Meditation Makes You More Anxious? Here's Why
For years, meditation has been sold as the holy grail of healing, productivity, calm and inner peace. Sit down, close your eyes, and breathe. Sounds simple, right? Wrong.But here’s the truth no one talks about: meditation doesn’t work for everyone and that’s because we are all so beautifully and biologically different. So, if you’ve ever felt like a failure because you couldn’t “clear your mind,” you are not broken. And I’ve been there too.
The more research I did into the types of people that meditation didn’t work for (a lot of successful, Type A, busy women), I heard a lot of people say things like: “I found it so boring and pointless. After 5 minutes I’d give up because I didn’t see the point. Sitting in silence just made me more jittery and anxious. I found myself waiting for it to be over. I guess everyone is different, but meditating made things worse. ‘Just accept your thoughts and let them pass by you’? What does that even mean?”
There are very real psychological, neurological, and biological reasons why sitting still can feel not only impossible, but in some cases, even harmful.
I know this firsthand. I’ve never been a big meditator. Living with a 20-year autoimmune disorder and intrusive OCD, sitting quietly wasn’t soothing - it was terrifying. My body screamed that something was wrong, that we didn’t know the answersm and that I was far from safe. Sitting in silence, my brain turned up the volume on every intrusive thought, sometimes leading me to panic attacks. Meditation didn’t feel like healing in any way. In fact, sometimes it felt like punishment. Today, we’re going to dig into why and all of the answers I’ve discovered along the way.
Why Meditation Can Feel Impossible
1. Hyperarousal in the Nervous System
If your body spends most of its time in busyness or fight-or-flight (a phase of dysregulation of the nervous system), sitting in silence can amplify that state. Instead of calming down, trying to sit still with a hyperaroused nervous system can lead to discomfort, heart rate spikes, a tightening chest and a racing mind because the body doesn’t know how to switch gears just through being ‘still’. This is also common for those with anxious attachment, where silence with no external reassurance can feel like abandonment. Instead of peace, stillness can trigger panic or unease.
2. An Overactive Default Mode Network (DMN)
Your DMN is your brain’s “autopilot network,” the place where overthinking and self-criticism thrive if you let it. Meditation is meant to calm your DMN, but in the beginning, it often makes it louder. If your DMN already runs on overdrive, stillness can feel unbearable. And for those with the COMT “Worrier” Gene, meditation’s “quiet mind ideology” can feel biologically out of reach. These individuals are often better suited to movement, which helps metabolize stress hormones and change their energy and nervous system state through movement.
3. A Very Busy Brain + Lack of Safety in the Body
If you’re ambitious, Type A, or constantly juggling a million mental tabs, stillness can feel threatening or unsafe because it leaves too much space for memories, emotions, or fears to surface (that often we are running from). If you’ve relied on busyness, productivity, or distraction to cope, the silence of meditation can feel threatening rather than soothing and it asks us to turn to face the things that we have been avoiding.
4. Unprocessed Trauma
Equally, for many people, sitting with uncomfortable sensations, silence and our internal word can unlock fear, memories, or overwhelm that they don’t yet have tools to regulate. For some, meditation isn’t calming; it’s actually retraumatizing.
5. Sitting With Sensations Can Feel Unsafe
Meditation may ask you to “face yourself” and “allow your thoughts to pass by” but for some people, without support, that can feel like danger, not healing. This is because people with anxiety or trauma often have heightened sensitivity to internal sensations (heartbeat, breath, stomach tension). Meditation asks you to “notice the body,” but for sensitive systems that awareness is magnified and overwhelming, making it harder to stay present.
6. Perfectionism + The Pressure to “Do It Right”
High achievers often approach meditation like a task to master. When the mind won’t go quiet, the thoughts keep coming, our mind keeps drifting and shame and self-criticism kick in: we just feel like “I’m doing this wrong.” For many of us? This pressure hijacks the very peace you’re trying to create.
7. Mismatch Between Body and Mind
Meditation assumes the mind will follow the breath, but for many people the body is still carrying excess energy - jitteriness, restlessness, tension. Without moving that energy through first, stillness becomes a battle between mind and body - wanting to get up, turn the track off early and get back on with the day.
Why Movement Works Instead
When you start to understand the above, you start to see that meditation isn’t a ‘once size fits all’ and isn’t ‘guaranteed to work for you’. In fact, something we are never taught is that for many people, movement can be just as healing, regulating or calming as meditation. You’ve probably heard the phrase “movement is medicine,” and there’s truth to it.
Why Movement Helps
Before we get into why movement can be just as powerful, healing and healthy as meditation, the difference between intense workouts and healing movement needs to be understood.
HIIT workouts, for example, can deliver a hit of cortisol, adrenaline, and dopamine - actually disconnecting us from our body, sensations, thoughts, feelings, and experiences. (Ever wondered why so many people get addicted to extreme marathon running or high-intensity training?) The chemical rush can feel like relief, but it often pulls us further out of connection with ourselves and further away from facing how we really feel.
By contrast, intentional movement has the opposite effect. It can be used as a daily ritual - a daily decision that supports nervous system regulation, emotional release, and even your ability to spiral upward into more energy, clarity, and success. Walking, or any type of somatic practice (like our Daily Devotion Somatic Pilates), can help to:
Bilateral Brain Stimulation: Rhythmic left-right movement (like walking) mimics therapies such as EMDR. It stimulates both hemispheres of the brain, helping you process stress and regulate the nervous system.
Cortisol Reduction: Gentle, steady movement lowers stress hormones rather than spiking them, creating balance instead of burnout.
The Lactate Shuttle: Walking, shaking, or stretching clears cortisol and adrenaline by moving stress metabolites through the body, giving them an outlet to leave your system.
Focus + Flow: The rhythm of movement gives the brain something to focus on, naturally quieting rumination and overthinking.
Somatic Safety: Trauma stored in the body can release more gently through motion than through forced stillness, making movement a safer entry point for many.
Regulation Through Rhythm: Consistent, rhythmic movement entrains the body into regulation, calming the mind and restoring balance.
So, movement isn’t “less than” meditation. For many of us, it’s the bridge - the practice that makes presence, peace, and healing finally possible - dropping us out of our head, into our body, and allowing us to explore how we feel, while also supporting our physical body too.
The Takeaway
If meditation hasn’t worked for you, you’re not failing. You’re just built differently. And I am too. Your nervous system might need movement, not stillness, to feel safe enough to settle. That’s not resistance - that’s wisdom. Life is about working out how to work with your body, your biology, your psychology and your unique incredible make up.
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