Over the years I have worked closely with many meditation practitioners and Buddhist authors, some of whom have been clients, and my own practice has grown alongside these relationships. Being surrounded by people with such deep experience can be inspiring, but it can also quietly raise the bar on where you think you need to be in your ability to overcome life’s challenges.
One of my most embarrassing moments was during a trip to the emergency room related to complications from my autoimmune disease. I was in excruciating pain when a close friend, who also has a long meditation practice, half-jokingly asked, “Are you able to outwit your pain?”
We both laughed. The joke came about because another friend of mine, physician and meditation teacher Dr. Christian Wolff, is a colleague and former client who wrote about working with chronic pain through mindfulness in her book Outsmart your pain.
I remember telling her once, almost defensively, that I meditated every day. I had a quiet competitive edge. I didn’t want to miss a day, even in the hospital. Skipping a day felt like a failure.
I remember telling her once, almost defensively, that I meditated every day. I had a quiet competitive edge. I didn’t want to miss a day, even in the hospital. Skipping a day felt like a failure. In retrospect, this belief seems a little ridiculous, but at the time it carried real weight.
At that moment, I couldn’t outwit my pain.
My response was immediate, “No. I can’t. I need painkillers.”
Even as I said it, a small part of me felt inadequate. I felt like a fraud. If I’ve spent years around mindfulness practices and teachings about skillful pain management, shouldn’t I be better at it?
My health issues have given me many moments like this, moments where I doubted my ability to overcome adversity the way I thought I should.
What I didn’t realize at the time was that practice doesn’t always manifest itself at the very moment when suffering arises. Sometimes it shows in how we move through the experience afterwards.
Later, Christiane offered a perspective that changed something for me.
“Angela,” she said, “if you don’t meditate when you’re in the hospital, that doesn’t mean you’re a failure. Your practice to date has prepared you to navigate these moments. That’s what this practice is for.”
“Angela,” she said, “if you don’t meditate when you’re in the hospital, that doesn’t mean you’re a failure. Your practice to date has prepared you to navigate these moments. That’s what this practice is for.”
It was a simple reminder, but an important one. I realized how quickly I had turned a moment of human vulnerability into a judgment about whether I was doing the practice “well enough.”
Around the same time, I was helping a menopausal telehealth company develop educational content and share mindfulness practices for perimenopausal and menopausal women. I had no problem guiding others through meditation or creating resources to help people access the practice.
Yet privately, I have sometimes struggled to apply the same resilience to my own life.
This tension between helping others access mindfulness and doubting my own ability to embody it was incredibly revealing. It showed me how quickly self-judgment can set in and how easily I hold myself to impossible standards. More importantly, it helped me see where I still had work to do, on and off the pad.
Naming experience
As the months went by, I became more and more curious about what might be going on beneath the surface of my experience. I understood the stress and anxiety associated with my health problems. They have been a part of my life for many years. But it felt deeper.
I began to question my beliefs about how I should handle adversity. Obviously, I’ve internalized an idea of what it should look and feel like, especially for someone with as much mindfulness experience as I do. After more than 15 years in this space, I unconsciously decided that I shouldn’t be fighting at all.
I began to question my beliefs about how I should handle adversity. Obviously, I’ve internalized an idea of what it should look and feel like, especially for someone with as much mindfulness experience as I do. After more than 15 years in this space, I unconsciously decided that I shouldn’t be fighting at all.
Psychologists have a term for a similar pattern in professional life. The impostor phenomenon, first described in Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes in 1978 refers to a persistent feeling that we are not up to the role we are supposed to play, even when there is ample evidence that we belong there.
While this concept is often discussed in career settings, similar dynamics can arise in contemplative practice.
Experienced practitioners are still human. We can be just as overwhelmed by everyday stressors as anyone else, and often the mind is quick to judge these experiences. mine sounds like If you were truly practicing mindfulness, you wouldn’t feel this way.
In such moments, the mind takes a very human experience and reframes it as failure. You are an impostor.
One of the things that makes it so difficult is that we start looking for evidence to support this belief, convincing ourselves that we are failing at something we never set out to improve.
One of the things that makes it so difficult is that we start looking for evidence to support this belief, convincing ourselves that we are failing at something we never set out to improve.
What about stress?
To be alive in these times is to experience persistent stress levels. It doesn’t take long to feel the weight of political unrest, global uncertainty, financial pressures, social division and personal tension: turning on the news, scrolling through the headlines or going about your daily chores.
