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Comment by monero-xmr | Hacker News Reader

I suffered from panic attacks in my youth. Mindfulness meditative practice enabled me to breathe in a such a way that I could stop the panic attack in its tracks. I further extended this breathing pattern to enter a state of deep calm on command.

It drives my wife crazy, but if I so choose, I can completely zen out within 30 seconds and enter a state of total relaxation. In this state I may acknowledge her talking to me but have little or no memory of any conversations after.

Finally, I’m a religious person and prayer is a mechanism for me to communicate with God. Combining transcendental meditation with my communications with the higher power is a very mind blowing experience for me.

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This sounds like spiritual bypass, which is a failure mode of mindfulness a lot of people can fall into. You say it drives your wife crazy, so it seems that being in this state doesn't actually help you resolve issues between you and your wife. It only numbs you to the conflict and puts the whole burden on your wife.

> You say it drives your wife crazy, so it seems that being in this state doesn't actually help you resolve issues between you and your wife. It only numbs you to the conflict and puts the whole burden on your wife.

I don't understand why you're saying this. The technique wasn't primarily to resolve issues with spouse; it was to fight panic attacks.

If the OP needs to zone-out to avoid a panic attack when talking with his wife, it sounds like they have some serious marital problems, and this is just a way of avoiding dealing with them.

Read this:

> I suffered from panic attacks in my youth.

Does it now make sense?

> If the OP needs to zone-out to avoid a panic attack when talking with his wife

He didn't said that. His wife his just frustrated that he can do this, I'm pretty sure he never told us he did this to annoy his wife on purpose or escaping.

> In this state I may acknowledge her talking to me but have little or no memory of any conversations after.

He tunes out his wife

> if I so choose

Willfully

> It drives my wife crazy

And often enough that it’s an issue.

He hasn’t shown up again in this bizarre thread, heck he’s probably doing it right now!

Don't build scenarios out of aligned facts :

> but if I so choose, I can completely zen out within 30 seconds and enter a state of total relaxation.

Sometime peoples just want to have own time and relaxing in their own preferred way

> In this state I may acknowledge her talking to me but have little or no memory of any conversations after.

It happened to his wife to come and start talking to him in this state, but him being able to acknowledge her without remembering the conversation causes her great frustration.

>> He hasn’t shown up again in this bizarre thread, heck he’s probably doing it right now!

Given the number of totally unjustified judgmental, misread based responses, no wonder one would shy out. Assuming that checking for answers it the sane behavior in the first place.

Well, OP could have framed his description a lot better since its easy even for native speakers to come up with conclusion he acts like an a-hole towards his wife and avoids conflicts. This is internet, folks don't re-read some anonymous comments 5 times to grok what was actually meant.

Good for him if he managed to get serious crippling condition under control, that's a hard feat deserving respect.

Not a fan of self-illusion claims about talking to god, that's not even how major religions are made from scratch (communication with God in my view is 2-way process, and no judaism/christian/muslim god ever talks back, but I get that it was probably not meant literally), but that's just an agnostic's nitpick when seeing righteous religious folks who claim weird stuff in my view.

You're blaming the poster for judgmental people snapping at him ? It's one thing to wish people being more articulate, it's another to use it as an excuse for 0 thought patronizing.

If someone has to refrain from express themselves or taking better care of what and how they say it, it's moralists reframing words of other people, without even thinking of asking questions beforehand.

> Not a fan of self-illusion claims about talking to god

> no judaism/christian/muslim god ever talks back

Agnostic: One who believes that it is impossible to know whether there is a God.

Houston, we have a problem: faith is a fundamental aspect of consciousness and culture, not just religion.

> Well, OP could have framed his description a lot better since its easy even for native speakers to come up with conclusion he acts like an a-hole towards his wife and avoids conflicts

Definitely not - it was completely clear from the start that OP had panic attacks since childhood.

I went to sleep - but all of these responses and conjecture amuse me greatly, so I shall let it continue without comment.

Sorry, did you say something? I was meditating.

You're blaming one person's emotional and physical experience on two people for some reason. One thing that is important in a healthy marriage is that people's feelings vs their actions are separate entities, and that one person's feelings shouldn't affect someone else's in an unhealthy fashion (enmeshment). A panic attack is unhealthy and unhelpful - if there's a conflict, one party going into a panic will not resolve the conflict.

