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What if your migraines weren't just about food or sleep, but about how hard you are on yourself?
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This episode is for perfectionists, overachievers and the ones who always strive to do their best.
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Migraine Heroes is a podcast for chronic migraine sufferers who've seen countless
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doctors with no results. Learn how to reduce your migraine attacks without
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endless medications or constant sacrifices. Hello, I'm Diane Ducard and I've helped over
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500 people break free from migraine, even after suffering for up to 60 years. My mission in life?
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To bring this relief to a million people using a unique blend of Eastern medicine and Western
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science. In this episode, you will learn how perfectionism creates a chronic tension pattern
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that fuels body imbalances, the neuroscience behind the need for control and how it impacts
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your nervous system, and a powerful Eastern framework to dissolve inner pressure and bring
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more softness to your healing journey. So why stay to the end? Because if you're the kind of
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person who tries really hard, my experience is that you go from episodic to chronic migraine
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suffering faster than other people. And we need to address that gently, starting today.
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So what is perfectionism? Perfectionism is more than high standards. It's a relentless drive
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to avoid mistakes, control outcomes and win approval. According to a seminal paper in the
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Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, perfectionism can be broken down into three
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categories, self-oriented, other-oriented and socially prescribed categories. All of these
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can activate chronic stress responses. Now let's talk about the three categories for a minute,
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so you can see if one or multiple resonate with you. The first one is self-oriented perfectionism.
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This isn't about trying to please others or chase praise. This is when you set the bar sky high for
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yourself, push endlessly to reach it and then beat yourself up when you don't. You tell yourself,
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I should have done better, even when you've done your best. You tie your worth to your performance
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and even small slip-ups can feel like massive faders. It's not that you're trying to impress
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anyone. It's more like there's a voice inside that says you're only okay if everything you do
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is flawless. And if it's not, cue the guilt, the shame, the tension in your shoulders, the sleepless
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night, replaying that one moment over and over. Self-oriented perfectionism can look like drive
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and ambition on the outside, but inside it can lead to burnout, anxiety and even chronic pain.
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Now the second type is other-oriented perfectionism. This is a quiet tension that
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creeps into our relationships. It's when you hold the people around you to the same
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impossibly high standards you might hold for yourself or even higher. You expect your partner
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to always know the right thing to say, your kids to never forget, your co-workers to get it right
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the first time. And when they don't, it's hard not to feel disappointed or frustrated. It's not
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about being mean, it's about creating control, wanting things done the right way. But over time,
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it can chip away that connection and leave you feeling let down because no one, not even those
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you love, can live inside your rulebook. And then we have socially prescribed perfectionism.
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It is when you feel like the world expects you to be perfect and you're terrified of letting
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anyone down. It's not just you wanting to get it right, it's the belief that others will judge you,
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reject you or think less of you if you fall short. So you hustle to meet what you think everyone
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else wants, to be the perfect parent, perfect partner, the perfect professional. The pressure
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feels external, like there's an invisible audience watching and one wrong move means you don't belong.
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It's a lonely, anxious place to live in because deep down, you're not just chasing success,
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you're chasing acceptance. And so why it matters? It matters because migraine isn't just about what
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you eat or how much you sleep, it's also about what you believe about yourself. Yes, food matters,
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sleep matters, stress, hormones, weather, they all play a role. But underneath it all, there's
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something quieter that often gets missed. The stories you carry about who you are, the pressure
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to always be on, to be good, to hold it all together, the belief that you have to earn your rest,
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your worth, your space. And so I'll repeat it, not because it's easy to hear, but because it's so
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true. Migraine isn't just about what you eat or how much you sleep, it's about what you believe
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about yourself. Do you feel safe being imperfect? Can you soften when things go wrong? Or do you
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brace, tighten and push through again and again because deep down you feel like you have to?
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That belief that being lovable depends on being flawless isn't just exhausting, it's also something
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your body feels in your muscles, in your breath, in the pain that lingers longer than it should.
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So yes, let's talk about hydration and magnesium and sleep hygiene, but let's also talk about the
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kindness towards yourself, about letting go of the pressure to be perfect, about believing that
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who you are, even on your hardest days, is enough and a small miracle on its own.
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I want to share a story, it's a very personal story. When I was seven, my godfather died.
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He died in a skydiving accident and so at home we are three girls and my parents had the three
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of us in four years, so things were incredibly busy. My mom fell pregnant when I was five months
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old and so I had to be able to climb the stairs. We were living in an apartment without a lift,
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I had to learn to climb the stairs before I could even walk and I had to be able to tie my shoes
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at age two. I was really, really small and I could dress myself and some people were saying
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my parents were too hard on me. I think they were just trying to cope, you know, with little means
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and having had three children a bit abruptly in just a couple of years. And in the middle of all
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of that, there was my godfather. He was living with us for many, many months and he was the one
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for whom I was special and it made me feel special. I loved him so dearly, he gave me
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unconditional love and so when he passed away when I was seven, my world fell apart. I was so
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sad, I was crying so much at night during the day in school. I had to evacuate my classroom so many
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times and at that time, after that time, my godmother, she sat me on her lap and she offered
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me an engagement ring. Yeah, that's unusual and so basically she said, look Diane, the day your
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godfather would have found a woman who would have been really smart and really kind and very
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compassionate and would have traveled the world and spoken languages and done good in her studies
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and have a great job and also be good at sports, then he would have asked to marry her and today
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he wants you to have this ring. And so can you imagine, I was just seven, I was a very, very
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average kid. I was not even that good in school, I was just not turned on, there was a little flame
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inside of me and then overnight, he gave me an A, he said through that ring, she said,
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you are that person already and I have no doubt that you will be that person as you grow.
