Subscribe Feed (RSS)Headache Prevention - Is There A Migraine Personality?
February 20th, 2008 by admin | Filed under Uncategorized.There may be some identifiable characteristics of people who get a migraine headache, but a more useful course is to identify specific actions that migraine sufferers can take for prevention.
Migraine Personality
Is there a ‘migraine personality?’ Some sweeping generalities have been popular over the years. Migraineurs have been characterized as perfectionists, people who are ambitious, rigid, obsessive and achievement-oriented. They have been described as individuals who have a lot of anxiety and who find it difficult to express feelings like anger and aggression.
Profile Problems
Two problems with the profile: 1. Observations of migraine sufferers don’t support it. 2. The profile isn’t ‘operational’ — it doesn’t give any kind of handle for helping migraine sufferers.
Another Approach
A more useful angle for the study and help of migraine sufferers is their response to STRESS — since migraines have been shown to be related to anxiety, and to and stress-related personality traits like nervousness, sensitivity, and proneness to worry. Recent studies have focused on the response of migraine sufferers to stress, as opposed to the response of people who don’t get migraines.
Results
The findings? As compared to migraine-free individuals, migraine sufferers seem to deal with stress more often by avoiding problems — wishing they would go away or imagining the worst — rather than meeting them head-on. They also tend to criticize themselves, and to withdraw from others. These are all responses that tend to prolong stress rather than resolve it.
Migraine sufferers also tend to respond to stress by developing physical symptoms (headache, with all its attendant ills) rather than responding verbally to the situation. That is, they tend to INTERNALIZE their response rather than EXTERNALIZING it.
To top it off, migraine sufferers tend to have a low regard for their own abilities to cope with stressful situations.
Chicken or Egg?
The first thing I wondered when I read the studies was — which came first, the chicken or the egg? Do migraine sufferers get headaches because of their response to stress, or do they develop these responses because they live with devastating headaches which often strike without warning?
When you’re accustomed to regular sieges of pain, you may tend to become more inward-focused and less open.
Two Rays of Light
Still, there are two general activities that migraine sufferers can take from the studies: 1. VERBALIZE, particularly when you are experiencing stress — even if it’s out loud to yourself. 2. CONNECT with others. Maintain connections with other people, whether you ‘need’ to or not. Benefits: You realize others go through stress too. You see a range of coping mechanisms. You find that someone has gone through what you’re experiencing, and found something that helped.
Sandra Feder is a writer and a former research chemist who used to get migraines almost weekly. She got rid of her headaches by following a simple, natural 5-step system: avoidamigraine.com Avoid a Migraine, Stop a Migraine
Sign up for a free 6-part ecourse: avoidamigraine.com 6 Things They Won’t Tell You About Migraines
Tags: anxietyRelated posts
Tags: anxiety
