Deserving

At the first consultation of a new treatment Tuesday, after turning me into a human pin-cushion and hearing my life story, the acupuncturist said he didn't believe there was anything psychological to my headache. The solid mass that pretends to be my muscles gives him the hint that it's physiological. 

But at last weekend's hypnotherapy session I was asked about focusing on why my headache started. I spoke about how I often feel that I did something to cause this headache. The medication overuse, stress and anxiety, going on too many roller coasters. 

When you walk into a room for a Chiropractic appointment with someone who is not your usual chiropractor and they say that you're giving yourself mini-whiplash every time you flick your fringe out of your eyes and that's probably the cause of all your problems, you're inclined to believe them. They are the expert after all.

Except I didn't have a fringe when my headache started. Sure my mini-whiplash probably doesn't help, but it didn't cause my headache in the first place.

And the cause, the why my headache started, is likely to always be a mystery. Yes it could have been the stress of moving schools. Yes it could have been the roller coasters. 

Yes it could have been the medication overuse. And whilst I know that biologically medication overuse comes from taking pain killers too often, and not from huge quantities in one sitting, there is part of me that will always think I am to blame for this headache because of the things I have done, and because of the pain I have caused. It's karma. Except I can't cross it off a list like Earl. 

Trance on Saturday focused on emotions, and how they can cause pain. And how pain can manifest itself as an emotion. 

When I try to describe how my headache makes me feel, it's along the lines of frustrated, powerless. When I try to describe how my headache feels, if it were emotion, it would usually be anger. An anger that assaults my muscles, my skeleton, my senses, my organs. An anger that courses its way through my veins, pools in the temples, strikes behind the eyes, lies at the base of my skull, coiled like a snake waiting to spot its prey. 

When treatments don't work, I usually think it's because I haven't tried hard enough to make it work. When my head gets worse it is easy to point to the things I'm doing wrong, and not the things I'm doing right. The eating pastries as a snack, not the 2 litres of water I drink every day. The times I sit on my Xbox for hours not the runs I go for, the walking I do or the daily stretches. 

We only have one life, and sometimes it can be too short. I need to let go of this feeling that I did something in this life or lives past that mean I deserve this pain. I need to focus on making the best of the life I have, and make sure that I get the right balance to enjoy the life I deserve. 

Action Week

Ages ago, I decided that doing several things in one go to target my headache would be a useful experiment.

So in the last 5 days, I've had my own little headache action week.

Last Thursday, I had a 2 hour sports massage. It was brutal at times, but I wanted to start loosening my knots, in order to help the Botox, that I had booked in for Saturday, to work.
I still felt pretty knotted up afterwards, but it did help. I came home and did a hypnotherapy relaxation session from CD as soon as I got back. I wanted to help my muscles relax as much as possible.

On Saturday I had Botox treatment. The first time I had Botox for my headache, it helped somewhat, but that was 6 months ago now. I saw a different doctor this time, at a different clinic, and I have a review session in 2 weeks. This doctor explained the muscles in my head, and why he'd put the Botox in the particular places. When he showed me which muscles he'd be injecting, they started to hurt more in anticipation (or a last offensive attack?) The doctor was jovial, and I can't wait to go back haha!

I did another hypnotherapy relaxation session over the weekend too. I get fidgety, it's hard to stay still for so long. But it does make me feel quite relaxed.

Today, I had a good Raynor massage from Dave Taylor. We get on very well, and he knows my body very well too. When he finished, I lay there in headache-free bliss for a few moments.
Today is the first day that the Botox starts getting to work (3 days after treatment, 14 days maximum it takes to work), and my headache pain has been minimal. It has barely spiked above a 5 today, and has rested mostly at a 2 or 3! Walking around made it worse at times, and some of the pain has probably come from dehydration. But mostly the worse pains I've felt today have been muscular. So that's something!

I just wish I had the time, and the money, to have more regular treatments.

Maybe now is the time to start Yoga again, while my head has a chance.

Hypnotherapy: The Beginning

Yesterday I had my first Hypnotherapy session with Steve Cook at the Chiltern Health Centre.
It lasted 1 hour, and I did a lot of crying. More than I was expecting to do, as I wasn't expecting to cry at all. Which is funny, because pretty much everyday this week I have cried because of my headache, so why shouldn't I cry in a session about my headache?!

Steve took the opportunity to teach me EFT - Emotional Freedom Technique. It uses tapping of certain points on the face and body to relax and help certain ideas sink in. I think. That's how I see it anyway. It works better when someone else does it to you when you're trying to relax and calm down a headache, because when you do it to yourself you're constantly thinking of the points and which one's next, so you don't really concentrate on the issue you're facing. But I have found it relaxing. I have taken a photo of the help sheet I have been given that indicate the points and their order. You start by tapping on your hand while giving the pain submodalities and telling yourself that you "deeply and completely accept [yourself]".



So I am hoping that this technique will be the start to learning to control my headache. But the thing about this EFT was that it brought up a lot of psychological issues. Consultants have previously thought that my headache was caused by some inner pain I have. But £80 sessions at the Priory didn't help solve that, or at least I'm assuming it didn't because I still have the headache. But regardless of whether it was caused by inner pain and psychological problems, this headache has certainly caused some of it's own. I feel like this headache will never leave me. I am on the verge of giving up, In fact, if it wasn't for the fact the headache has been worse this past week, I would have seen this Hypnotherapy as just another thing to give a go, but now I am sort of seeing it as a lifeline.

I find it difficult to believe I may cure it, and that makes me apprehensive about hypnotherapy, because he wants me to keep an open mind. But from what I've read from other people's experiences, it discourages me from that hope and almost giving me an excuse to resign myself to this destiny of pain (i.e. they have it after 30 years, why should I be any different?).

I am also apprehensive at the idea that someone will be delving into my unconscious to see if there's anything else we've missed. Am I repressing something awful? Is it simply my self-esteem issues manifesting itself as a headache? Am I bottling up too much anger?

And at the end of the day, I can relax myself all I want, but I will still have the muscle tension and the knots gripping my body and keeping it tied up tight, good and proper. I've always wondered if I had a day of massage, or a massage every day for a week, a month, would it get rid of all the knots and the tension?

I just have to keep reminding myself that I could be so much worse off. And I know I have to keep on fighting. If we were put on this earth for anything, it wasn't to make money, to have kids, to create more efficient manufacturing industries. It was to overcome obstacles. And I'm still overcoming this one. Maybe it can't be overcome, but I'd at least like to get somewhere with it. I'm been trying to for so long already.

At War with my Head

Life got in the way of me posting on this blog. But telling a colleague today about everything I've done to try and cure myself made me realise that I need to get this all down. I need to help other people. I need for my own sake to document the pain and the problems.

I've been trying to keep a headache diary for the last few weeks to help identify any triggers. I haven't done a headache diary for many years and I remembered why once I started doing this one: they are impossible to keep track of. Well, not impossible, but the only way I could record every fluctuation is if I didn't work all day and literally sat at home waiting for them in order to write them down.

From what I've noted so far, triggers include: walking, the cold, sitting still, not eating, not drinking, eating and drinking, sleeping too much, not sleeping enough.

I am all for control, ok, but there is just no way I am going to be able to control all these things that I might see as triggers.

Not eating and drinking - ok, I'll just eat or drink something. Cue trigger from eating or drinking. And I am being way more careful or what I'm eating these days.
I can't not walk. I can't avoid the cold in this country. And my job requires me to sit still at a desk. I take regular breaks, but this doesn't seem to help.

I have a cold at the moment which really hasn't helped but I can't stop that either really. I think the massive pains I'm getting in my right temple and sinuses (and weirdly, stabbing pains in my left ear that feel like someone is ramming a screwdriver down into there) are related to my cold. But I'm trying to treat and there's not a lot else I can do.

I saw Dave Taylor at the weekend, and whilst he is a great chap and a fantastic masseuse, he's didn't make a huge amount of difference, and that's because I leave too long between sessions. I have time and money issues (I lack both). But I'm making a headache plan because I have waged war on my head.

Or at least I thought I had, until I re-read my last post, all those months ago, and looked at the thread I had linked. I think the biggest problem is facing up to the fact that I may well have this condition for the rest of my life. And it really is difficult to do that when every single day it makes you want to blow your brains out. Honestly, no matter how happy I am with my boyfriend, my job, my life in general, everyday I wish there were a way I could blow my brains out just to get rid of this headache. I was to inject poison into my veins so the blood vessels that might be constricted just melt away. I want to poke my finger in my ear and keep poking until I get to the muscles around my head and just pull them out. Gone, away.
I have never been so close to jumping in front of a train as I was yesterday.

And it sounds melodramatic, and I know that I could be SO much worse off. But at the same time, I live with this pain every day. If I didn't have enough to deal with, like finding my own feet in the world, negotiating a career in this job-poor country and trying to carve an identity for myself, I am constantly taunted and tortured by this pain.
It is wearing me down faster than it has been before. I used to be pretty strong. I'm getting to feel pretty weak.

But when you have to sit and work all day with stabbing pains coming from both sides of your head and an ache at the bottom of skull like it's going to fall off, you do start to question the hell the point of it all is.


I am trying very hard to focus on the positives. I am starting hypnotherapy this coming Saturday, so hopefully I will be able to blog about that. What I'm aiming for (and I think he is on the same page with me about this) are some self-hypnosis techniques I can use to relax myself. I'm notoriously bad at relaxing, everybody I know knows this. The guy I am seeing is Steve Cook. He seems really lovely and keen to help. Maybe he's already worked his hypnosis skills on me but I feel I can trust this guy. He has been on the level with me about what he can and cannot do, and I am looking forward to some positive results.


I'm hoping I can find a community for Chronic headache sufferers. As soon as I do, I'll post it on here.