“You’re Too Much in Your Head!”

I cannot tell you how many times I have been told - ‘You’re too much in your head!’

I would be a rich woman if I got a dollar for every time I have been on the receiving end of those utterances.

I often feel like asking those individuals to show me where the switch is, so that I can just flick it off to get out of my busy mind. I wish it was that simple.

Those words are often delivered by those who believe that they are so much in their own hearts and generally uber evolved, while my heart aches at their ignorance, judgement and astounding lack of compassion.

‘You’re too much in your head’ has become a new-age cliché that lacks a basic understanding of the psychology behind this tendency. This mental pattern is often a trauma response learnt very early in life; and, rather than the issue being a lack of feeling, the problem for those of us who live in our heads, is feeling too much, and needing to find a way to not let that overwhelmed us.

What is often overlooked, even by mental health professionals, is that ‘being in the head’ is a tenacious survival mechanism usually learnt in early life, often in response to abuse or neglect. If an infant or young child did not receive the appropriate nurturance, attunement, protection and care from their care-givers, they very often had to be in their head, their mental space, to work out how to survive their circumstances by themselves. This habit becomes their safety blanket, something to rely on when there is little else.

If the young child was not appropriately soothed when alarmed or distressed, they did not receive the benefits of the bonding hormone, oxytocin, that helped them to feel reassured and calmed. The healthy nurturance behaviours demonstrated by their caregivers also helps a young child to later be able to self-soothe and develop a healthy sense of self – because they knew they were worth caring for.

Polyvagal theory helps us to understand that the ventral vagal system, the ‘social engagement system’ is designed to foster safety and connection, particularly when under threat. A parent’s nurturing, protection and reassuring gaze and gestures come into play via the ventral vagal system. We know that the sympathetic nervous system puts us into fight or flight when stressed or threatened, and the parasympathetic nervous system, of which the vagus nerve is the largest nerve, pacifies the system and aids rest and recovery when in safety.

When, in early life, there is abuse or a significant deficit of healthy attachment to, and nurturance by a child’s caregivers, that somatic calming of the system is not experienced and the young child has to find another way to cope with, or even survive, their stressful circumstances. They often go into their mental space to try to figure it out by themselves. The mind will frantically try to find solutions as an attempted compensation for the lack of viscerally felt safety. Top-down rather than bottom-up. This can become a very tenacious life-long habit.

There is also very often a lack of trust in others, and even life in general, that was instilled in early life in response to certain circumstances and that further fuels the need for the child to work it out by themself. Which a young child simply cannot do. So the young child never really feels safe. This creates much ongoing tension, putting mind and body in a defensive, overgiligent state; and as the defensive state is inflammatory to the body, this can contribute to a number of health issues over time.

I believe that an infant or young child can be more in their mental space, rather than relaxed in their body, even when pre-verbal. We know that unconscious core beliefs can form very early in life in response to certain experiences and traumatic events, which often remain as implicit memories. Though there is no language, the felt sense, and perception at an energy level, affects the workings of the developing brain and mind.

Habits that we believe ensure our very survival will not be relinquished readily and thus hold very firm. This is largely an unconscious process; and, as the unconscious mind is estimated to be about 95% of our mind, we have 5% conscious mind working against 95% unconscious mind. Yes, we can learn to get ‘out of our heads’, however, this takes time, determination, effort, the right guidance and often the clearing of underlying traumas. It is not just an act of will. We cannot use our mental space alone to get out of our mental space, though the process often starts with a cognitive intention to do so.

There are always reasons why people are the way they are and rather than judge the surface presentation, the personality and habits, according to the latest pop-psychology trend and how we decide others should be, maybe we need to scratch under the surface rather than condemn them. Maybe we need to get curious about what makes them tick and also apply the same to ourselves.

Brain and heart are meant to work together, with heart on lead, each contributing the best of themselves cooperatively rather than being an out-of-balance system. We associate the left brain with analytical thought, logic and reasoning and the right brain with intuition, creativity, pattern recognition and the gestalt. As with brain and heart, both left and right sides of the brain are designed to work together, in balance; we need both.

Due to a variety of factors and influences, we might have tendencies to be either more left brain or right brain dominant, i.e., more in our intellect or more aligned with our emotional, felt sense. We also live in a society that fosters the intellect rather than the emotional aspects of ourselves. Facts and knowledge hold more credence in our society than our intuition or gestalt understandings.

We are also exposed to what seems to be an exponentially increasing plethora of information, mainly via digital platforms. Our fast click world caters to, and promotes, short intention spans. Many of us have our brains and minds ricocheting around in the restless pursuit of yet more information and cheap click-bait distractions.

Not to mention the influence of our lifestyles, fast pace of life, unhealthy quick food diets, cumulative stresses and the burgeoning increase in imposed new-to-nature chemicals that we are meant to take into our bodies - all of which are considered normal by our society. Even if there is no significant trauma in childhood, these influences alone will affect brain development. It is much easier to apply an umbrella label to any related emotional-psychological dysfunction rather than address the contributing societal influences.

You might have noticed that there is a marked increase in the diagnosis of ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) in both children and adults. I, personally, would tick many the boxes for an ADHD diagnosis if I were to go down that diagnostic process. Which I won’t. I don’t need a pathologizing label to tell me what I already know.

I am, in fact, more right brain dominant, though I have had to squeeze myself into a left-brain format and do, indeed, have the tendency to be ‘in my head’. Working as a medical doctor for over 40 years certainly helped that tendency along, defying my natural predisposition. I also know that my early life experiences helped to create my over-thinking habit and my over-intellectualisation as a defence mechanism.

Having said that, I love my sharp intellect and my knowledge base and plan to keep it; however, I am endeavouring to bring those aspects more into balance with my right brain capacity and bring my strong intuition and emotional and artistic sides out of hiding. It is okay to be in my head as long as I bring that into balance with being in my heart.

Dr Catherine Fyans is a retired medical practitioner, trauma therapist, mind-body consultant and the author of ‘The Wounding of Health Care: From Fragmentation to Integration’