which made it look like there weren’t any. That’s started to change.

The clearest picture so far comes from a 2025 study that surveyed a representative sample of 886 U.S. adults who meditate (Van Dam et al., 2025). It’s worth knowing the numbers because they cut through both the hype and the fear. About 58% reported at least one adverse effect at some point. Around 31% reported an experience they’d call challenging, difficult, or distressing. And about 9% said a side effect caused real impairment in their daily functioning.

So side effects are common. But notice the drop from 58% to 9%. For most people who report something, it’s a passing rough patch, not a disruption to their life. The serious end is the smaller end.

One caveat I want to be straight about: that study is a snapshot, not a tracking study. It can’t prove meditation caused the effects, only that the two go together in people who meditate. That matters, and I’ll come back to it.

How Common Are They, Really?

Here’s where it gets confusing, so let me save you the whiplash of reading five articles that each quote a different number.

Estimates range from about 1% to roughly two-thirds. That spread comes from studies measuring different things, not from sloppy research. A systematic review of 83 studies covering 6,703 participants pooled the rate at 8.3% (Farias et al., 2020). But split by study type, the gap is huge: tightly controlled trials reported about 3.7%, while observational studies reported 33.2%. The strict trials tend to screen out vulnerable people and under-report problems. The looser studies catch more.

A controlled trial that specifically went looking, using a structured interview after an eight-week program, found about 58% of participants had at least one meditation-related adverse effect, 37% had one that affected their functioning, and 6 to 14% had effects lasting more than a month (Britton et al., 2021). The researchers made a point I think about a lot: these rates are similar to the side-effect rates of other psychological treatments. Therapy has side effects too. We just don’t pretend it doesn’t.

So the honest read: something unexpected or uncomfortable is common, especially if you look carefully for it. Something that genuinely disrupts your life is uncommon. Neither extreme (“totally safe” or “secretly dangerous”) survives contact with the data.

What the Side Effects Actually Are

When people hear “side effects” they picture something dramatic. Usually it’s quieter than that. The most frequently reported categories across the research are anxiety, low mood, and what one review called cognitive anomalies, like trouble concentrating or feeling foggy (Farias et al., 2020). Here’s the range, roughly from common to rare:

• More anxiety, not less. You sit down to calm down and your mind gets louder. For a lot of beginners this is temporary. When you stop filling every quiet moment, the backlog shows up.
• Low or flat mood after sitting. Some people feel heavy or tearful. Sometimes old feelings surface.
• Over-arousal and trouble sleeping. Long or late sessions can leave you wired rather than settled. If your evening meditation is costing you sleep, that’s a signal, not a personal failing.
• Feeling detached or unreal. Depersonalization (feeling cut off from yourself) and derealization (the world seeming dreamlike) show up in the research, and they can be unsettling even when brief (Lindahl et al., 2017).
• Memories resurfacing. Meditation turns attention inward, and for people with difficult histories that can bring up things they’d kept at a distance.
• Rarer, more serious reactions. At the far end, there are reports of dissociation and, very occasionally, destabilization that looks like mania or a break with reality. This is rare, and it clusters in people with specific vulnerabilities and in intense settings.

A qualitative study that interviewed 60 experienced meditators mapped 59 distinct kinds of meditation-related experiences across seven domains, from perception to sense of self (Lindahl et al., 2017). One finding stuck with me: even changes that sound positive, like a dropping-away of the usual sense of self, can be destabilizing if they arrive before you’re ready for them. “Good” and “comfortable” aren’t the same thing.

Who’s Most Likely to Have a Hard Time

This is the useful part, because the risk isn’t random. A few things reliably show up alongside the rougher experiences.

Recent psychological distress. In the 2025 survey, people dealing with significant distress were more likely to report adverse effects (Van Dam et al., 2025). If you’re in an acute crisis, the inside of your own head at full volume may not be where you want to start.

A trauma history. Turning attention toward the body and the present can re-expose material that distraction was holding off. This is well enough known that there’s a whole approach, trauma-sensitive mindfulness, built around working slowly, keeping choice in the practitioner’s hands, and staying grounded (David Treleaven’s work is the standard reference here).

Intensive and silent retreats. The same 2025 survey found retreat participation linked to the more serious, functioning-impairing effects. Days of silence with many hours of practice is the highest-dose version of this, and it’s where a lot of the dramatic stories come from. It’s not where a beginner should begin.

Very long or very frequent sessions. More is not better, and past a point it’s worse. An hour of white-knuckled striving does more harm than ten honest minutes.

And a few conditions deserve a real conversation with a professional before you start a serious practice: a history of psychosis, bipolar disorder, or severe PTSD. Meditation isn’t off-limits for everyone with these, but it should be done with guidance, not alone off a free app.

Why Meditation Can Backfire

I’ll be honest that the mechanisms here are better guessed than proven. But a few explanations fit what I’ve seen in myself and in people I’ve taught.