TL;DR, being able to stop a panic attack or otherwise unproductive emotional response is a great skill to have. If the other party takes that personal then that's something they need to work on themselves.

"It only numbs you to the conflict and puts the whole burden on your wife."

Or it prevents the conflict from escalating. Panic and anger are connected, so if he found a way to be calm and stop the conversation, I guess this is way better than having the conflict in a mode of distress. So later, when both are calm, the issues can get resolved.

Persistent antagonists and provocateurs tend to become antagonised and provoked when their attempts to antagonise and provoke fail.

That is a secondary consideration to preventing further antagonisation, provocation, and escallation of the situation itself.

That said, there seems to be an underlying interpersonal conflict, and possibly incompatibility, here.

"That said, there seems to be an underlying interpersonal conflict, and possibly incompatibility, here."

Possible, but I would not judge so much, from the little that was shared. Op just shared what worked for him, to prevent panic attacks. And he shared that their are downsides as well, that frustrates his wife. The rest is speculation.

Which is why I wrote the more suggestive "seems to be" rather than the declarative "is". "Might be" could also have been used.

Much of that depends on what is read into "drives my wife crazy", which could range from mild or even humorous response to scales far more irrational and concerning. My own experience over multiple relationships and time is that small irritations have a profound tendency to grow, and that as people age they become more of who they are, psychologically, much as other patterns of aging etch the same lines ever deeper.

It's an experientially-informed observation and caution, not a diagnosis. But it's something I'd suggest putting some consideration to for anyone noticing similar trends in their own relationships. The most glaring warning sign is a loss of respect by one, both, or all parties within a relationship, familial, social, business, or otherwise.

I noted your "seems to". I just wanted to point out, that it could be seen as overstepping a line, to suggest that the whole marriage is possibly incompatible, because of that little shared info. I mean, of course it does not sound ideal. But I would not dare to judge the whole relationship because of it.

That is an absolutely fair point.

OP never mentioned conflict. He just said he zones out and ignores his wife.

You say "failure mode", but it sounds like a superpower to me.

Please don't "you're doing it wrong" with mindfulness. Mindfulness has become almost a religion for some people who want it to be more than a pragmatic tool with various consumption styles.

The whole thing has been oversold in the same way that cannabis, etc. were. It's just a thing, utterly detached from artificial spiritual goals, and we should let people use it how they want.

This is textbook spiritual bypassing. You are misusing Buddhist teachings in order to run away from your life. Buddhism especially (but also related religions) is about facing the difficulty in your life as it is, not "blissing out for 30 minutes while you wife is talking to you"

Oh no! If Buddha said so then it must be true.

Why are you putting words in my mouth? I never said that. I'm sure you can manage to refute me without lying.

Why did you bring up your religion in the first place? OP said that he found this cool technique for instant relaxation, and then you started talking about whatever religious bullcrap.

Because mindfulness meditation is taken from a specific religion.

Also, is "facing your suffering" really "religious bullcrap"?

I'm saying that using techniques taken from religions to avoid your suffering is spiritual bypassing. Please explain how that is "religious bullcrap"

> is taken from a specific religion.

It hasn't been only "discovered" there, definitely not... and even if so, religion or whatever is the truth and noone dare to use it differently ( what OP even not said), bad cultural appropriation or what?

Religions have a history of making up bullshit reasons why suffering and being unhappy is the righteous path. Christianity promises you a happy afterlife for suffering in real life, Hinduism tells you that you're getting karmic credit points for your next life, etc. "facing your suffering" is just another iteration of this.

A more rational take on these teachings is that historically they were a tool of pacifying the masses to accept their abject poverty and squalor without revolting and imploding the social hierarchy. They make no sense in a post-scarcity world.

This is what I mean by religious bullcrap.

I didn't mention any of that stuff though.

Facing your suffering is the only way to understand truly how to solve it.

You can keep running from it if you want but it will just catch up to you.

Says who?

Me.

Hinduism doesn’t have “karmic credit points” and this is a misconception. Karma is the output of the totality of your life and its measurement is cosmically obscured. You can, however, be granted awesome boons by the various deities for extreme selfless acts of devotion —- demons included.

I think you misread the comment and he doesn't do this to escape his wife. You should reflect on yourself to understand what mechanism makes you jump head on on a (illegitimate) patronizing opportunity.

Do Buddhist teachings not talk about passing judgments? OP provided an anecdote which makes no claims about "running away from life".

No, they do not talk of that

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