A lot of the promotion of meditation, particularly mindfulness meditation, involves the use of it in treating mental health problems, and there are various other claims about its wider health benefits. These are often supported by a wealth of research. So, in some sense, meditation can be considered as having some effects in the way drugs do. However, the similarity breaks down very quickly for those who try to use meditation as a palliative in the way they might take an aspirin for a headache.
One meditation session can make you feel less distressed, but sometimes it can make you feel more distressed. If you come to meditation classes only when you are distressed, you may get some value from it, but you are missing the wider value of meditation. You also might get discouraged if you find that the meditation you wanted to make you feel better has no effect or even makes you feel worse!
A key value of meditation is that it helps you build emotional resilience. With that in mind, regular meditation when you are not distressed is likely to be of great benefit when the challenges of life appear. Rather than taking the pain away when distress appears, it can help reduce your chance of getting distressed when challenges come along, and it may help you recover faster.
The real value of mindfulness is in daily life. The practices are intended to help you deal with daily life. And the effects of the practices are cumulative over time. It is more like doing exercise to keep fit – you need to do it regularly to get the real value, and the value is not just in the exercise itself.
By all means go to a class that you value when you are feeling distressed, but when you don’t feel you need it right now then maybe that is a better time to go.