Why Mindfulness Can’t Heal Over Trauma
The gap between pseudoscience and overcoming trauma is massive.
One of my cousin’s and her husband have delved into the self-help world at full force. She has been selling meditative crystals, is a birth doula, and believes in energy healing. Her husband is a Reiki instructor and provides his techniques through online meetings rather than meeting people in person.
Her store and his teaching is going well, they’re making enough to move out of the city into a brand new home while supporting four children. They can even afford to do home schooling for their kids.
All around they are great people to be around and chat with.
But the more I walk down my own path in self-help the more I look at how flimsy these particular techniques are.
When it comes to crystals the concept of them, it’s appealing on the surface. A crystal to help purge hangovers, bolster positive emotions while also just looking nice. Who wouldn’t want a crystal that can offer various benefits to your mental well being?
Combined with Reiki — a practice in which you can get certification for — it seems like a great match to help deal with life struggles.
But the more you look into it the more it’s all theatrics.
For years I was interested in crystals and when I explored self-help I stumbled upon the mystical aspect of them. I clung to it, especially after going through a guided meditation.
I fell asleep during that session.
It wasn’t until I spent time thinking about my stance on things that I realized these additional benefits don’t really matter to me. They’re just very pretty to look at.
And even though I haven’t done Reiki before, I know energy levels don’t need “healing”. Not when you can just eat healthy. If you can afford a reiki session or more, I’m sure you can afford to drink more water, have more salads or better meals, and move around a bit.
But when these tactics start to claim they can help with overcoming trauma or deal with more complex emotions or difficult situations, the more I feel this is a predatory tactic than genuine help.
A Bath-Bomb Or Guided Meditation Can’t Solve Deeper Problems
Mindfulness has been twisted over the years to make some pretty weird claims. Like how Reiki is a suitable replacement for cancer treatment or how crystals can heal as long as you soak them in a certain way or use specific ones. This phenomenon can be dated back centuries and has been repeated time and time again through multiple channels.
Televangelists hyped up the cause by saying they can cure Lupus or can cure cancer through the word of God or Jesus. Tony Robbins still does his hot coals thing to help people “purge doubts and fears and limitations”.
These work because they are more entertaining and more convenient to think like that. Imagine cancer or any other complex disease in the human body that is causes so much pain and suffering could just go away from some random person telling you “Go in the name of Jesus!” or to be holding a crystal that was soaked in water.
Why, who would ever need actual medicine if that was how we removed diseases?
But the reality isn’t so simple. We know that reiki can be supportive treatment akin to counselling. We know better than to think these particular methods could fully cure complex illnesses.
And the same can be extended to mental illness and dealing with trauma.
The problem with these forms of mindfulness is that there are limitations to what they can do. Even though these practices are thoroughly researched, self-help gurus still find a way of over-extending how helpful these really can be.
It’s not so much that these practices are completely useless all of the time, but depending on what sort of trauma someone is going through mindfulness practices can backfire hard. Researchers in that field have stated how this could help with some cases of anxiety, depression, or substance abuse, but anything beyond that is shaky at best.
The Individuals Lack Expertise
When I started to take my writing seriously, I was approached by another writer who said he’d help guide me in getting my writing adventure going. His mentorship was rather scattered and the only thing useful he provided was he encouraged me to sign up to an SEMRush Writing session where I spent a week learning some more writing techniques for free.
But one of the things that stood out to me the most was the few phone calls that we had together. I’d talk about my life situation and these phone calls felt more like therapy sessions than on writing.
Sure enough it turned into a meditative session. It was a simple breathing exercise but I still remember what he said afterwards.
“Something is troubling you and you’re not able to breathe properly.”
Last I checked, my mentor was a writer.
And of course something is troubling me. I expected him to help me find clients and improve my writing. Not give me breathing exercises.
Yes, there are certainly ways to get certifications in the self-help world. There are certifications for being a life coach or a reiki instructor for example. But when you’re in an industry where anyone can jump in and start anything, these certifications don’t really hold any weight to them beyond whether or not that specific person cares.
They’re about as relevant as saying you graduated from Elf Spotting Academy and are now an official Elf Spotter.
Who really cares?
The top dog of the industry thinks running over hot coals helps you overcome fear and limitations after all. Real smart, that Robbins fellow.
And that’s kinda the point here.
When we take these kinds of methods seriously, when we believe in these individuals capabilities, people can get hurt as a result. Especially when it comes to something that’s more complicated and needs someone who actually knows what they are doing.
To be fair, therapy itself is also tricky too. But at least those individuals are trained and have licenses and have spent way more time learning how to overcome trauma than any energy healer, self-help guru hype man, or myself have done.
Emotional Overwhelm
But one of the biggest reasons can be boiled down to the fact these methods aren’t meant to handle all the emotional baggage people have. There is a built-in limitation and a lot of it has to do with our own emotions.
Reiki and energy crystal healing and meditating is akin to someone saying “calm down” when someone is having a panic attack or someone who is so emotionally checked out and fuelled by anger.
There’s always been this disconnection between people’s emotions and self-help. That much is clear since traditional self-help emphasizes how negative emotions are terrible and have to be removed. They prioritize happiness and positivity.
Positivity is positive of course, but there is always that problem of having too much of a good thing can end up hurting you more in the end. In the case of positivity it can blindside you and make you insensitive to other people’s problems.
The fact that negativity is meant to be a counter-balance and to prompt us to think realistically and critically is looked at with disdain by the wealthiest of the industry makes it pretty obvious there is a big emotional disconnection. This is further widened by of course rich self-help guru’s wealth.
But while those advocating for these methods aren’t always done by super rich people, it doesn’t change the fact that rich self-help guru ideology is passed down to other people who reinforce that rhetoric. In the case of mindfulness, a lot of the standards revolve around what people like Oprah, and Deepak Chopra have said in the past.
What this creates for those going through trauma or a rough part of their lives is more difficulties. On an emotional standpoint it’s better to deal with those emotions head on. To dwell on them and sort through them and look for solutions. When it comes to mindfulness, the current standard feels more like a purging of the system. A detox. It doesn’t actually address the base issues.
Self-help and by extension mindfulness have always been in this middle ground when it comes to dealing with mental and physical problems. It’s long been affiliated with pseudoscience and it’s getting to a point where people are catching on and getting tired of it.
I don’t doubt that these alternatives are helpful. There is a lot of science behind it and I can see it being helpful for not so serious issues. But the problem is more the over-hypness of it all and the exaggeration of what these kinds of tactics can actually provide.
With more people entering the industry and carving out their own spot, the more we can begin to change this industry around. One where people can offer these services but don’t feel the need to exaggerate the benefits in order to bring people in. One where these supplemental forms of care can function in the way they are meant to: secondary and complimenting the more in-debth treatment and care that is making a bigger difference.
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