I worry when I run into people who did some form of mindfulness(tm) practice in a therapeutic (or god forbid, "coaching") setting and started running into heavy insight phenomena, repressed emotions or general weirdness.
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Most everyone I've interacted with in this context were highly intelligent, sensitive people who were just curious about what they'd found.
I'm guessing those are a minority of the people who will actually run into said phenomena, though. It's the rest I worry about the most.
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Do therapists really how to responsibly handle patients who run into visions, insight stages or deep pools of repressed feeling? Do I-read-a-book-and-now-I'm-a-mindfulness-coach(es) know?
It seems to me like this is a "no," and pretty far outside the bounds of informed consent.
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The problem doesn't seem to be malice, either.
Some mindfulness-utilizing therapists are long-term practitioners, many others are just trying the new, cool thing.
It's not like people take side-effect labels like "you may start seeing demons" too seriously, and yet, you may...
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So what happens when some not-so-high IQ patient does mindfulness, taps into something they weren't expecting and starts having visions or such?
"Doctor, I see these floating heads follow me around everywhere. They don't really do anything, but it's really scary!"
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It's not like you can expect everyone to make the connection to "oh, it's that meditation I was doing," or to realize they shouldn't talk to everyone about it, or that it's not dangerous, just a weird side-effect...
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And since these are real but rare side-effects of meditating a lot, itself a rare and poorly-understood set of practices, will peers understand you're not psychotic or on drugs or a danger to yourself and others?
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