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What if your headache is carrying someone else's emotion?
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Welcome to Migraine Heroes. For anyone living with migraine and wondering why nothing has fully
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worked yet, I'm Diane Ducarme. In seven years of working with people with migraine, I've learned
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that no two migraine stories are the same and none of them are simple. But your migraine has
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its own patterns. Here we look at them from different angles so you can start recognizing
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them for yourself. A quick note, this is educational. For diagnosis or medication,
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please keep working with your doctor. Now take a deep breath and let's dive in.
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In this episode, you will learn why other people's emotion might affect your migraine,
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even when you don't feel particularly stressed, for example, yourself. How to recognize when
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you're absorbing emotional tension from your partner, your family, your colleagues, or simply
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the people around you. And three simple ways to create emotional boundaries so you can care
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deeply about others without carrying everything inside your own body. Stay with me till the end
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because at the end of this episode, you will learn a simple question that could change the
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way you respond to other people's emotions and perhaps help you recognize one of your hidden
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migraine patterns. Now, let me ask you something. Have you ever spent time with someone who was
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anxious, angry, or deeply upset and afterward felt completely exhausted? Maybe you were having
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a perfectly good day, you slept well, you ate normally, nothing particularly stressful happened
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to you. But then you had a difficult conversation. Difficult conversation could have been with your
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mother or your partner came home with a terrible mood or a colleague spent an hour telling you
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everything that was going wrong in their life and suddenly you felt different and your shoulders
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became tense and your mind started racing and you felt heavy. You felt irritated or strangely sad
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and perhaps a few hours later your migraine arrived and you might have wondered what happened.
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I was not even the one having a bad day. Can you see how unfair this is? So today we're going to
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explore something fascinating. Can we experience stress that doesn't originate with us and could
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that stress matter for migraine? So the emotion we're going to focus on is stress but it does
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apply to many other emotions such as anger, grief, etc. So in psychology there's a concept called
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emotional contagion and it's going to describe how emotions can spread between people through
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facial expressions, tone of voice, body language, and social interaction. So if you think about it,
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when someone smiles warmly at you, you often smile back without thinking and so when someone
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whispers nervously, you might become more alert and when someone you love is distressed, you may
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start feeling distressed as well. And so that's part of being human, of having EQ. Our brains are
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social. We constantly read the emotional signals of others often without completely realising it
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and for some people those signals can be particularly difficult to ignore. So imagine that
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your partner is upset about something at work and they haven't said very much but you notice
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their silence, you notice the tension around their mouth, you notice the way they put down their keys
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and before they've explained anything you always start wondering, are they angry? Did I do something?
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Is everything okay? And your body may begin responding to a situation before your conscious
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mind has even fully understood it. And that doesn't mean that emotions literally move from one person's
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head into another person's head. It means that observing another person's distress can influence
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your own emotional and physiological state. And this brings us to migraine. So what does the
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science tell us about stress and migraine? So we know that migraine is considered a complex
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neurological condition and not a simple reaction to stress of course, but that stress can influence
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the likelihood of an attack in some people. So there was a study published in Neurology in 2014
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that followed people with migraine using daily electronic diaries and interestingly the researchers
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found that a reduction in perceived stress was associated with an increased likelihood of
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migraine onset in the following hours. In other words, sometimes the migraine did not arrive during
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the most stressful moment, it arrived when the stress started to disappear. And this is sometimes
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called the letdown headache and it's a phenomenon we talked about in another podcast.
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And I find that one interesting, right? So you might spend an entire day supporting a distressed
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friend, you hold yourself together, you listen, you help, you reassure them and then you finally
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get home and everything becomes quiet and that's when the migraine begins. Now this research does
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not prove that absorbing another person's emotion causes migraine. It involved a relatively small
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number of participants and the study examines changes in stress, not emotional contagion
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specifically, but it gives us an important clue. Your migraine may respond not only to the
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stressful experiences but also to the way your stress levels change over time. And there's
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another important piece of the puzzle and that's the hidden cost of always being emotionally
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available. There was a study published in Headache, the journal of head and face pain in 2023 and it
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examines the relationship between emotional processing, psychological adversity and migraine.
