Migraines are no joke. They can become completely debilitating and wipe you out for the whole day (or days at a time). When you feel that familiar pain coming on, you might reach for the pain medication, but did you know migraines can be reversed with a mind-body approach?
That’s right, you may be able to reverse a migraine without medication, a cold compress, or putting yourself to bed. That’s because many migraines are neuroplastic pain, meaning pain caused by stress, rather than pain caused by a structural injury or abnormality.
In this article, I’ll describe how to reverse migraines with the mind alone, the techniques used, as well as real results from clients who’ve suffered from regular migraine headaches.
Is a Migraine Neuroplastic Pain?
Although there are several possible causes of migraines, such as environmental pollutants, muscle strain and tension, or pressure due to an underlying condition, most migraines are not linked to any structural damage or abnormalities. They are simply caused by stress in the mind and body.
In the mind, stress = danger. A stressed mind is a mind that feels unsafe, and a mind that feels unsafe may misinterpret sensations in the body as dangerous, causing you to feel pain. Pain that is caused by stress is referred to as neuroplastic pain or psychosomatic pain.
Medical Disclaimer: It is always best to speak with your doctor prior to starting any treatment. The content in this article is meant for educational purposes and is not meant to diagnose.
In my experience working with individuals suffering from reoccurring migraines, a mind-body approach has helped to decrease the intensity of symptoms, as well as reverse their migraine before it reaches a debilitating level. In these instances, it’s clear that the pain is neuroplastic. If the migraine were caused by a structural injury or abnormality, the mind-body approach simply wouldn’t work.
The best thing about using your mind to reverse a migraine is that there are no side effects! You are simply using your mind to relieve the pain. Although you may not consider migraines chronic pain, if you suffer from migraines daily, weekly, or monthly, they are in fact, considered chronic pain.
The techniques I discuss in this post are designed to release pain with a mind-body approach. Pain Reprocessing Therapy is a very effective technique for migraines, and Hypnotherapy can help release the emotional connection to migraines if you suffer from them chronically.
What is Pain Reprocessing Therapy?
Pain Reprocessing Therapy is a simple technique that retrains the brain to interpret and respond to signals from the body properly, subsequently breaking the cycle of chronic pain. The mind-body connection is instantaneous, therefor, the moment your mind interprets sensations as safe, the pain immediately dissipates or disappears completely.
In most Pain Reprocessing Therapy sessions, my clients experience a decrease in pain within just 10-15 minutes of using the technique. This has been the case regardless of whether my client’s pain is in the form of fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, IBS, migraines, back pain, joint pain, scoliosis, or pain from a prior injury. When the brain interprets the sensation as safe, the pain goes away.
Pain Reprocessing Therapy is a process of retraining the brain, this means that although my clients experience a decrease or elimination of pain within the first session, the pain will likely return. However, with time, they are able to retrain their brain to interpret the sensation properly, resulting in a decrease in overall pain (or complete elimination) over just a few sessions.
It’s as if we are teaching your brain a new skill. It takes a little practice but may not take as long as you think. After just a few sessions, my clients are usually quite proficient at the technique and progress starts to speed up. In the case of migraines, my clients typically see a decrease or full reversal in the first session and are able to replicate this any time they feel a migraine coming on.
Using Pain Reprocessing Therapy to Reverse a Migraine
The real trick to reversing a migraine with your mind is to completely change the way you perceive it. It’s easy to see the enemy, or the result of a fragile, failing body. Once you experience a decrease in pain with a mind-body approach you realize your body is not failing, and pain is not the enemy, but rather a signal from the body.
The body communicates in sensation -that’s the only way it can give us messages. Just think, when your body needs fuel, it signals that need to the brain and you begin to feel hungry. You get the signal and instinctively find something to eat. When your body is getting dehydrated, it signals that need to the brain and you begin to feel thirsty. You feel that sensation and instinctively find something to drink.
Pain is no different. Pain is your body’s way of signaling danger. There are receptors all over your body monitoring sensation. When they notice a sensation (a stubbed toe, pressure in your head, a twinge in your back, etc.) they send that signal to the brain and the brain decides whether that sensation is safe or dangerous.
If your brain decides it’s dangerous, you feel pain. This snaps you into action to attend to that sensation. It’s a great system when it’s working properly. However, when the brain is stressed, it’s more likely to interpret any sensation as dangerous. That means that a sensation that is actually safe could be misinterpreted as dangerous, resulting in pain.
Reversing a migraine (and all neuroplastic pain) is about helping your brain to interpret the sensations as safe. We do this by observing the sensation without fear.
It’s natural to fear pain, especially if you know this pain will turn into a full-blown migraine. However, that fear only makes the pain worse. When the pain gets worse, the fear gets worse, and when the fear gets worse, you guessed it, the pain gets worse.
The key to reversing a migraine is to observe the sensations without fear and break that pain-fear spiral. This can be a tricky step if the pain is already quite intense, which is why I suggest using this technique when the pain is still relatively low.
When you start to observe the sensation without fear, you might start to notice the sensation begins to move or shift. It might begin to pulse, or it might come in and out, or even move around your head. All of this is indicating a reduction of fear, this is a good sign!
As you notice the sensation moving and shifting, you simply continue to observe the sensation without fear, and as you do this you might notice the intensity begins to fade. You might even notice that after a few minutes, you’re finding it hard to keep track of the sensation because it’s fading away completely.
The most important thing to remember is to observe without fear. Fearful thoughts such as “what if it comes back? or what if I can’t get rid of it? may feed into the pain-fear cycle and increase the intensity again. As much as possible, stay in a neutral state of mind where you are not fearful or judgmental of the sensations you’re noticing.
Real Success Stories of Reversing Migraines without Medication
I’ve worked with a variety of clients on migraines, some of which were suffering from migraines weekly, and even daily. One particular client would get migraines about once a week. I saw her for one Pain Reprocessing Session and within ten minutes of starting the technique detailed above, her migraine was completely gone.
I caught up with her a few weeks later and she reported using the technique any time she noticed the onset of a migraine, and she was able to reverse it before it became debilitating. She no longer worries about getting migraines or having to completely reschedule her life around a migraine.
Another client I worked with suffered from some form of migraine everyday. Some days it was a dull pain that she could manage, other times, it wiped her out for days on end. In this case, we used Hypnotherapy to get to the root of the migraines, which happened to be stress stored in her mind and body from traumatic events that took place years prior.
Her mind was interpreting neutral sensations in her head as dangerous because of the stress and fear stored from the past. In our hypnotherapy session we were able to release the stored emotion and help mind and body release the stress and fear from that experience.
Getting to the root of the migraines with hypnotherapy allowed us to release the emotional cause, which allowed her mind and body to get out of a fearful state and stop interpreting sensations in her head as dangerous.
After the hypnotherapy session, this client noticed a dramatic decrease in migraines. She went from daily migraine pain to only 2-3 migraines per month!
Next Steps
As you can see from the case studies above, using a mind body approach can reverse the onset of a migraine, and even decrease or eliminate the onset of migraines all together. If you suffer from migraines and are interested in one-on-one support to learn how to reverse a migraine or want to heal the emotional root-cause of your migraines, you can book a Free Consultation and chat with me directly.
Is this the first time learning about Pain Reprocessing Therapy or Hypnotherapy for chronic pain? You can learn more about Hypnotherapy in this post and continue to learn more about Pain Reprocessing Therapy in this post.
Your mind is so much more powerful that you can imagine. You can harness that power to reverse and heal from migraines along with so much more!
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