Most of us keep discomfort at bay by staying busy. Podcasts in the shower, a phone at every red light, something on in the background always. Meditation removes the buffer. You sit, the noise stops, and whatever the noise was covering gets a turn to speak. That’s often the whole mechanism behind “meditation made me more anxious.” The anxiety was already there. You just stopped drowning it out.

The other common one is striving. People approach meditation like a task to win, forcing concentration, fighting every stray thought, treating a wandering mind as failure. That effort is its own kind of stress, and it can leave you tenser than when you started. The fix is almost always to do less, not more.

What I won’t tell you is that this is all neatly understood. The research is young, and for years the adverse effects were barely monitored at all (Van Dam et al., 2018, “Mind the Hype”). We’re still early in taking the downsides as seriously as the upsides.

How to Practice So You’re in the Low-Risk Group

The good news is that almost everything that raises the risk is a dial you control. Here’s how I’d set them if you’re starting out or restarting after a bad experience.

1. Start short. Five to ten minutes. Not because you can’t handle more, but because short sessions keep you well inside your window and build the habit without the dose that causes trouble.
2. Go guided, not solo silent. A voice gives your attention somewhere to rest, which is gentler than being left alone in an empty room with your mind. If you’d rather follow along than sit in silence, that’s a sensible on-ramp, not a weakness. (Our guided practices are free, secular, and run about 5 to 20 minutes, which is the low-risk profile on purpose. No silent-retreat intensity.) This is the honest case for guided over unguided meditation when you’re new.
3. Keep your eyes open if closing them feels worse. A soft downward gaze is a real option. Nobody is grading you.
4. Stay anchored to something concrete. Breath, sounds, the feeling of your feet on the floor. If you drift somewhere unsettling, the anchor is the way back. If things feel too big, open your eyes and name five things you can see. There’s a fuller set of grounding techniques worth knowing.
5. Have a stop rule. You’re allowed to end a session early. If distress is climbing instead of settling, stop, stand up, and do something ordinary. Pushing through is exactly the wrong instinct here.
6. Skip the deep end for now. No multi-day silent retreats, no two-hour sits, until a gentle daily practice feels genuinely steady.

If you want a thirty-second reset when a sit gets away from you: plant both feet flat on the floor. Feel the weight of your body in the chair. Take three slow breaths, letting the out-breath be a little longer than the in. Look around the room and name, out loud or in your head, three things you can see and two you can hear. That’s it. You’ve come back.

When to Pause or Talk to a Professional

Most side effects ease when you shorten sessions, soften your effort, or take a break for a few days. Some don’t, and those are worth taking seriously.

Pause your practice and talk to a doctor or therapist if the distress is intense, if detachment or dissociation lingers after you stop sitting, if old trauma is flooding back in a way you can’t settle, or if your sleep, mood, or ability to function is getting worse over weeks rather than better. Meditation is a complement to mental-health care, never a replacement for it. If you don’t have someone yet, here’s how to find a therapist without knowing where to start.

And if you’re ever in crisis or having thoughts of harming yourself, skip the cushion and reach out now. In the U.S. you can call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, any time.

None of this is a reason to quit. Meditation genuinely helps most people who stick with it, and knowing the risks is how you join them without the detour. Start small, stay kind to yourself about stopping, and let it be easier than the internet made it sound.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can meditation make anxiety worse?

Yes, especially at first. When you stop filling every quiet moment, a backlog of anxious thoughts can surface, so a session meant to calm you can briefly feel like the opposite. For most beginners this eases with shorter, guided sessions. If anxiety keeps climbing instead of settling, stop and ground yourself, and talk to a professional if it persists.

Can meditation cause feeling detached or unreal?

It can. Depersonalization (feeling cut off from yourself) and derealization (the world seeming dreamlike) are documented meditation side effects. They’re often brief, but they can be unsettling. Keep sessions short, stay anchored to your breath or your feet on the floor, and if the detachment lingers after you stop sitting, pause your practice and speak with a clinician.

Is meditation safe if I have a trauma history or PTSD?

It can be, but it needs care. Turning attention inward can resurface traumatic material, so a trauma-sensitive approach matters: work slowly, keep your eyes open if you prefer, stay grounded, and ideally practice with professional guidance rather than alone off an app.

Can you meditate too much?

Yes. More isn’t better. Very long or very frequent sessions, and intensive silent retreats especially, are linked to the more serious side effects. Ten honest minutes beats an hour of forced effort. Build a steady short practice before you go longer.

Should I stop meditating if I get side effects?

Often you don’t have to stop entirely, just dial it back: shorter sessions, gentler effort, maybe a few days off. But if the distress is intense, detachment lingers, trauma is flooding back, or your mood or sleep is getting worse over weeks, pause and talk to a doctor or therapist.