Our author suffers from migraines. If you don’t know this type of headache, you’re all the more happy to comment: A little headache will heal itself…
Sometimes I wake up and she’s already there. She sits on me, I stand next to me.
Sometimes she doesn’t stop by until later in the day. She knocks briefly, then waits outside the door until I have time for her. She’s mostly polite, you have to give her that. Very ambitious at that, because she rarely bothers me during work – only when the stress ends and free time begins. She also likes proverbs: “Don’t get excited too soon” is just as seriously to her as “First work, then pleasure” and she has her own take on the latter.
I speak of her like a good friend, an old acquaintance. I recognize her from afar when suddenly looking at the sun makes me wink at her. I know her patience, with which she can challenge my impatience. And I respect her power, with which she can rob me of all strength at any time.
I’ve lived with her since childhood. In fact, migraines have always been a part of our family—it just seems like they decided to make a move when I was born, from my mother’s body to mine. A change of scenery, how nice! Let’s see how I can manage here, she may have thought.
What sounds kind of nice and forgiving now is only half the truth, the funny anecdote that you unpack in good phases in order to, as it is always said with chronic illnesses, “befriend each other”. Also a popular formulation: to “reconcile”, preferably hug right away. I’d love to, if the migraine didn’t always hit my skull backwards with a hammer.
It took me a long time to accept the migraines, to be honest I still regularly fail at it. On the one hand, this is due to her unpredictability and my rising anger when she smashes my plans again. On the other hand, it is because of their image. In company, migraines are much friendlier than alone. She’s got a reputation for a slight headache, no beauty, but a welcome visit nonetheless if you want to avoid a dalliance.
Anyone who only knows migraines as a friend of friends, but has never had them at home, finds it difficult to recognize their true self. I notice this again and again when I get pitying looks, but also completely wrong advice. I don’t blame people, it’s hard to grasp something that you don’t know yourself. Nevertheless, I notice how the social prestige of migraines makes it more difficult to deal with them, how I begin to be ashamed of them, to hide them, to stop taking me and them seriously, to blame myself and to gradually convince myself of it want to pull myself together just a little bit, then the little headache would heal by itself.
It took me years to be willing to see doctors, get neurology, allow myself to take strong painkillers, not be weak about it, and accept migraines for what they are, a ” complex neurological disease, a temporary dysfunction of the brain”, as the “German Migraine and Headache Society” writes.
What people with migraines don’t want to hear
So here’s a small excerpt of things I really, really don’t want to hear about my migraines anymore – in the hope that it might help others too. I know that most of this advice is well intentioned. But the migraine is more than just a little headache, it gets worse with movement, it is accompanied by sensitivity to light and noise, it causes nausea, heat and cold chills, sometimes you can no longer see or feel properly, sometimes the pain is like that strong that you can think of nothing else. Sometimes the pain is gone, but the dark cloud that clouds your thoughts and mood for days is still there. Then the following comments are a punch in the pit of the stomach, which is still aching:
- Just take an Ibu, then you can stay.
- Didn’t you have a headache just yesterday?
- But that often happens.
- Have you had anything to drink today?
- Do you have a lot of stress?
- Maybe yoga will help you.
- You just need a vacation.
- I often have headaches, but I never take pills.
- But these pills are not healthy either.
- You need to get more fresh air.
- Anyway, do you do enough sport?
You people who have now felt caught with these sentences, please don’t be angry with me – I’m not angry with you either. But believe me: If you have migraines, you will think a lot about where it comes from, what relieves it, whether you are absent too often because of it and why you are now getting headaches again. If we then also get the mirror from the outside that everything is not as bad as it feels for us, that we only have to reduce stress a little or meditate – then our girlfriend is already waiting for us at home, who also likes to rage , dances and sounds shrill in the ears when she sings in a continuous loop, completely unimpressed by the feedback from the outside world: Does the world say that a little headache heals itself? Well, let’s see.