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And the researchers discussed how difficulties with emotional processing, particularly in people
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who have experienced adversity or trauma, may contribute to migraine burden. They also highlighted
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the potential value of psychological approaches that help people understand and process difficult
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emotion. It doesn't mean that every person with migraine has unresolved trauma, it doesn't. And it
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certainly doesn't mean that migraine is caused by psychological problems, but it doesn't invite us
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to ask a different question. What happens when your emotional attention is constantly directed
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toward everyone except yourself? Perhaps you're the person everyone calls when something goes wrong,
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the reliable one, the understanding one, the person who can always see both sides of an argument. You
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notice when your children are unhappy, you detect tension between colleagues, you sense when your
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partner is worried, even when they say they're fine, and you're constantly monitoring the emotional
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climate around you. And sometimes you may be so focused on keeping everyone else comfortable that
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you don't notice your own discomfort. You postpone lunch because someone needs to talk, you stay awake
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because someone is upset, you ignore your own tiredness because someone else needs support,
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and over time these experiences can add demands to an already sensitive nervous system. And the
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emotional demands, disrupted routines, and lack of recovery, they may all matter. Because the goal is
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not to become less empathetic. The goal is to understand when empathy becomes so exhausting,
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it brings you closer to a migraine state. Now let's look at it from a different perspective.
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In traditional chinese medicine, we don't look at emotions as something separate from the body. If
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it's in your head, it's in your body. So we look at the person as a whole. Your thoughts, your emotions,
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your digestion, your sleep, your energy, and your physical symptoms are all understood as completely
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interconnected. And one of the most interesting concepts in traditional chinese medicine is the
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relationship between those emotions and the movement of qi, often described as the body's
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vital energy. And this is of course a traditional explanatory framework rather than an anatomical
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system established by modern science. So in traditional chinese medicine, the liver is
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associated with that smooth movement of energy, of qi. Now of course, I want to clarify when I say
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liver here, I am not only referring to the physical organ, I'm referring to that one,
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but I'm also referring to another whole number of organs that are part of the liver system,
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that possesses nutrients and substances in your body. And so I'm referring to that broader concept
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of liver. And so the liver is traditionally associated with fertility, with emotional
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expression, and with the ability to adapt to changing circumstances. The emotion of frustration
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versus the emotion of patience, for example. And so one of the patterns described is the system,
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it's called liver chest agnation. So imagine a river, and when the river flows freely, it can
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move around obstacles. But when the river becomes blocked, pressure accumulates. Do you see that?
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That's exactly what we're referring to. And so in traditional chinese medicine, emotional frustration,
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the suppressed feeling, and I really insist on suppressed feeling. It doesn't mean you're angry,
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because anger is also an emotion of the liver. Repressed anger is as strong, if not stronger,
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than expressed anger. And so we have emotional frustration, suppressed feeling, suppressed anger,
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and prolonged tension. And all of those are sometimes understood through this image of blocked
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movement. And this is where it becomes interesting. What if you're not expressing your own frustration,
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because you're constantly managing everyone else's? What if you feel angry, but you tell
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yourself you shouldn't? What if you're exhausted, but you keep saying yes? What if you need quiet,
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but you feel guilty asking for it? Traditional chinese medicine might interpret some of these
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experiences as contributing to stagnation. And within that tradition, certain headache patterns
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are understood in relationship to that disrupted, what is called liver qi, or liver yang rising.
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These are traditional diagnostic ideas, they're not scientific explanations of migraine mechanisms.
