Is there someone in your life you’d like to insult, but can’t decide how? For maximal negative impact—if not maximal logic—I humbly suggest, to all jerks and bullies, “It’s all in your head!” For some reason, unkind people like to throw around “It’s all in your head,” meaning by this, “You’re imagining something with no basis in reality!” Or, more vaguely, the meaning might be, “You’re batshit crazy!” It can even mean, “You’re making this up—you’re purposely being overdramatic for attention!”
It’s all in your head! Or is it?
I usually write about books on this blog, but today I’d like to feature a podcast because it was so good, so fascinating, and so relevant to us all. Podcaster Dan Taberski, of Missing Richard Simmons fame, has done it again. His new postcast, Hysterical, was released this summer.
(Another recommendation I have for all jerks and bullies: call someone hysterical, particularly a woman.)
Hysterical is the second-most bingeable podcast I’ve ever listened to, losing out only to Missing Richard Simmons. It’s a fun listen—and a vastly important topic.
Hysterical tells the true story of a group of mostly teenage girls in upstate New York who all begin exhibiting Tourette’s-like symptoms such as verbal tics and jerky movements. It’s about the Salem Witch Trials, which occurred after teenage girls all began exhibiting strange symptoms. It’s about men and women currently suffering from Havana Syndrome: mysteriously developing severe headaches and other issues while working for the U.S. government in Cuba, Russia, and even Washington, DC.
What is the cause of these strange symptoms exhibited by multiple people in a community? Environmental pollution? Witches? New, high-tech, undetectable weapons? Psychological disorders? Lying drama queens?
“It’s all in your head!” meaning: in the social context
The meaning of “It’s all in your head!” socially is a vague insult that questions a person’s competence, motivations, morality, and sanity. The meaning is: “You don’t have it together because you’re incompetent. If you tried, you could get it together. Or maybe you’re a liar. Or maybe you need psychiatric help, which, by the way, is a moral failing on your part.”
This insulting, hodgepodge meaning does nothing to get to the core of why a person is suffering. It’s a dismissal of a person’s humanity.
“It’s all in your head!” meaning: by the logic
Strictly logically speaking, everything is all in your head. Philosophers such as Locke and Hume pointed out centuries ago that our perceptions of the world happen inside our heads.
This has nothing to do with competence, morality, mental health, or any of the “It’s all in your head!” bully’s accusations. It’s a fact of life that’s true for all of us.
Furthermore, our heads are mysterious things. Modern science is still trying to figure out what exactly goes on in there.
If you are experiencing a frustrating symptom and know you’re not making it up, that it’s a genuine problem, it can be hard to hear a doctor tell you that its cause is psychological. An environmental toxin, an international threat to the U.S., or even a witch seems easier to believe in than that your brain is producing harmful symptoms without your knowledge or consent.
But it happens.
It happened to me.
It’s all in my head!
On this blog, I chronicled what happened to me after I got a concussion in 2019. Symptoms persisted for several years after my doctors told me I was fully healed. I thought the doctors were wrong about me being healed, because I knew I was still experiencing daily headaches and dizziness. And I knew I wasn’t making it up.
After years of trial and error, I discovered the answer when a psychiatrist diagnosed me with chronic pain.
(Note: Many terms describe the same or similar phenomena. Chronic pain. Conversion disorder. Psychosomatic symptoms. These terms all refer to something psychologically wrong that manifests as something physically wrong. The term chronic pain is especially confusing because it can also refer to pain that lasts a long time for physical reasons. But often, it refers to pain that lasts a long time for psychological reasons. Another confusing thing: psychological issues are technically physical, because they involve neurons and neurochemicals in the brain. The difference is that psychological issues are emotion based, while what I’m calling physical issues are not.)
Because headaches and dizziness, as well as tics, back pain, stomach pain, and other unpleasant symptoms are processed in the brain, these same neuropathways can be stimulated even when there is no physical cause.
So, what is the precise psychological cause of all this suffering? Which psychological emotion can conjure up real pain and other symptoms for no external reason?
The answer is fear.
What is the opposite of fear?
To fix a psychosomatic problem, you have to counteract the feeling of fear that is pervading the mind.
So what’s the opposite of fear?
For a long time, I thought the answer was hope.
I was wrong. Hope is a positive attitude that you have alongside your fear. If you have nothing to be afraid of, there’s no reason to expend energies on hope. (Because it’s like, duh, things are already good, dude.)
The opposite of fear is safety. To recover from chronic pain, conversion disorder, psychosomatic symptoms, or whatever you want to call it, you have to cultivate the feeling of nestling as a child in a loving mother’s arms.
There are many ways to do this if your mom isn’t available for the job—or you’re, like, a grown-up. I used a combination of (1) an antidepressant that also works for chronic pain, (2) a meditation practice, and (3) an app called Curable. Using these tools and techniques, I reconfigured my brain toward a feeling of safety and love, as opposed to anxiety and dread. And my symptoms went away.
It’s okay if it’s all in your head!
The next time a jerk or bully tells you, “It’s all in your head!” you can say in reply, “Yeah, I know. Weird, huh? Glad to hear you’ve read your philosophers!”
If it’s all in your head, that’s nothing to be ashamed of. It means you’re human. If you’re suffering from symptoms but doctors say you should not be, it’s possible your brain is tricking you. It’s possible your brain is transforming psychological fear into physical pain or other issues, unbeknownst to you.
No, that doesn’t mean you’re crazy. It means you’re going through a hard time in life. But that’s okay. You can recover.
I want to tell the world about this! Please spread the word! There is likely much needless suffering out there due to a lack of awareness about this strange feature of the brain. Two resources that do an excellent job of explaining it are the Curable app and the book The Way Out by Alan Gordon and Alon Ziv.
And do listen to the podcast Hysterical with Dan Taberski.
Is it all in your head?
I’m sorry you went through this, and I’m glad you’re feeling better.
This is good writing.
Thank you, David, for your kind words! It is such a blessing to be healed.
I had numerous vision probs in my late 20s and on/off for years. They would go away completely and then return. Saw a special doc. Finally around age 42, I got trigeminal neuralgia which was beyond a terror. Only thing rhat even helped at all was massive amount of steroids pills w awful side effects. Kept seeing same doc and had an MRI. They were not common then
I kept having odd symptoms on/off for another year. This is pre-digital. I would pick up films, bring to doc. One dayvi noticed, written on manila sleeve of Mri film, “likely MS lesions.” I asked the doc abt this and he poo-poo’d it. He suggested writing me RX for an antidepressant due to my “supposed” symptoms. You get the idea. There was more. He insisted not MS though my evoked potentials for eyes, limbs and even spinal tap all pointed to MS. When I had numbness in left hand, he said it was carnal tĆŗnel and made me wear a bracelet, though I never did repeatedly motions and was right handed. There was more, but he treated me like a hysterical female. He was also a neurologist. I finally went to the head of the MS clinic at Georgetown and she was incredulous.
She said it had been over much time, upper body and lower, left and right sides, with physical evidence from all my many tests consistent w MS, and multiple lesions from day 1. She put me on those early shots and took me off steroids. Great doc. “It’s all in your head” resonated w me.
Irene, I’m so sorry to hear you went through that. And you bring up an excellent point that I may not have emphasized enough in my blog post – it’s entirely possible that your symptoms are based in a physical (not psychological) issue. It’s important to look at the evidence, as your new doctor pointed out. Take care!