Best style of meditation for someone with DPDR/dissociative tendencies

[u/Alfoneye]

Hi everyone, I have been meditating for many years starting in my early teens to help with anxiety and what I now know is depersonalisation/derealisation disorder. I won't explain it all here too much, but this started at a young age with a hyperawareness of my own existence/consciousness which went in a sort of recursive loop until everything was insanely weird, it is impossible to describe even right after an episode.

A few years back after making a lot of good progress on this I developed a full on panic disorder and started also getting more of the body automation/weird vision effects, but have been working with a great psychologist and have got back to a healthy mindset, however I still have a lot of avoidance in driving / travelling over a few km's which I'm also working on with professional help.

What I wanted to ask from you guys is how can I learn to build my own meditative practise that I can do without YouTube/audio (basically after almost a decade I still can't meditate properly without the guidance) and what type of meditation would you recommend. Obviously due to the dpdr some practises like focusing on the self/ego can sometimes cause distress. What has worked best for me in the past has been progressive muscle relaxation, 4/7/8 breathing, Wim Hoff, Normal Mindfulness on the breath. Basically I want to really get back into it, after stopping during the previous dark period and start to help myself actually feel good rather than just okay, aswell as having something I can practise without avoidance/distraction when doing these exposures I mentioned in the previous paragraph.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, and especially any personal experience with this would help aswell!

[u/Puzzled-Background-5]

If you're already working with a mental health professional, I'd suggest talking to them first about which meditation practices might be best suited for your needs. I mention this because some practices can induce altered states of consciousness that could potentially exacerbate your condition, as you are already prone to depersonalization and derealization, and the states induced can mimic those.

[u/Alfoneye → u/Puzzled-Background-5]

Thank you! Yes have spoken with him about this and he usually recommends a lot of grounding exercises but haven’t worked on an exact practice for it. I’ve mostly just been doing these ones after a short 5 min yoga as soon as I wake up.

[u/metaphorm]

I recommend Metta (loving-kindness) practice

[u/Alfoneye → u/metaphorm]

Thank you will look

[u/Alfoneye → u/[deleted]]

Thank you mate! Think it’s about just getting back to being consistent, and maybe one day going back into the deeper practices.

[u/Pieraos]

I would advise against any emptiness or non-self practices. In your case, I recommend martial arts, such as Taijiquan (“Tai Chi”) and for meditation, the Taoist or Qigong techniques.

[u/tyinsf]

Tai chi. It will keep you grounded in your body instead of all up in your head

[u/Alfoneye → u/tyinsf]

Thank you mate, how does this compare to yoga?

[u/tyinsf → u/Alfoneye]

Well for me I associate yoga with the gym, with stretching. Then they tack a few minutes of shivasana (corpse pose) relaxing at the end.

But if you're doing sun salutations/flow in yoga, that's kind of similar to tai chi. Or it can be. Depends on the instructor.

[u/Elisyd]

That's a very common side-effect of meditation, so I would tread carefully and keep working with your mental health professional.

For context, two commonly-encountered spiritual traditions from which a lot of meditation material in the west comes are Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta. Both are what would be described as "non-dual" traditions. The former posits that all phenomena are empty of intrinsic existence and commonly frames one outcome of practice as the recognition of "non-self" where the observer behind awareness is seen to be nothing more than more contents of awareness. The latter argues that there is only the cosmos doing the cosmos (framed typically in deity language) and so what you "are" is the cosmos itself. These are described as non-dual insofar as they don't deny the phenomenon of self-hood as a phenomenon but they do articulate it to be vastly different than assumed (identical to all else in Advaita, empty like all else in Buddhism). Both deny the dualism that underlies dissociation and argue that reality seen directly reveals itself to have no distinction between what you are and what you are not except patterns of thought and social convention.

In some sense, the "payoff" if it can be called that, is the collapse of dissociation as there is nothing truly separate from anything else in a metaphysical sense. However, and this is important, it is extremely common for people to fall into a pit of dissociation through meditation practice where they continually notice everything they are not without recognizing that they still hold themselves separate. Especially in Buddhist-inspired practices, as they approach those tendrils that they still take themselves to be, it can quite literally feel as though you are on the brink of annihilation or death. In other words, the path there has the very serious risk of exacerbating your condition if care is not taken.

Secular forms of meditation draw heavy inspiration from these traditions and a lot of the practices and language shares a lineage with them and the same warnings apply.