One of the interviewees mentioned that meditating was very difficult because he kept having thoughts that were not supposed to come up emerge. My immediate thought was to what I learned in Buddhist teaching to have compassion for oneself. If he had been instructed well, we would have known to accept all the thoughts that arose and merely observe them.

The following passage from Thich Nhat Hanh comes to mind:

Before the Buddha attained full realization of the path, for example, he tried various methods to suppress his mind, and they did not work. In one discourse (the Mahasaccaka Sutta), he recounted:

I thought, Why don't I grit my teeth, press my tongue against my palate, and use my mind to repress my mind? Then, as a wrestler might take hold of the head or the shoulders of someone weaker than he, and, in order to restrain and coerce that person, he has to hold him down constantly without letting go for a moment, so I gritted my teeth, pressed my tongue against my palate, and used my mind to suppress my mind. As I did this, I was bathed in sweat. Although I was not lacking in strength, although I maintained mindfulness and did not fall from mindfulness, my body and my mind were not at peace, and I was exhausted by these efforts, This practice caused other feelings of pain to arise in me besides the pain associated with the austerities, and I was not able to tame my mind.