Can Zen or meditation assist counselling and psychotherapy?

Having written about Zen in the past, clients sometimes ask me whether Zen or meditation would work well with their counselling or psychotherapy.

First of all, let’s quickly get the ‘Zen’ part out of the way. Practising Zen to achieve a result or get something out of it is not really Zen at all. (Some Zen schools see things differently, but that is a different conversation.) In this context, though, the question usually refers to the Zen practice of zazen or ‘sitting meditation’, or simply to meditation in a wider sense. I will use that meaning of it here.

Do zen and meditation assist mental and physical health health?

I have seen people who meditate gently and consistently whose mental health has improved. For example, that their anger, anxiety or flashbacks reduced over time. Or buried emotions they didn’t know they had are discovered and dissipated, leaving them happier. Sometimes resentments and anger are let go. Thinking patterns can become more helpful or at least negative inner voices become less powerful.

I don’t think this is news to anyone these days. You can find endless examples of this in social media or your local book store. And if that’s the result, then meditation is probably helpful for many of us, not just those in therapy. And of course, the same can be said of yoga or mindfulness, both of which people report as beneficial to their physical and mental well-being.

If your meditation is helping your mental health, then it’s probably helping your therapy too!

Should I mix zen or meditation with psychotherapy?

In most cases, there is no reason why you should not mix zen or meditation with counselling or psychotherapy.

So, if you ask me, “Will meditation help or hinder my therapy?” my answer will usually be to try it out. But do so carefully. I mean ‘carefully’ in two ways.

Firstly, treat yourself gently and, literally, with care. Finding time and commitment to meditation contributes to developing self-care and compassion towards ourselves, which on its own is an important component of longer term mental health for all of us. And secondly because the results may not be what you expect. Here is what “carefully” means in practice.

Discuss in therapy what happens emotionally in meditation

Think about what you are trying to get out of meditation, so that you notice as you go along whether the effects you are getting are the ones that you want Are you getting something else (for better or worse)? More importantly, notice what actually results from your meditation, separate from what you had imagined or hoped for.

If meditation is freeing up your mind and emotions in some way, then bring this into your therapy process. This prompts you to think again whether meditation is taking you on a path to better health, rather than slipping into patterns that are unhelpful to you. Even better, it may sometimes aid or speed up your therapy process.

Treat meditation as a long term prospect

Meditation tends to give greater mental health benefits when you do it regularly and consistently. It takes time and commitment. If you are short on either of those, a small, regular commitment is better than on-off practice. And the benefits become more noticeable when you practice over an extended period of weeks, then months. So don’t expect instant results; don’t judge the results too quickly. But I mean more than just jumping to the conclusion that meditation isn’t helping

Sometimes meditation seems to trigger negative experiences. I suggest you don’t automatically treat them as bad or try to prevent them. Instead, try and think about what was happening. Was the meditation itself bad? Or was the meditation opening you up to painful past experiences or hard-to-handle emotions? Here is an example.

An example of how meditation may interact with psychotherapy

Meditation might allow some of critical voices in your head to quieten down, allowing you to feel better about yourself. But at the same time, it might relax mental processes that have kept you from getting in touch with other negative feelings that were buried. These may have been kept out of your conscious awareness for a long time! This may be because they were too painful to face or because it wasn’t safe in earlier life to allow them to be seen and heard. It would be easy to decide meditation is making you worse, when in fact it is showing you a new path in your therapeutic journey.

Ask your therapist for help

Once again, ask your therapist to help you evaluate what is happening emotionally during your meditation. It doesn’t matter too much that your therapist has no experience in meditation, as long as she or he can help you understand and process the results.

When to stop meditation

Experiencing distress in meditation? Take it to therapy!

In my experience, it is rare for meditation itself to work against your therapy. To be honest, I can’t think of an example. Nonetheless, I would suggest proceeding gently and cautiously. And if meditation results in distress, stop! It may not be the meditation itself that is causing the distress, but it is wise to stop temporarily. Take time to find out. You can always return to meditation afterwards.

You are, I hope, trying to improve your long term mental health and not push yourself to do something that hurts. If you are pushing yourself too hard or criticising yourself for failing at meditation, this is probably part of a wider pattern. This is something to be brought into your therapy sessions. If you are playing out some form of destructive behaviour, again it is important to recognise this and bring it into your therapy. At the very least, stop the meditation until you have had a re-think about what you are doing. Again, this can be done with your therapist’s help.

Meditation and dissociation

A final note of caution. There is one situation where I would be careful about mixing zazen (sitting meditation) or other meditation and psychotherapy. That is where you dissociate easily or often. To be more precise, I am suggesting you think carefully before starting meditation practice if you dissociate easily.

Attempting to meditate might simply result in more dissociation. That is not necessarily bad if dissociation doesn’t upset you. But if the dissociation is distressing for you, why add to it?

Even experienced mediators sometimes mistake a deep quietness (‘laya’) as progress or a beneficial state, when it is really a dead-end. In fact, I sometimes hear about some wonderful place that a meditator has reached and think they might simply have dissociated. This is an easy mistake to make. (Incidentally, finding dissociation wonderful may highlight how much discomfort they experience the rest of the time.)

If you dissociate easily, you might decide not to try meditation at all, or at least not until you have a much better understanding of what triggers your dissociation. Learning to ground yourself is probably more important.

Conclusion

In summary then, zen-style meditation and meditation generally can contribute to improving your physical and mental health. There is generally no reason not to mix zen or meditation with psychotherapy. My experience is that they often work well together. A notable exception to consider is if you dissociate easily. If you try meditation, please check from time to time that it’s taking you in a healthy direction. Pay attention to any distress that arises during meditation. Work with your therapist. And, most importantly, work on caring for yourself!

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This post was last edited on 5 October 2022 to address issues raised by clients. Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash