News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Not everyone should meditate by kranke155 on Wednesday March 02, 2022 @08:01PM (#30535746)
The author might be more correct than he imagines. I suffer from bipolar disorder, which was “activated” during a heavy meditation period 5 years ago or so.

My therapist now advises me to stay away from it. She says that meditation is a form of “self hypnosis” and that I should stay away from daily practice, which is what I had previously.

Re:Not everyone should meditate by electriclizard on Wednesday March 02, 2022 @10:13PM (#30536694)
It's been a bit like having access to my computer's terminal for me. I didn't expect the power. I did way more than just turn off the distractions. I fucked some shit up and had to spend some time in the shop. But I also learned how to fix the stuff that was broken and then stay the hell away from the terminal the rest of the time.

My issue was mainly that I couldn't turn the UI back on. But also I fucked up all the links and the whole system was out of order.

Now I still use it when necessary because I still have bugs, which is really easy because just thinking about it will pop it open. But I mostly use it to signal to me when the UI is starting to fade away; not something I was good at before.

Re:Not everyone should meditate by hnfong on Thursday March 03, 2022 @10:35AM (#30542330)
It's fucked up that I kinda understand what you're talking about.
Re:Not everyone should meditate by electriclizard on Tuesday March 08, 2022 @03:18PM (#30606249)
When you know, you know. I'm sorry you've been through the hell. I hope you're doing better.
Re:Not everyone should meditate by cheschire on Wednesday March 02, 2022 @10:29PM (#30536808)
Metaforgotten…
Re:Not everyone should meditate by nradov on Wednesday March 02, 2022 @08:07PM (#30535796)
Is there any evidence that your bipolar disorder would have activated later or not at all if you hadn't meditated?
Re:Not everyone should meditate by kayodelycaon on Wednesday March 02, 2022 @08:25PM (#30535933)
Altered states of consciousness are know to trigger psychosis in people who many develop bipolar disorder.

It’s relatively easy for me to deliberately trigger psychosis, despite being on antipsychotics. And it is a very bad idea for me to do that. Losing touch with reality isn’t exactly fun.

For those who are interested, I’ve written about the four-month-long psychotic break that ended with me being diagnosed bipolar. https://kayode.co/blog/4106/living-with-psychosis/

Re:Not everyone should meditate by kranke155 on Monday March 07, 2022 @04:30AM (#30585790)
Not that I’m aware of. But bipolar disorder is (very) poorly understood. Asking for evidence would imply for instance, that we know what bipolar IS, and from my knowledge, I don’t think we do. In order to have evidence that meditation and bipolar interact we would have to know what bipolar affects in our system that causes it. As far as I know we don’t know what causes it/how it works exactly. We have some inklings of what’s involved.

What we have is some medications that work with relatively extreme side effects (I am now pre diabetic due to daily Seroquel use) and sort of folk tradition of what to do and not to do - ie bipolar people are advised to stay away from religion for instance.

In my experience both the medication and the folk tradition are mostly right actually, as weird as that might sound. It’s not like psychologists are performing huge studies, but they can see patterns in the individual cases when they are studied in bulk - ie religious individuals might have more psychotic episodes etc.

Re:Not everyone should meditate by joshcsimmons on Wednesday March 02, 2022 @08:47PM (#30536080)
I’m so sorry to hear that and I hope you’re doing better now.
Re:Not everyone should meditate by kovek on Wednesday March 02, 2022 @08:32PM (#30535971)
Me too!