The Head-Chatter Honey Trap

Brendan Lloyd PhD
September 2021, r: 04.04

It's the head-chatter that drives those felt experiences of stress, anxiety and depression.[i] It's a simple mind-body connection. If there is head-chatter occupying your mind then consequently you'll have elevated levels of adrenaline and cortisol in your body.

It's the adrenaline that gives us that jittery, agitated, churned or knotted gut, tight chest, anxious feeling. The cortisol accounts for that exhausted, fatigued, alienating, wanting to hide, depressed feeling. It's the head-chatter that constantly whacks away on the emergency button[ii] that keeps these emergency chemicals topped up in our bloodstream.

What we really need to appreciate is that it's the relentless over production of adrenaline and cortisol that causes our suffering. The issue is to understand how we do this relentless over production of these emergency chemicals.

If you're experiencing ongoing stress, anxiety and/or depression then you need to address the head-chatter. Arguably any other approach is papering over the cracks. In other words, by addressing your head-chatter you go directly to the source where you can use your mind skilfully, to change how you feel.

A skilful mind is useful because the head-chatter is a slippery customer. If only it was as simple as banishing it from our mind altogether. Our head-chatter, which is behaviour of our mind[iii] and a projection of our personality, has its own set of challenges in our quest for stress-reduction.

Head-chatter is sneaky, deceptive and seductive. It will even elude you. It will hide behind elements of truth, grievances and desires, justifications and entitlement. It will always have a confirmatory bias. It will disguise itself as thinking.

Head-chatter will even lead you to do things that seem like solutions at the time. If you do experience unwanted paradoxical effects[iv] in your life it will be because you acted on the chatter. It is subconscious in the sense that you don't notice the chatter starting up; and once it gets going you may not even notice that you're doing it. If you do notice it, you'll most likely mistake it for thinking.

We fall into the chatter. On any given occasion this is usually a subconscious process. There is a triggering.

The triggering

The triggering could come from anything. All the trigger requires is a symbolic resemblance of the threat. In other words, all that is needed is for the trigger to look like or resemble the threat, in whatever shape or form that may be.

In Table 1 below are examples of triggering-events to illustrate the point. When you read each example, try not to relate these examples to yourself because the specific content may not apply to you. We're talking about how it works. We have a focus on the process, not specific content; that's why there are eight different vignettes to demonstrate the one point.

As the examples demonstrate, the potential content for any triggering-event is wide-ranging and boundless; and for the purpose of this discussion, we need to bring it all back to one point.

Each of these examples resembles a threat and thus the triggering of the emergency button. So, we need to focus our attention on understanding the threat rather than spending time on sorting out the content. This is the coalface of stress-reduction.

These eight vignette examples represent four unique threats, namely shame, persecution, abandonment and deprivation. Three examples represent the threat of shame. Three represent the threat of persecution. One each represents the threats of abandonment and deprivation. Examples could have been presented for the threats of imperfection, catastrophe, invalidation, subjugation, failure, unfairness, etc.

The four threats that are illustrated may not be your threats. You will have your own set of threats. You will have your own list of favourites.

In Table 2, we step behind the eyes of each person in each vignette. To understand the threat, we listen to the chatter with curiosity and interest.

What's the threat? "What am I responding to with all this adrenaline and cortisol?" The head-chatter provides the clue.

We don't even have conscious control over our response to the trigger. Our initial response is too quick. You wouldn't want it any other way. We need that instant recognition of threats; with particular reference to actual threats.

In our triggering-events the emergency button is activated by conditioned or learnt responses. We have an instant recognition of the threat. We respond automatically to what looks like a threat.

The seduction

The idea of being trapped in the head-chatter is an analogy. It's as if we are lured into it and we just can't get out. This is the issue with the continuing head-chatter; we stay in it; we even develop the story. In some cases, we will shift our attention from real-time and become absorbed by the story. This is when our mind figuratively leaves the room.

Traps aren't as they seem; there is a perceptual distortion. For a trap to work it needs a disguise or it needs to create a deception of one sort or another. For example, our continuing chatter makes promises it can't possibly keep, like reaching a resolution of the threat. This will forever be a false promise because these particular threats only come to life in the continuing chatter to begin with.

The head-chatter sucks us in. The lure or the bait is the element of truth. To illustrate the point, in Table 3 we stay behind the eyes of the eight individuals portrayed in the eight vignettes, to see the elements of truth.

