[00:00]
What if your drive to be perfect is not just stressful but actually fueling your migraine pain and
[00:07]
There was a way out
[00:11]
Welcome to migraine heroes a podcast for people living with chronic migraines with years of pain
[00:17]
Misunderstanding and lack of answers. I'm Deanne Ducarne
[00:21]
I've helped more than a thousand people reduce the burden of migraines and feel more in control
[00:27]
My mission in life to help a million people
[00:30]
Each episode brings you grounded insight into what your body might be asking for and what can truly help
[00:38]
Just to keep you fully supported. This podcast is educational for diagnosis or medication
[00:45]
Always work with your doctor
[00:48]
Now take a breath and let's dive in
[00:56]
This episode you will learn three specific ways perfectionist thinking literally triggers and sustains migraine attacks
[01:03]
Not just stress in general
[01:04]
but patterns your nervous system reacts to
[01:08]
how perfectionism rewires your brain's pain pathways and stress response over time and what that means for breaking the cycle and
[01:17]
Practical neuroscience aligned strategies to shift rigid patterns into flexibility
[01:23]
So you can reduce migraine frequency and severity without beating yourself up
[01:28]
You do everything, right?
[01:31]
You eat healthy you choose organic you move your body with care you meditate
[01:37]
You try to listen to your nervous system you work at being well
[01:41]
And yet despite all of that you can still end up in a dark room in
[01:47]
unbearable pain while your partner your friend or your colleagues seem to get away with
[01:53]
everything late nights missed meals
[01:56]
constant stress burning life at both ends and
[02:00]
Somehow they're fine
[02:02]
That's often the most painful part. Not just the migraine itself, but a deep sense of unfairness that comes with it
[02:09]
The feeling that you're doing more than everyone else yet paying a much higher price
[02:16]
It can feel like your life is being quietly controlled by migraines
[02:20]
Shaping your plans your energy your spontaneity while others move through life with a freedom
[02:26]
You don't have you start living with constant vigilance you plan carefully you anticipate triggers
[02:34]
You weigh every decision is it worth the risk you become incredibly disciplined
[02:40]
incredibly responsible and often
[02:43]
Incredibly hard on yourself and this is where something really important is showing up
[02:48]
Many people with migraines don't just have sensitive nervous systems. They also have
[02:53]
Perfectionist patterns not the glossy high achiever kind but the quiet kind the kind that says if I do
[03:02]
Everything right my body will finally cooperate
[03:05]
The kind that never fully rests because the rest has to be done properly
[03:10]
the kind that turns healing into another job and
[03:15]
Overtime that constant self-monitoring self-correcting and pressure to get it right can keep your nervous system in a low-grade state of tension
[03:23]
Even when you're doing yoga even when you're meditating even when you're relaxing
[03:28]
For a migraine brain, which is already highly sensitive to change stress and control that perfectionist undercurrent can quietly become another trigger
[03:36]
And so this isn't about blame
[03:38]
It's about understanding that healing doesn't always come from doing more
[03:43]
but from softening the grip from allowing imperfection from letting your body feel safe enough and
[03:50]
Stop being on guard and if it resonates it might be a gentle invitation to ask a different question
[03:56]
Not what am I doing wrong? But where am I still asking too much of myself?
[04:01]
So what is perfectionism exactly? So perfectionism is not about being neat. It's a pattern of thinking
[04:11]
Relenting high standards on yourself often tied to fear failure or judgment and in psychology
[04:18]
Perfectionism is understood as both a cognitive style and emotional stress response
[04:24]
There are broadly two overlapping dimension
[04:27]
One is the self-orientated perfectionism demanding perfection for oneself
[04:32]
then the second one which is evaluative concerns perfectionism fear of not meeting others expectations and
[04:39]
Both are going to involve intolerance of mistakes and high privileges to error and both are significant
[04:48]
Chronic stress primes your nervous system and migraine is fundamentally a neurological condition of hyper
[04:56]
responsivity so the brain
[04:58]
hypothalamus and trigeminal vascular system
[05:00]
Becomes sensitized and chronic migraine suffers and perfectionism is going to keep the stress system and overdrive
[05:07]
It's going to act first of all like a perceived threat
[05:11]
Perfectionists often interpret challenges as threats rather than opportunities. Then there's going to be cognitive rumination
[05:17]
replaying mistakes or worrying about performance
[05:21]
Stays active after the stressor ends
[05:23]
I think we can all relate to that and then the sympathetic dominance the fight-or-flight
[05:29]
Nervous system remains engaged longer increasing muscle tension vascular instability and central sensitization
[05:35]
All core migraine triggers and there was a landmark study that found that individuals with higher perfectionism scores
[05:42]
Had elevated cortisol levels throughout the day even outside of obvious stressors and this hormonal pattern
[05:50]
Parallels completely with what we see in chronic migraines a nervous system that stays on alert and never fully recovers in between attacks
[05:58]
And so perfectionism doesn't just cause stress it's going to change how your brain processes pain
