Is anything missing from your life that you would like to have in it?
37. Imagine your life as free of headaches. Describe what that would be and look like, and how it would be different from your current life.
38. Write anything else you would like to express about yourself, your family, your headaches, or your life.
Your Observations
Now that you have recorded the details of your history and daily life, did this process stir the pot or remind you of things you had forgotten? Your recollections are the perfect place to start mining your life for clues. I’ll illustrate my point using four of the questions you’ve answered as examples.
Questions 5 and 6, about occupation, seems pretty straightforward at first. But if you think about all the factors involved in your work and how you use your body throughout your day, there might be more to that seemingly simple question.
What does your occupation have to do with your headaches? Let’s explore:
• Notice whether you sit at your desk or computer in the same position or perform repetitive tasks for hours at a time without moving, getting up, taking breaks, or eating lunch. Is your head typically pulled forward toward your computer? Is your neck bent while you text? Is your body often torqued — for example as you reach sideways for items on your desk?
• Think about your posture and the stress you experience as you commute, drive for your job, or chauffeur your kids around. Notice whether your lower back is supported, whether your shoulders are relaxed or raised up, and how tightly you are gripping the wheel. If you walk or bike to work, consider the weight of your bag, backpack, or briefcase over one or both shoulders.
• Consider your workplace, whether it’s outside of or in your home, and whether it is a stressful place. What is your mood about it? Perhaps you are responsible for other people — employees, clients, patients, or customers — for their livelihoods, or even their lives. Perhaps you like your occupation but dislike your workplace or some of your coworkers and would rather be working somewhere else. Perhaps you are unemployed and desperately need a job. Does the stress of your workplace affect your emotional health? Your physical health?
If you have aches and pains at the end of the day, any of the above factors, and more, connected with your work or your job could be causing them. Consider the tangible and intangible factors involved in doing your job and balancing your work with the rest of your life.
Next let’s touch on questions 31 and 32, which ask about your life when your headaches first began. Reflect on that time and how what was happening affected your body, your self, and your sense of safety:
• Were you injured or ill, or did you have an accident? Were you going through a difficult personal or family situation? Did you move to a new area or change schools? Were you traumatized, assaulted, or abused?
• Perhaps you were going through hormonal changes, or starting contraceptives, hormone replacement therapy, or new medication.
• If you were starting college and living away from home for the first time, think about your newfound freedoms; any academic, athletic, or social pressures; and the changes in your eating, drinking, sleeping, and postural habits.
• If you were an adult, think of all you were trying to juggle between spouse, kids, and work — or any job or financial uncertainty.
You can mine all of your answers for clues in this way. Some questions might seem more relevant to you than others, but any of them could reveal triggers you might have previously discounted, like starting or stopping a medication, hobby, job, or routine. So consider everything, and don’t give anything short shrift. The hidden gems are often found where you least expect them, and others could bubble up later.
The Power of Your Story
Your story has power. Each chronic headache sufferer has a story, and telling yours — describing the pain and giving voice to the frustration you’ve experienced in trying to heal it — brings its power to the fore. Part of the healing journey is learning how to spot clues in order to gain insight, and both clues and insight might be hidden in your story. This section introduces you to a new way of listening to your inner voice — a practice that continues throughout the healing process.
Early on in my practice, as I led classes of patients who were referred by their neurologists, we would do brief introductions on the first day and check-ins throughout the course. The depth of pain and suffering and the mood in which each person told his or her story spoke volumes.
Hi, my name is Carol. I’ve had migraines for thirty years now, since I was fourteen. I get them every day, and I’ve been using over-the-counter pain medication daily for the past ten years. I’m afraid that if I stop taking it, the pain will be even worse. My headache doctor referred me to this class, and I’m skeptical of trying one more thing. But I’m here to give it a shot.
Based on my somatics training, I would listen to each story by centering in my body and holding a neutral space. By neutral space, I mean a feeling of empathy for the person without falling into sentimentality about their pain. (More “I hear you” and less “Oh, you poor dear, that’s horrible.”) While holding a vision for each person’s healing, I could also hear voice quality and tone, word choices, mood, and posture — which would inform my assessments and coaching. To my surprise, the classes spontaneously adopted my mode of listening, and whoever was sharing would start to listen to herself in that way too. It was so touching to feel that mood of compassion pervade the room.
Finding a setting in which you can tell your story and listen to the stories of others can be revealing and helpful. Although it can be hard to imagine beforehand, there is usually someone who is worse off than you are, and hearing their story lets you empathize and takes the focus off your own pain. (“Geez, and I thought that I had it bad.”) Hearing someone in the group talk about doing better shows you that the possibility for healing exists. (“If she’s doing better, maybe there’s hope for me.”) And, of course, being heard and believed is internally settling.
The story you tell yourself and others about your headaches plays a powerful role in healing them. Listen to the words and the voice you use to describe your pain, yourself, and your life. Try to listen to yourself and others with compassion — as if you were in that classroom of headache patients, hearing their headache stories and being heard.
4 The Mind-Body-Headache Connection
In his writings, seventeenth-century French philosopher René Descartes assigned the flesh and blood of humans to medicine and their spiritual side to the church, and it stuck. In Western culture, we tend to move through life as if our bodies are simply vehicles on which to carry our heads around — just well-oiled machines unrelated to our thoughts, aspirations, and behaviors.
In the 1960s, Eastern spiritual philosophies and practices began flooding into Western culture. Over the next forty years, a large variety of meditation, yoga, tai chi, martial arts, and bodywork disciplines became widely available, and new forms were created and adopted. Classes were offered at medical centers and sports clubs; doctors referred patients to complementary medicine practitioners; and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) began researching alternative therapies in medicine. People who practiced these disciplines and received these therapies found that relaxing their bodies calmed their minds, and calming their minds relaxed their bodies.
