Vitamodo School · "Simply About the Complex" Series · Dr. Andris Saulitis, M.D.
For those who: regularly feel a dull, pressing pain in the forehead, especially in the evening or after a demanding workday, and suspect the cause isn't their eyes or sinuses, but accumulated tension.
Not for those who: are experiencing, for the first time, a severe, unusual headache unlike their usual pattern, accompanied by vomiting, or disturbances in vision, speech, or consciousness — this calls for immediate medical evaluation, not self-help.
1. Tension as an SOS Signal
Picture a control panel with dozens of lights. When all is calm, the lights glow steadily, taking turns, the system working in harmony. But the moment alarm switches on, the whole panel starts flashing at once — chaotically, with no order at all. This is roughly how Dr. Saulitis describes what happens to the brain under chronic stress. When a person is "flooded with reactive states" — that is, in constant readiness for threat — a localized combat-alert mode kicks in. Different brain regions stop working in sync; each one "pulls the blanket toward itself." A frontal headache, in this sense, isn't a random malfunction — it's literally a signal of disorganization: the system lacks the resources to function as a whole.
"When we're clogged up with all these reactive states, SOS mode switches on, and the brain becomes disorganized — different parts start working differently."
The mechanism here is simple once you strip away the medical jargon. The brain isn't a single organ but a community of regions, each handling its own task: one plans, another reads emotions, a third holds attention. In a calm state, they work like an orchestra under one conductor. Under chronic anxiety, the conductor — loosely speaking, the prefrontal zone responsible for judgment and choice — loses part of its influence, and older, faster structures start dictating the tempo. The result isn't music but cacophony. And this cacophony is felt by the body quite literally — as tension, tightness, a dull ache precisely in the frontal area, where the zones responsible for focus and control are located.
This is recognizable to anyone who has spent a day in "must get it done," "must reply," "must solve one more thing" mode. By evening, the head doesn't suddenly start hurting — it fills with heaviness gradually, as if someone were slowly tightening a band around the forehead. People look for the cause in their eyes, in stuffy air, in lack of sleep — and they're partly right, because all of this does contribute. But the main cause runs deeper: the system has been in SOS mode all day, and by evening its reserves of coordination have run out.
It's important to understand: the signal itself isn't a catastrophe. It's a normal reaction of a normal brain to an abnormal load. The problem starts when the signal is ignored day after day, and the body stops hoping to be heard gently — then it starts "speaking" louder and more often.
Practical step: tonight, when you feel that familiar heaviness in your forehead, don't immediately reach for a painkiller, and don't push through by working anyway. Pause for a minute and honestly ask yourself: how many hours in a row have I been in "must, urgent, or else" mode? That acknowledgment alone is already the first step toward reducing the load rather than muting the signal.