Some things sound far more mystical than they actually are
Shamanism, for instance: dismissed by some as pure hocus-pocus, embraced by others as a nature-based healing practice. Yet however different these labels may seem, many of these approaches work with the very same core ingredients as modern psychotherapy: inner imagery, rhythm, focused attention, and regulation of the nervous system.
Much of what we casually discard as “mythical” - and in doing so unnecessarily cut ourselves off from effective pathways - can be explained quite soberly in neurobiological terms. And this is where it gets interesting: the mystical shows up right inside the scientific.
Projection Psychology: The Inner Short Film Runs Faster Than Consciousness
One central phenomenon - clinically well observed, though not fully explained in its precise mechanics - is projection. The brain often needs only a fraction of a second to layer past experiences onto a new situation. Like an automatic filter.
Before conscious appraisal even kicks in, a biographical short film starts playing: the boss turns into the controlling father, the neighbour into the eternal critic, the partner into a threat
– long before a single word has been spoken.
Emotional Contagion: When Someone Else’s Fear Feels Like Your Own
Then there is what psychotherapy calls countertransference - closely related to what research calls emotional contagion. Emotions activated in another person are unconsciously “picked up”. Someone walks into the room carrying fear - and suddenly it feels as though it were your own.
At times, we even experience in our bodies what a dynamic feels like for the other person, rooted in their familiar relational patterns.
All of this happens in parallel. Highly complex. Extremely fast. Everything at once.
Against this backdrop, it would be rather unscientific to pretend that the factual level of an interaction can be reached or maintained without acknowledging these constantly active automatisms. What was once read as magic can now, in part, be described neurobiologically:
a nervous system trying to protect us within milliseconds. And yet, these autopilot responses immediately catapult us onto the relational level, while the factual level loses its shape.
Everyday situations can therefore feel threatening because, once upon a time, they genuinely were. The adult nervous system first has to learn that today’s scene is not the same as the one back then.
When the Mystical Turns Neurological
A former colleague from cognitive behavioural therapy - decidedly rational in its orientation - uses the term shamanism with surprising flexibility. Depending on his clients’ belief systems, he will either employ or avoid it deliberately. And with considerable success.
Officially, he prefers to call his work systematic neural reprocessing. It sounds like a software update for the brain - and that is, in essence, exactly what it is.
Whether we drum, talk, breathe, or visualise is secondary. What matters is the reorganisation of neural patterns. At its core, the nervous system asks only two questions: Does this feel safe?
Can I really turn the alarm down?
And further: Can I begin to believe myself that I can cope - because I have experienced it? Because I have felt my heart rate slow in the presence of a trigger, noticed my breath begin to flow again even as a chill runs down my spine. Because I register that I do not collapse into toddler mode, despite sensing judgement in the room.
The Nocebo Effect: How a “Curse” Gets Under Your Skin
Just how powerful belief can be was illustrated by a case my colleague once shared. A woman in her early forties, two children, ongoing family conflict. Then a phone call from her sister-in-law: “I’ve had you cursed.”
Objectively absurd. Subjectively, devastatingly effective. Psychology has a name for this: the nocebo effect - the dark twin of the placebo. When we expect harm, the body can respond with real symptoms: tension, pain, sleeplessness (Colloca & Barsky, 2020).
Shortly afterwards: keys snapping, houseplants dying, her body shifting into even more chronic tension than before. An inner narrative begins to take shape: What if there really is something to it?
From a schema-therapeutic perspective, the vulnerable child mode takes over, and the world turns into a threat - although, objectively speaking, nothing has happened apart from a malicious phone call. Whether keys and plants had anything to do with it - or whether a frightened mind simply notices every broken thing - remains open. What matters is this: the nervous system had lost its ground.
The “Ritual” That Was Actually Therapy
The so-called “uncursing” turned out to be a precisely guided hypnotherapeutic session.
No feathers. No smoke. Just targeted access to safety and calming systems.
My colleague told her he had experience with counter-curses - allegedly learned in the Amazon. That part was untrue. A trick – and one with a tradition: since Milton Erickson, hypnotherapy has worked with stories that need to feel alive enough to land. Where exactly the line runs between an effective story and a fib is up for debate. What was true was the power of the new narrative:
I can trust myself. I have agency.
With that experience, her body changed. The curse did not dissolve magically - it simply lost its grip because her nervous system found safety again.
If the curse had truly been magical, a session without any counter-magic should not have been able to lift it. Yet the symptoms did not return. For the first time, the woman set firm boundaries and allowed no further contact with her sister-in-law - despite social expectations. Enough was enough.
Final Thought
Belief - whether in curses, therapy, or one’s own capacity for change - is neurobiology with a poetic user interface.
And every story we believe becomes the world we actually live in. It therefore deserves to be shaped with care - and, if possible, with love.
This is where my Spooky Psychology series picks up: Why rituals work where understanding alone falls short.
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And if an old story still has a grip on you: that’s what therapy or is for.
Elena Tinkloh (aka Tink) is a licensed psychotherapist in Germany, specialising in cognitive behavioural therapy, and works with people on the stories their nervous systems keep telling.