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However, they're incredibly relevant and incredibly accurate. I can share really, in the last seven
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years of working with thousands of people, this is really something I've observed over and over
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again. And it's very, very true. It's very clinical. It's not necessarily theoretical,
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it's actually very applied. And so all of that, it offers us a metaphor worth exploring. What
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happens when you are constantly making space for everyone else's emotions, but you're never making
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space for your own? And so this is a bit of the wisdom of the empty cup. That's a very simple
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image I love. Imagine you're holding a cup of water, and every time someone comes to you with
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a problem, they add a little water to your cup. Your colleague is stressed, a little more water.
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Your mother is worried, a little more. Your partner is frustrated, another little drop. And
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your child is upset, more water. And you continue holding the cup, because you're strong, because
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you're caring, because you believe it's your responsibility to be there. And you continue
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to hold the cup, because you're strong, because you're caring, because you believe it's your
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responsibility to be there. But eventually, the cup is full. And then someone comes along,
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with one tiny problem. Nothing dramatic, perhaps a small disagreement, a change of plans,
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an unexpected request. And suddenly, it all spills over. And you might think, why am I reacting so
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strongly to something so small? Well, they might think that. But perhaps it wasn't just that final
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moment. Perhaps your cup was already full. And in traditional Chinese medicine, balance is an
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important principle. Giving and receiving. Movement and rest. Connection and separation.
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And I think this is something worth reflecting on. Not because emotional boundaries are a cure
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for migraines, but because your needs deserve space too. Now, there's a distinction I would
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love you to remember. You can understand someone's suffering without making it your own. Let's say
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your best friend calls you because she's going through a difficult divorce. You can listen to her.
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You can comfort her. And you can offer her advice if she wants it. You can genuinely care. But you
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do not have to spend the rest of your evening replaying her arguments, imagining every possible
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outcome, and feeling personally responsible for fixing her life. Her pain deserves compassion.
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But it does not require you to abandon your own peace. And that is what I mean by emotional
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boundaries. Not building walls. Not becoming cold. Not refusing help. Without taking responsibility
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for resolving all of them. And for someone living with migraine, that distinction may be particularly
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valuable. Because protecting your emotional energy can also mean protecting your sleep,
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protecting your routines, and the opportunities your body has to recover.
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Now, let me share with you three exercises. First, ask yourself in those moments,
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is this emotion mine? So the next time you suddenly feel tense, worried, or irritable,
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take a moment to notice what happened to you just before they appeared. Were you speaking
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with someone who was upset? Did you walk into a tense environment? Were you reading distressed
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messages? You don't need to dismiss the emotion. Simply become curious about where it may have come
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from. Second, I want you to create a transition after emotionally demanding interactions. If
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you've had a difficult conversation, don't immediately jump into your next responsibility.
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Give yourself just five minutes. Step outside. Drink some water. Walk quietly. Allow your
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breathing to settle naturally. Perhaps ask yourself, what do I need right now? This small
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transition may help you notice tension and create space for recovery. Third, practice caring without
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fixing. This one can be difficult, especially if you've spent years being the person who solves
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everyone's problems. The next time someone shares something painful, try saying, I hear you,
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I care about what you're going through, and I trust that you can find your way through this.
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Notice the difference. You're offering compassion, but you're not automatically taking ownership of
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the problem. And here's the question I promised you at the beginning of this episode. Am I
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supporting this person, or am I trying to carry their feelings for them? It's a simple question,
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but it can reveal a lot. And so over the next week, if you feel comfortable, I invite you to
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notice whether emotionally demanding interactions tend to happen before some of your migraine
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attacks. You can record the interactions, your sleep, your mood, your stress levels, and even
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when the symptoms began. Don't assume you found a trigger based on one or two experiences. Migraine
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is more complex than that, but observing repeated patterns may help you understand
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your own experience more clearly. That's all for today. I hope this episode helped you notice
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some new things. If you'd like to keep exploring your patterns, you can find us on
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MigraineHeroes.com. Your body has a story to tell. Let's keep listening. I will be back with you soon.
