Mindfulness made everything worse...

[Becca19962014]

... I can't find anything anywhere that isn't mindfulness to help with what I'm going through e.g. Anxiety attacks p/c-PTSD that lead to collapse/hallucinations/severe depression.

All that's happened since doing it is everything has even more of a grip on me combined with a major recent bereavement (mid March). I can't have meds (medical issues and mh team refuse to engage with other clinicians) I've no money for private therapy.

Mental health team will only offer mindfulness courses for anything mental health related and as I can't have meds refuse to see me. I can't even access emergency help as that too is the mindfulness leaflets.

I know it helps others but obviously not for me, wondering if there are others in same position? What if anything helped them?

Mindfulness isn't the be all and end all. Hypnotherapy worked for me - creative visualisation about fantastical situations not based in the present.

I haven't had PTSD but when I had huge panic attacks and 24/7 anxiety the best time for me was listening to meditation/relaxation removing myself to another time/place that became in my mind like a safe room where I could come to no harm & therefore relax. It was escape & respite & I didn't need to think about whatever other feelings were going on. The feelings carried on but I was detached & I didn't need to pay attention to them what so ever while I was in my safe place, which felt like a mental holiday.

Eventually this carried over to my conscious thought & resulted in the end of panic & anxiety.

I know this is an old thread, but it's mine so I'm bumping it

Had a dreadful appointment yesterday where the worker actually raised their voice to me demanding I did mindfulness again but this time I'm to put in effort to begin with they lied and said the therapy wasn't mindfulness but I knew it was and challenged them and they got really angry yelling at me for being rediculous about it and how it always works.

My mental health has been spiralling for days and I can access no support at all, not even a&e as they sent me away with a mindfulness leaflet and a heap of humiliation (our a&e has no privacy as very small so everyone knows why you're there). Apparently if really in need then people would contact them. I've no one to contact them!

God Becca this sounds like a nightmare And for the record I bloody hate mindfulness! Are there any national helplines you can ring for advice? They might be able to point you in the right direction.
Found this one.
www.sane.org.uk/what_we_do/support/helpline

Sane don't cover Wales. I have however rung the Welsh one but there's no one here to support people it's all north or South Wales which I can't get to.

I just dont understand why it's being forced on me and the patronising "guarantee" it'll work if I really want it to really pisses me off.

I've lost my religious community and the support I had from them because I was told I was being silly and it wasn't a conflict and the community leaders didn't know what they were talking about, well I ended up being excommunicated over it and that's been devastating. Yesterday the person had the nerve to tell me to contact the community for help - they aren't allowed to help anymore. It doesn't bloody work like that. When the thing you guarantee will work doesn't work out you don't tell them they can just go back, it's a commitment one I was forced to give up, I can't just go back. I'd need to reapply and study even if I could convince them to take me back, which is extremely unlikely.

Frigging heck Becca. This is awful, i'm so sorry you are being treated this way.
Can you get an advocate/friend to support you and go back to your GP?

I think some charities have advocacy people.
sorry if this isn't helpful x

Can I ask who it was that you saw yesterday, was it a CPN or a GP or someone else?

Were you on a mindfulness course and did you complete the course?

I agree that mindfulness doesn't work for everyone, and can actually be damaging for some. But I wonder if an element of playing the game is needed here? Attend mindfulness classes, prove that they don't help, and then you might get referred elsewhere.

It was a social worker. I'm not allowed to see anyone from health I was discharged from health (cpn/psych/primary mh care) for failure to engage after mindfulness made things worse and I couldn't tolerate their meds.

Yes I was on a course and no I didn't complete it as it made me much, much worse. There was zero support for it making me worse I was just told to try harder. I attempted during this time and since because my cptsd and social anxiety got so much worse and has never got back to the point it was before doing it. There's no way I'd risk what little mh functioning I have left on "playing the game". I get what you're saying but there's zero support if it causes problems other than being told off for not trying and directed to a&e who just give mindfulness leaflets and send you home unless you've made a serious attempt and need admitting for physical needs. They won't admit to mh ward, which I'd never consent to anyway after being abused last admission and being refused my medical treatment and ending up very physically unwell.

Literally only mindfulness here on NHS. It's that or private.

For context, before trying it I was having flashbacks once or twice a week, now I'm lucky if it's that daily (usually it's more).

I was promised it would cure everything and I wouldn't lose my religious community. I know it's not something people are able to understand but it's devastating for me to have lost that.

It made my mh worse, is actually NOT recommended for the conditions I have and did nothing at all to improve what they called psychosomatic symptoms (even though that's been proven to be medical condition which is terminal they refuse to accept it and it didn't make my chronic pain easier either - something else I was promised).

It was a lot of money to do as well - no free transport and I couldn't financially justify it either. I just felt bullied and humiliated for it not working when it supposedly did for everyone else. I didn't just go once, I gave it a good try but it just made things worse.

It wasn't worth the mental or financial cost and certainly wasn't worth losing my community over.

Mindfulness is flavour of the year as it were, just as CBT was. I haven't actually tried it, my thoughts are that although it might put people in the moment, so stopping intrusive thoughts etc, surely afterwards you go back to a stressful situation with the same old problems. My CPN recently went on a Behavioural Activation couse, suspect this is the coming flavour of the year. Maybe that will be better...

It's annoying they have these trends. I logically understand everything cannot be funded but I struggle that round here they only fund one thing, and Sod's law is it's something that's not worked for me.

@Becca19962014

Just a thought - our local Mind offers free counselling. Maybe there's one near you that does this.