[06:03]
research in pain science shows that
[06:06]
Catastrophizing a common component of perfectionist thinking brings greater pain intensity and disability
[06:13]
Catastrophizing is going to include expecting the worst outcome
[06:16]
focusing excessively on pain
[06:19]
Feeling helpless about it and perfectionists are more likely to interpret pain as a personal failure
[06:25]
Rather than a nervous system signal and it's going to amplify pain circuits in the brain in migraine neurobiology
[06:33]
This amplification contributes to central sensitization
[06:36]
Lowered pain threshold longer attack duration So one migraine triggers the next not just physically but physiologically
[06:43]
And so perfectionists are often gonna cope with pain in ways that maintain the cycle. They're gonna push through pain
[06:51]
So instead of resting they're gonna lead to rebound and extended attacks. They're gonna over plan and hyper control
[06:58]
increasing wheel spinning worry and
[07:01]
They're gonna delay self-care believing that rest is indulgent or weak and these behaviors not only delay recovery
[07:08]
they reinforce the brain stress response making migraines more frequent and harder to break and
[07:14]
As I'm sharing all of the science so you understand the mechanics of how it works
[07:19]
I also want to see this it can feel deeply unfair because that perfectionism in this context isn't a
[07:27]
Personality trait, although sometimes it can be but oftentimes is held in place by fear
[07:34]
the fear of a migraine attack and
[07:36]
When your nervous system is constantly trying to prevent pain the drive to do everything right goes beyond what's normal or even human
[07:43]
It's not about ambition anymore. It's about survival. And so I want to acknowledge that now, let's move east for a bit
[07:50]
There's a Thais teaching I love that says in a storm
[07:53]
The oak tree stands tall and resists the wind and risks breaking
[07:59]
the bamboo on the other hand bends it sways it moves with the storm and
[08:06]
Because of that it survives
[08:09]
In traditional Chinese medicine and Taoist philosophy
[08:12]
Bamboo is a symbol of health not because it's rigid or unyielding
[08:17]
But because it's flexible it knows when to give and when you look at migraines through that lens something clicks
[08:25]
Many migraine sufferers have been trying to be the oak
[08:29]
strong discipline doing everything right when what their body may actually be asking for is the wisdom of bamboo a
[08:37]
Rigid perfectionist approach to healing can look like constant monitoring
[08:41]
Constant correcting constant effort. It comes from a good place
[08:46]
Wanting relief wanting control wanting your life back
[08:50]
But migraine bodies don't thrive under pressure. They are sensitive systems like bamboo
[08:56]
They respond better to responsiveness than resistance to forgiveness rather than force
[09:02]
when healing becomes another performance another thing to get right the nervous system never truly stands down and
[09:10]
Tension quietly keeps circulating upward often straight to the head
[09:15]
That's why a simple Taoist line lands so deeply here
[09:18]
Nature does not hurry yet
[09:21]
Everything is accomplished when we try to rush healing force balance or demand that our body behave correctly
[09:27]
We often creates the very strain that keeps
[09:31]
Migraines looping migraine brains don't respond to pushing they respond to safety rhythm and permission
[09:38]
So the one piece of advice to carry with you is try bending instead of bracing
[09:44]
Soften the timelines loosen the rules let your healing move at that speed of trust not urgency
[09:50]
Like bamboo, you don't need to be unbreakable. You need to be allowed to move
[09:56]
Now if I turn inward for a moment part of me is a perfectionist
[10:01]
Let me reframe that actually in my family. My husband is the ultimate
[10:06]
Perfectionist, but I'm not too far with myself and over the course of the last seven years
[10:11]
My children turn from four and six to eleven and thirteen and so many days on
[10:18]
So many occasions working at migraine healers
[10:21]
They forced me to bend a cold a cry at school a sleepless night an urgent costume
[10:28]
Sports activity dentist appointments and my impatient minds. It would drive me insane
[10:34]
But over time I started to realize that had I pushed through on that day without the children
[10:40]
I would have made a mistake. I would have done something too fast and
[10:45]
They slowed me down in that process
[10:47]
And I have come to appreciate that the fastest way is the flow of the music in
[10:53]
Your body and brains. I used to try to change everything all at once and I learned the hard way that very first year in
[11:01]
2019 that I had to make fewer changes in parallel and let the body take over again
[11:07]
That balance little by little it's not my first nature, but it's becoming it
[11:12]
I'm such an impatient achiever. And now I come to observe
[11:18]
Nature does not hurry yet
[11:20]
Everything is accomplished. What you go through is hell
[11:24]
None of my podcasts will ever do justice to that. No one will
[11:29]
But there's a possibility
[11:31]
There's a hope your body's craving for that balance and I do have the faith we will help a million people
[11:38]
Find their way not through perfectionism, but through staying at it by the sidelines over and over again
[11:46]
until you have that magical and deserved feeling of freedom and
[11:53]
Every small step you take moves you closer to freedom. You are powerful. You are resilient and you are no longer alone
