People typically believe that they understand what a migraine entails. This is until they actually have experienced one themselves.
While Headaches pmay cause physical discomfort, a Migraine will not only affect you physically but also rob you of all your other senses, such as taste and smell, your thought process, your overall emotional state, and your ability to function as a person. For most individuals suffering from Migraines, these occur on a frequent (recurring) basis and can dictate how an individual lives their daily life, plans for future activities, and interacts with their own bodies.
A Migraine does not occur as a result of failing to show emotional strength or willpower. Instead, a Migraine will occur due to the over-sensitivity and chemical imbalance of your brain in response to external stimuli or environmental factors.
Why Do We Get Migraines?
An abnormality of the nervous system primarily causes migraine headaches. The way a migraine affects a person’s experience with light, sound, and stress is very different compared to someone who doesn’t suffer from migraine. Several things lead to migraines, including:
1. Changes in Brain Chemistry
When serotonin (one of the chemicals that help regulate mood, pain, sleep, and digestion) levels decline, the brain’s pain pathways become more active, and blood vessels in the brain change size, resulting in increased pain.
2. A Hyperactive Nervous System
The brain that experiences migraine can be easily overstimulated (e.g. bright sunlight can be neutral to one person, but an overstimulated person may have a migraine).
3. Your Genetics
Many migraines are genetic in nature and, therefore, if you are suffering from migraines, it is not that you are “too sensitive” but rather that the way your brain works is different from someone who does not have migraines.
4. The Trigeminovascular System and Pain Pathways
The trigeminal nerve system plays a significant role in migraine; it transmits sensory input from the face and head to the brain, and when activated, it releases inflammatory substances that worsen and prolong pain.
The basic explanation is that the migraine process is triggered when the brain’s alarm system becomes overly activated, resulting in a migraine.
What Does a Migraine Feel Like When It Comes On?
Migraine headaches usually don’t just arrive with only pain.
For many people, there is an early warning phase (sometimes hours or even days prior), which could include:
General fatigue
Out-of-character irritability and/or unexplained sadness
Food craving/loss of appetite
Inability to concentrate
A sensation that something isn’t right
Then, the migraine hits.
The pain can be throbbing, pulsating, or like a pressure or squeeze in the head. Movement worsens the pain. Light feels sharp; sounds feel harsh; and (for whatever reason) smells are intolerable. Even a light touch on the head (e.g. hair brushing against skin) can be painful.
Some may experience aura; vision can become blurred and/or fragmented, creating flashes of light or blind spots, while others may experience dizziness, nausea, or a sense of disconnection from reality during a migraine.
During a migraine episode, everything in the world around you becomes overwhelming.
The Lived Experience: Triggers and Sensitivity
Migraines can be very frustrating because of how typical their triggers can be. Some people’s triggers are environmental (e.g., stepping out into the bright sun for too long). In contrast, others’ triggers come from things they eat (like chocolate) or hormones (especially around their monthly period). In addition, emotional or psychological stress of any sort can also trigger migraines. All of these things make the brain super sensitive to stimuli. Therefore, the number and variety of trigger possibilities lead people to monitor their environment, which can be mentally exhausting.
Mood and Emotions During a Migraine
Migraine headaches cause physical pain but can also impact your emotional state.
They can cause people to feel:
Angry or irritable
More anxious
More likely to cry
More numb to their emotions
Wanting to be alone or isolated
You’re not being “weak,” “bad,” or “problematic.” You have changes in your brain’s chemistry that influence how you process your emotions and experience pain. If the system that processes pain is disrupted, the system that processes emotions will be disrupted as well.
Many people feel guilty for needing quiet, darkness and solitude while having a migraine; however, recovering from a migraine isn’t selfish—it’s an absolute physiological requirement for recovery from a migraine.
The Recovery Period: After the Pain Fades
Migraine relief is often not permanent; you may still feel unwell after relief.
“Migraine hangover” is the opposite term to the word “headache”; therefore, when some people have experienced a post-migraine phase (lasting hours to days), there can be feelings such as:
Drained & weak
Emotionally fragile or low
Slow & foggy
Light & sound hypersensitive
You will frequently feel/tell either yourself or those sharing your experience about your sadness or “apparent flatness”, regardless of how much time has passed since the migraine.
Migraines and Mental Health: Deeply Connected
There is a feedback loop between migraines and mental health. Individuals who suffer from migraines tend to also suffer from anxiety and depression, not due to their inability to cope with the pain, but for the reason that:
– The same brain chemicals that affect mood affect pain.
– Chronic pain alters the way the brain recognises and processes threat and safety.
– Unpredictability creates continuous heightened levels of stress.
At the same time, mental health conditions can also worsen migraines. Chronic stress keeps the nervous system in a heightened state of alert. Anxiety causes hypersensitivity to stimuli in the body. Depression results in a reduced pain tolerance. Trauma can sensitise the brain’s alarm systems, further compounding the problem.
Treating migraines alone without addressing mental health is like pulling the fire alarm without actually putting out the fire.
More Than Pain
Headaches that cause migraines often go unrecognised, are not understood, and are perceived as less severe. However, they’re genuine, biological conditions that result from being human (the body speaking to the brain, saying, “I’ve had enough!”).
To understand headaches, we must first gain a basic understanding of chemicals in our brains – this includes understanding what they do on a biological level, as well as an emotional and environmental level.
Headaches that cause migraines do not exist as mere headaches, but are comprised of a full-body neurological event that requires us to treat others with empathy, understanding and compassion; our doctors and health care systems should be held to these same standards!
