The author Dr Howard Schubiner has a book called โUnlearn your painโ which I’ll try to summarize soon.ย Until then, I want to mention a specific concept that he raises in the book – โpredictive codingโ โ which is when you start to see and feel the things you expect to see and feel.ย
Dr Schubiner refers to an experiment that was done in which peopleโs walking speed was recorded, and they found that participants could be โprimedโ to walk slower when they were exposed to words like โold, retired and gray.โ
In other words, energy flows where attention goes.
Think old, feel old… or perhaps, feel old, think old.
It got me thinking about my gray hair.
When COVID went around the world in late 2019 / early 2020, people (in Australia) were put into lockdown to minimize the spread of the highly contagious disease. Rules about when you could come out of your house and what for, waxed and waned, but I specifically remember that going to the hairdressers was off limits.
Now, Iโve been going gray since I was 18 years old โ no joke โ it was only a few fringe hairs, but they were there.ย As they started to pop up in more and more places on my head, I started to dye my hair.ย At that stage, my hair was long and went way down my back.ย Also at that stage, I was a broke university student, so there was no going to the hairdressers for any special treatments.ย Instead, Iโve used DIY packet-dyes for decades now, turning my brown hair progressively darker with โBittersweet Chocolateโ layered over โDark Mahoganyโ (and one experiment with โRich Auburnโ whose red-highlights gave me pink streaks).
Anyway โ the point is, by the time I went into lockdown as a 50-year-old, my hair had been dyed for decades, and soon needed to be dyed again. Of course, I could still order the boxes from the supermarket and have them delivered along with all the other food and toiletries, but there was something almost wasteful (time and money wise) about dying my hair when I wasnโt going anywhere or seeing anyone.
So, in early 2020, I decided to let the gray hair grow out.
One daughter was all โmore power to you โ be your authentic selfโ, the other was more, โwhyโฆ?โย My husband shrugged, โyour hair, your choiceโ, (but he did have a habit of constantly noting how far โthe tide had gone outโ as the gray grew longer and longer from the top of my head).
The first few months of going gray are by far the worst โ Pepรฉ Le Pew (skunk streak) anyone?
Iโm horrified by the following photo and would NOT have kept it โ except that it happens to be my university enrolment pictureโฆ think youโre having a bad day? Try spending the next 4+ years looking at this face every time you have to swipe yourself into the university library building:
That said, I went back through my photos and found another one taken at home on a good day – same hair, different attitude:
Anyway โ anyway โ itโs not aesthetics that Iโm interested in today โ itโs whether the gray hair โprimedโ my health to wash away with the โtidelineโโฆ
I’m not in any way saying that refusing to dye my hair gave me chronic migraine (it didn’t, although the covid-lockdowns at that time definitely contributed to them). What I am trying to say is that how we envision ourselves MIGHT have a tendency to create predictive coding, and prime us to see ourselves (and our pain) in a certain way.
Obviously thereโs no way of knowing for sure, but I sometimes think that if you look in the mirror and see โpoor, sick, tired, struggling personโ then itโs hard not to feel like a poor, sick, tired, struggling person.
Of course itโs a chicken and egg scenario too โ when you feel unwell, youโre more likely to see an unwell version of yourself in the mirror.
When I look at old photos of myself with dark hair, I seem younger, healthier, fitterโฆ Iโm not sure that I necessarily was, I just think that based on how I look. One of the big โproblemsโ with gray hair is that as a white woman, you can tend to look more washed out.ย Darker hair tends to give your skin a different tone, whilst a gray โframeโ around your face changes your face, especially in winter when you donโt have even a blush of a tan.
But I suspect itโs more than that โ I think social conditioning also creates a deep-seated stigma: โgrey hair = old person.โย
Worseโฆ โold person = potentially weak and frail.โ
I often think about dying over my hair again, even if itโs just a rinseโฆ and then Iโm reminded of the dreadful transition period, and never want to go through that againโฆ so itโs gray all day for me.
Curious if anyone else has transitioned to your โauthentic selfโ and wondered whether it changed your opinion of yourself and hence your wellbeing.
Take care, being you-nique lovelies, Linda x
PS โ if youโre also a “silver fox”, or thinking about becoming one, thereโs a YouTube channel I used in lockdown called Sparkling Silvers that has lots of helpful advice and transition stories โ here: SparklingSilvers – YouTube
The Mindful Migraine 
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