What my headaches turned out to mean

I’ve had headaches on and off for years. Sometimes a dull one above my right eye. Sometimes one that starts at my left temple and runs down the side of my neck.

For a long time I treated them like weather. Something that happened to me, that I waited out.

This year I started paying closer attention. I’m not a doctor, and some headaches have causes that no amount of journaling will touch. If yours are new or getting worse, get them checked. This is just what I’ve noticed in mine, over about six months of practicing letting go.

What was I getting wrong at the start?

In May I had a low headache that came and went for weeks. I’d stopped taking anything for it, and I told myself I was letting it be.

Then one afternoon I caught it. I was sitting with the headache, but I was also quietly wishing it would leave. That wish was still a no. I wasn’t letting it be. I was waiting it out with better posture.

So I changed the question. Less “please go away,” more “okay, you’re here. What are you carrying?”

Where does anger come in?

Late in May, after a couple of weeks of mostly fear, I had a day where small things kept going wrong. I tried three parks to sit barefoot on the grass, and each one fell through. Then a login loop on my laptop took what calm I had left.

I was angry. What surprised me is that it felt like a step up. Fear had kept me frozen for two weeks. Anger at least had some heat in it. I talked the whole day through into a voice note, naming each thing that set me off, and I was calmer at the end of the recording than at the start.

About a week later I noticed heat and redness in my face and scalp, and something clicked. I’d always pictured anger as yelling or venting. Some of mine never came out either way. As a kid I learned to keep frustration and impatience to myself. So the anger didn’t go out. It went in.

That’s when my headaches started to look different. Not always anger. But often a feeling with nowhere to go, settling into my head, my jaw, my neck.

Is every headache anger?

No. That was the next surprise.

In September I placed an order for something I’d wanted for a long time. Right after, I felt overwhelmed and anxious, and the pressure started building in my head. When I looked closer, it wasn’t worry. It was excitement. Joy can get stuck up there too.

I also had to admit something less flattering. Back in June I saw that some of my aches had been a socially acceptable way to stop. Nobody argues with a headache. Resting because I was in pain felt allowed. Resting because I was tired didn’t.

So when my head tightens now, I’ve stopped asking what’s wrong with me. I ask what I’m feeling that isn’t landing. Sometimes it’s anger. Sometimes it’s excitement. Sometimes I’m just tired, and the honest answer is rest.

What am I trying when anger flashes?

In September someone I see for this work described anger as a security guard, standing in front of something softer. What they saw under mine was grief, and an old feeling of not getting my share. That one landed, so I’m testing it.

When I feel the flash, I try not to say anything to anyone right away. I turn inward and ask why, then why again, until I reach the softer thing. If it needs to come out, I say it out loud, alone in the car, not at a person.

With the tension, I pause as soon as I feel it climb. I let the feeling be whatever it is and give it a few minutes before I go back to what I was doing. I’ve also been getting bodywork every week or so since September.

Is it working?

Some days, yes. In September I had a run of overloaded days, the kind that used to end with a pounding headache, and the headache didn’t come. One late night I felt anxiety and pressure on the right side of my head and just sat through it. It loosened. My note from that night says sitting through my emotions did work.

The clearest change is a gap. When I get overwhelmed now, the headache doesn’t arrive at the same moment. There’s a little room between the two, and in that room I can relax before it fully lands.

I still get headaches. Anger still flashes. But I don’t read the headache as the problem anymore.

It was never the feeling. It was where the feeling waited.