‘Shooting the messenger’ & other ways the primitive brain avoids doing mind/body work

‘Shooting the messenger’ and/or 'avoidance of the messenger' and other ways the primitive brain avoids doing mind/body work:

The lizard/reptilian brain (one's primitive brain) uses various tactics to avoid the emotional work necessary for mind-body symptom relief, especially when faced with processing anger or rage threatening one's sense of safety or relationships (as in TMS). This defence mechanism causes the brain to resist emotional processing in subtle and overt ways, often without conscious awareness.

The defence mechanism/tactics are not personal flaws but signs that outdated survival circuits remain active. The key is to notice and make space for these defences while continuing to take steps to feel and express the emotions beneath one's symptoms, despite one's lizard/reptilian brain’s objections. Understanding and naming these avoidance strategies enables this.

Understanding lizard/reptilian brain behaviour

Primitive survival mechanisms trigger automatic responses such as fight, flight, freeze, appease, or fawn. These responses are often activated by perceived threats or stress, which may no longer be real or are exaggerated in modern life.

Recognising these reactions as survival strategies, not conscious choices, enables engagement of one's more evolved brain regions (like the prefrontal cortex) to pause, reflect, and choose more adaptive responses. This fosters self-awareness and promotes emotional regulation techniques such as mindful breathing, grounding, and reflective thinking that calm the nervous system and prevent impulsive reactions driven by fear or anger.

Over time, this leads to reduced anxiety, improved social interactions through integration of emotional/social cognitive functions with older brain parts. It also reduces defensive behaviours and supports healthier processing of emotions like anger and rage without overwhelming survival responses.

In essence, understanding the function of the reptilian brain provides insight into the brain's innate protective mechanisms, enabling individuals to engage with these primal responses consciously rather than being dominated by them. This awareness fosters the capacity for psychological resilience, as it allows for intentional modulation of instinctual behaviours that serve survival but may otherwise compromise reasoned decision-making.

'Shooting the messenger' and/or 'avoidance of the messenger' effect

When anyone—therapist, friend, or one's own conscious self—highlights any of these avoidance behaviours (below) or emotional roots, one's brain may respond with anger, frustration, denial, ridicule, criticism of those 'messengers' and/or avoidance of those 'messengers' because the feedback threatens its survival strategies.

Common ways the lizard/reptilian brain avoids 'the work'

1. Distraction with symptoms: Amplifies physical symptoms (pain, discomfort, fatigue) to overshadow emotional awareness, making bodily treatment feel more urgent than addressing underlying emotions/feelings (e.g. of rage or anger).

2. Rationalisation and minimisation: Uses logical excuses to avoid emotional work, such as believing the issue is purely physical or diminishing emotional triggers.

3. Self-Doubt and confusion: Creates scepticism about mind-body connections or processes (“Maybe this is nonsense,” “What if I’m wasting my time?”), stopping deeper engagement.

4. Procrastination and avoidance: Encourages delaying therapeutic exercises (“I’ll do it tomorrow”) or distracts attention to other tasks and activities, e.g. phone scrolling.

5. Perfectionism and over-control: Seeks the “perfect” or "silver bullet" method or guarantee before starting, leading to endless preparation without action.

6. Excessive analysis and/or looking for reasons why one is a 'special' or 'rare' or 'exceptional' or 'difficult' case and mind/body work won't work for you: Discussing and analysing things to the nth degree is another distraction and diversion that the lizard/reptilian brain uses, keeping one stuck in thinking rather than feeling and doing the emotional work. And considering oneself to be a 'special', 'rare' and 'difficult' case puts a block on starting or continuing to do 'the work'.

7. Flooding with other emotions: Substitutes direct anger with more acceptable feelings like guilt, anxiety, or sadness, avoiding core issues.

8. Outcome dependence: A significant avoidance behaviour—focusing on needing guaranteed success before engaging in 'the work'. When someone points out that this is a "hiding to nothing" and blocks progress, the brain becomes defensive and reacts by criticising and/or 'shooting the messenger’. This defensiveness protects survival strategies by rejecting discomfort or challenge from feedback, reinforcing resistance to emotional work.

9. Comparing progress and timetabling: A very common often counterproductive behaviour is having a mental timetable regarding losing symptoms and/or comparing one's progress with others to include how long it took for others to experience improvement of symptoms or to lose symptoms. This is liable to lead to disappointment and despondency and be used by the brain to question and stop one from doing 'the work'. The brain does not like being told that this is often unhelpful; such feedback can trigger defensiveness because the brain perceives this as a threat to its strategy of protecting one from perceived failure or danger.

10. Resistance of progress being typically non-linear and/or being concerned and/or becoming preoccupied with the level of progress and/or the rate of progress, and/or being impatient with the process: Can trigger significant frustration, discouragement and lack of determination. The primitive brain interprets perceived slow or uneven progress as a potential threat to survival or success, often responding with anxiety, impatience, or self-doubt. This can activate defensive mechanisms such as heightened stress, avoidance behaviours, or a tendency to 'shoot the messenger'—rejecting feedback that challenges these perceptions—thereby impeding motivation.

11. Constantly searching for someone who has fully lost their mind/body symptoms who had exactly the same symptoms as one's own: Finding someone with similar symptoms is usually not enough, and even if an exact match is found, that is often not enough either; there will be the need to find other such cases and so on. This causes procrastination with regard to starting or doing 'the work'.

12. Doubting that the lizard brain can cause all sorts of different symptoms, not just pain, but fatigue, IBS, itching sensations, swelling etc: Puts a block on starting or continuing to do 'the work'.