I am not sure what kind of meditation you practice, but there are a lot of different approaches, and maybe it’s a matter of finding one that fits YOU, rather than you not fitting meditation.

For example, some people do “guided imagery” as a meditation. Others count their breaths. Others simply listen to ambient noise. Sometimes meditation is an attempt to empty one’s mind of thoughts (pretty near impossible, I say), other times meditation brings focus and awareness to our inner processes. What kind do you practice? If you’re having trouble, maybe it’s because you haven’t yet found the kind of meditation that suits your temperament.

I practice a form of Zen meditation that emphasizes paying attention to one’s thoughts — just noticing what they are — and then letting them go. Sometimes, to help this process, we practice “labeling our thoughts,” where we notice what we are thinking and put a label to it, like “Now my knees hurt” and “Now I am thinking about what I will do when I stop meditating” and “Now I am feeling anxious again.” But most of the time, we just sit. I admit that this was very frightening to me when I just starting meditating, and was still in the early stages of recovery, but over time I came to look forward to that “just sitting” time, time that was just about ME and whatever I happened to be thinking at the moment.

I also feel that meditation is most meaningful when it is in the context of a religious or spiritual practice. There are Christian forms of meditation, such as contemplative prayer, as well as Jewish, Hindu, and Buddhist — and probably more that I don’t even know about. I started meditating because I wanted to calm down and feel less anxious, but as I did more sitting with a Zen group in college, I became interested in the rituals involved in Zen and decided to learn more about the tradition as a whole, which led me down the Buddhist path that I now follow. So now, I meditate because I am Buddhist, and not to quell my anxiety — though there is still plenty of that — and meditation has a larger purpose that I find rather soothing in its own right. I am connecting with a tradition and faith that are larger than I am — WOW!!