In Table 3, the head-chatter speaks the alarming truth, or at least an alarming element of the truth. We humans tend to default toward a confirmation bias. What we see in the triggering-event is evidence to support our story/theory about the threat.

From within our head-chatter there is no way to question the truth. The truth is the truth and that is all there is to it. For example, "if I take a flight to Sydney and the plane crashes that will be a disaster", true or false? It's simply a fact, it would be a disaster. How do you dismiss or even let go of a fact like that? Table 4 shows the facts behind the eyes for the eight vignettes.

How can you argue with what you see and what you feel? The answer is, don't argue. There is no argument when the 'truth' is spoken in the content of your head-chatter.

You do not need to set up a battle in your mind by questioning the truth. If you do you will succeed in producing more adrenaline and cortisol, which is the opposite of what you need to change how you feel.

Our selective attention and confirmation bias block our view of the whole truth. An element of truth is not the whole truth; no matter how alarming. For example, in Table 5, consider the whole-truth possibilities for each of the vignettes.

In the first vignette, of course people judge all the time, true or false? It is possible to assume that a day would not pass where you have not been judged and where you have not judged another person. Judging is a phenomenon across the board regardless of time, place, or prevailing conditions.

If shame is a threat to you, then you're on the lookout for the judging events. You will look for the evidence. You will spot the threat at 50 paces.

You will notice the judging to the extent of excluding other important information. You are not likely to notice the validating or valuing. We could say that people are validating and valuing all the time, true or false? Of course, it's true. But with your attention drawn to the judging as the truth you would either not notice validating and valuing occurring, or you would deny that it applies to you.

Vignette two portrays the threat of abandonment. It is true, just because you have abandonment issues, doesn't mean your partner won't leave you. What it does mean is that you would have your attention keenly focused on any signs of what looks like abandonment.

If abandonment is one of your threats, then you would pay particular attention to anything that looks like abandonment. For example, your partner's phone rings. "I wonder who's calling her", this is the chatter starting up. On the other hand, you will probably ignore or not notice your partner's efforts to make you happy and comfortable.

Vignette three portrays the threat of persecution. Here we can say with confidence, that just because you're paranoid it doesn't mean they're not out to get you. Like the threat of abandonment, the threat of persecution has that paranoid aspect. "They're doing it to me; they make me feel that way".

Deprivation is the threat in vignette four. The chatter will justify the grievance. The chatter says that the suffering is caused by the slow bus and the narrow winding road. The suffering will follow the bus for the duration of the journey and perhaps beyond. The facts are there before your eyes. The bus is too slow, there are no overtaking opportunities, true or false?

In the slow-bus vignette, if we step outside the head-chatter and observe the present moment for what it offers, we see a human suffering quite unnecessarily. Whatever it is that needs doing can wait for sure. It doesn't matter how much you huff and you puff, you will not blow down the house of bricks.[v] The point is to change how you feel.

Escape the trap

The trap is all about what grabs our attention and holds our attention. The meaning 'threat' will get our attention any day. A continuing ‘threat' will hold our attention until the threat is resolved. In the context of head-chatter threats, the trap is the illusion of continuing threat.

How to break the illusion, is the question. We do not deny the threat and pretend that it isn't there. For starters, there is the actual suffering as evidence of the threat's continuing presence. The objective is to change the way you feel by addressing the threat, not just ignore the suffering.

Resources

To make life easier for you, there are resources here for you to tap into.

• The Skillful Mind Perspective articles.
• Telehealth couching sessions.

The Skillful Mind articles can be a great self-help resource. Telehealth consultations will speed up your efforts. You probably can do it on your own, but you can lighten the load.

With telehealth consultations your efforts will be solid and sustainable. Phone for an appointment.

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Endnotes

[i] The subject matter here is anxiety depression from psychological processes. This article in no way addresses anxiety depression from physiological processes, for example a psychological masquerade.

[ii] The Emergency Button is a metaphor to denote the sympathetic response in our autonomic nervous system, aka autonomic arousal or the fight or flight response.

[iii] If your mind is doing something, the something is behaviour. It's a simple definition; doing is behaviour.

[iv] A paradoxical effect is where you put out one thing and you get back something unexpected and unwanted. For example you put out closeness and you get back rejection; or you put out perfection and you are then accused of micro-management.

[v] According to the Three Little Pigs, you can blow down a house of straw or sticks, but not a house of bricks.