Meditation Roadblock: I’m Afraid to Be Alone With My Thoughts

Being alone with your thoughts doesn’t have to be a terrifying prospect.

Photo by Allie on Unsplash

People can come up with a variety of excuses to avoid meditation: lack of time, lack of knowledge, not being able to do it “right,” and even that they won’t benefit because they’re too scattered or stressed.

One of the most interesting excuses to avoid meditation I’ve heard, though, is their own thoughts. I’ve heard someone admit that the reason they’ve avoided meditating was that they were afraid to be alone with their own thoughts. They were afraid of what would come up.

The world offers us a lot of distractions from our thoughts and feelings. We can watch TV, scroll social media, text a friend, crank up music, and a million other activities. And sometimes this is good. Sometimes we’re not prepared yet to deal with a thought or feeling. So the ability to distract ourselves from it until we are prepared is a good thing.

But too often, we use those distractions to avoid the thought or feeling entirely, never even attempting to be ready to deal with it.

But when we avoid thoughts and feelings, they don’t go away. They get stuffed down, compressed, and build up. The anger caused by a situation with our boss gets spewed on…