My Husband Helped Me Discover the Solution to Stress. My Mom Thinks It's Perverse.

A person recovering from burnout improved health through diet changes, exercise, reduced commitments, and daily meditation. Their mother objects strongly, calling meditation unchristian, cultish, and mentally harmful, and also criticizes the husband as if he is trying to pervert the person. The response suggests the mother’s behavior is likely new and therefore may reflect something other than long-standing beliefs. The recommended approach is to patiently explain what meditation is and its benefits, using an authoritative medical source such as the Mayo Clinic. The guidance notes that this may not change the mother’s feelings, but it helps ensure the person has communicated clearly and can better understand what the mother believes is happening.

"Your suspicion about cognitive decline tells me this kind of behavior is mostly new for your mom. If she had been panicking over things like the satanic messages in pop music since your childhood, this would just be par for the course. So something is going on. Just to check all the boxes, you should patiently explain the basics of meditation and its benefits to her, maybe citing an authoritative source like the Mayo Clinic, whose article on how the practice relieves stress includes lines like, During meditation, you focus on one thing."

"You get rid of the stream of thoughts that may be crowding your mind and causing stress. This process can lead to better physical and emotional well-being and lists the medical symptoms that research indicates it might alleviate. To be clear, that probably won't make her feel better. But at least you'll know that you've been clear, and What does my mom actually think I'm doing when I use my mindfulness app? won't be one of the questions"

"Your husband, bless the man, is a problem solver and immediately started seeking solutions. His influence led me to change my diet, start exercising, cut back on a lot of commitments, and start a daily meditation practice. I'm doing a lot better, but my mother has, for reasons I can't quite get my head around, taken huge exception to my twice-daily quest for Nirvana."

"She's insisting that the meditation is unchristian, cultish, and squooshing my brain with primitive beliefs. It's obviously not, but she is now deeply critical of my husband and basically accuses him of trying to pervert me. It's not entirely new for her, but it is making it seriously difficult to engage, and I can't quite tell whether it's just a desperate cry for attention, cognitive decline, or something else."

Read at slate.com