All this is absorbed by the nervous system.
Thus how we regulate ourselves in the midst of it? And what does this have to do with attention imposter syndrome?
Studies in stress physiology shows that when the brain perceives a threat, the body goes into survival mode. The pulse increases, breathing changes, attention to potential danger narrows.
In these states of activation, it can be much more difficult to access the awareness we have worked so hard to develop. This can create a confusing internal signal: If I have these tools, why can’t I use them right now?
For those practicing mindfulness, this can easily be misinterpreted as a bad practice.
But the nervous system does not go astray at these moments. It reacts exactly as it was designed.
This misunderstanding is where self-doubt can quietly take hold.
A clear vision
One of psychiatrist Carl Jung’s most often quoted sayings is, “Until you become aware of the unconscious, it will rule your life, and you will call it fate.”
As mindfulness practice deepens, awareness expands. We become more attuned to our inner landscape, our thoughts, emotions and reactions. As a result, we often begin to notice reactivity more clearly than before. What may appear to be a regression may actually be an increase in awareness.
As mindfulness practice deepens, awareness expands. We become more attuned to our inner landscape, our thoughts, emotions and reactions.
As a result, we often begin to notice reactivity more clearly than before.
What may appear to be a regression may actually be an increase in awareness.
You may find yourself being triggered in situations where you previously reacted automatically without even realizing it. There is a pause now. Recognition. A moment of vision of what is happening.
This shift may feel uncomfortable not because something is going wrong, but because something is being revealed.
Studies on mindfulness suggests that the practice strengthens meta-awareness, our ability to observe our own mental and emotional states.
The reactions themselves may not be new.
What is new is our ability to see them.
Expectations and shame here!
Most of us have an internal narrative that quietly projects expectations onto our daily lives. In mindfulness practice, this often takes the form of how we think we should feel when we sit.
Calm. Patient. Indifferent. Grateful.
We tend to measure success by the presence of these states, ignoring the full range of human emotions, fear, anger, grief, uncertainty, which are equally part of our experience.
We tend to measure success by the presence of these states, ignoring the full range of human emotions, fear, anger, grief, uncertainty, which are equally part of our experience.
When our lived reality does not match these inner expectations, shame can arise.
During the months leading up to menopause, I felt driven by unfamiliar sensations in my body. Many of my tools seemed to have disappeared. I felt the reaction, the fear and the uncertainty of what was happening.
And the further narration was brutal:
You should handle it better.
Who are you to guide others if you can’t handle it yourself?
Instead of just noticing the stress, I added another layer: self-judgment.
Sometimes the very concepts of mindfulness can become a form of pressure. Psychotherapist John Wellwood described this dynamic as “spiritual bypassing,” using spiritual insights to avoid or overcome difficult emotional realities.
In practice, this may manifest itself in subtle ways, but the result is often the same. We begin to feel guilt or shame about what we are going through.
Struggle with dysregulation
Our perceptions of mindfulness can sometimes work against us. If we believe that this practice should always make us calm and less reactive, we are in for disappointment.
Mindfulness is not peace.
Mindfulness is not peace.
As Allen Ginsberg once said, the challenge is simply to “notice what you notice.”
As we develop awareness, we begin to see our reactions as they arise. You may have noticed that you are called out in conversation. Perhaps you pause rather than react immediately. You may even admit afterwards that you were surprised.
These moments are important.
Mindfulness meets us exactly where we are.
It does not require us to arrive in a particular state.
He asks us to meet whatever state we find ourselves in with a little more awareness and, if possible, a little more kindness.
Exploring self-compassion suggests that responding to difficult emotions with care rather than criticism supports emotional resilience and regulation.
When we approach our experiences in this way, the narrative of failure begins to soften.
Anyone who has spent time meditating knows that emotions always arise. It is not the presence of emotions that changes, but our attitude towards them.
instead of asking Why do I still react like this?
We can ask:
What is happening in the body now?
What is this reaction trying to tell me?
These questions reopen the possibility of practice, even in the midst of difficulty.
Anyone who has spent time meditating knows that emotions always arise. It is not the presence of emotions that changes, but our attitude towards them.
Moments of reaction do not deprive us of practice.
They remind us why we do what we do. Awareness is not something we perfect. It’s something we come back to again and again.