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And that changed everything and from that moment, something light up inside of me and I went
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and went and went and became that person, not because I was trying to choose perfection
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but because I was already that person inside of me in his heart and her heart and that
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meant everything. And so I went on the treadmill of life of achieving a lot of these standards
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and alongside crept in something I didn't even see, which was socially prescribed perfectionism.
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So people were expecting me to always do good, to always be extremely good at my exams and I
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picked some of the hardest studies and I learned seven languages and then I went to Harvard
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Business School and also went to McKinsey and all of that was well and good and all of that
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was driven a lot by my choices, by my own choices but they became quite overwhelming
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because I had done A, I could do B, because I had done B, I could do C, because I had done C,
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I could do D. It became quite invasive of my choices and so over time, we went from living
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in Europe to South Africa to the US to China and then we went to live in New Zealand and when
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I was in New Zealand, I stumbled across the ability to help people stop their migraines
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and at the same time, I did some research because I was quite pondering about what just happened
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and how come I can help the daughter of a neurologist get rid of her migraines
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and I discovered your world. I discovered the world of migraines for the first time ever
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and I was moved. I was really, really moved and I thought, wow, this is my calling. This is what
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I want to do. I want to help these people. I think I can and I want to be an upstander. I
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want to bring that joy, that life back in these people's lives because it's possible. I think
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there's a few problems with how we're dealing with migraine in general and I want to upstand
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and I want to fix it and so I was very enthusiastic but then I hurt a lot of roadblocks
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like socially prescribed perfectionism. People were not expecting that of me. They were not
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expecting to throw my career away, my good job, my financial security, everything. My parents
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weren't happy. My friends were lifting a lot of eyebrows and telling me I was out of my mind
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but this was me and I really had to let go of it and really sort of reject that socially
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prescribed perfectionism. I was like, you know what? Let me be small again. Let me be imperfect.
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Let me be scrappy. Let me be an imposter and feel like an imposter for some time. I won't
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charge. I just want to see how much can I help. Is this feasible? Was I just lucky? Was it a
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coincidence? Or is there more to it and can I develop that into something very factual,
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very robust with the standards I have learned in my past professional life? And so I went on
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to do that and I'll always be grateful to New Zealand for making me that gift of letting go of
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that socially prescribed perfectionism and it's important because it helps me be me and that
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today helps me make you you. What drives me in my work, what drives all of my team in our work
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is when we give you back the gifts of your brain, the gift of your life and the gift of helping
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you achieve the small and large things you want to achieve in life. Had I followed that socially
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prescribed perfectionism, I would have never dared but I let go of it and letting go is
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really what brought the biggest amount of joy ever that I have ever felt in my personal and
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professional career, outside of being a wife and a mom of course. Now there's this finding that I
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came across that really made me pause. It shows that people living with chronic migraine tend to
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have higher levels of perfectionistic thinking than those who don't and while part of me wanted
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to push back initially because no it's not always the case, I also found myself nodding because
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faces started to come to mind. Real people I've worked with, women in particular that comes to
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mind in Vietnam whose story gently mirrors this just like many others. You see perfectionism isn't
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just a personality trait, it's a physiological pattern. When you carry that constant inner
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pressure to get everything right, to never sleep, to stay in control, it puts your body in a state
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of high alert. Your sympathetic nervous system, the fight, flight, freeze mode starts running the show
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and over time that kind of stress response becomes your norm. So what does it look like? Your jaw
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stays tight, your shoulders live up near to your ears, your breath gets shallow and your body
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releases more cortisol, the stress hormones throughout the day. It's not just in your mind,
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it's in your chemistry and for many that tension becomes a perfect storm for migraine.
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Even your brain wiring plays a part. There's a region called the anterior cingulate cortex.
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It's like your inner error detector. In perfectionists, it lights up more often. You're
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scanning for what went wrong, how you could have done better, not because you're dramatic but
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because your brain is literally wired to protect you by noticing mistakes. The problem is it never
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gets to rest. So when we talk about migraines, yes we'll talk about food and sleep and hormones
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but we also have to talk about this, the pressure to be perfect, the quiet war we wage inside.
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Because sometimes the most powerful shift doesn't come from a new supplement or new treatment,
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sometimes it comes from allowing yourself to be human. In eastern philosophy, there's a beautiful
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concept known as the fear of the middle. The idea that balance, not extremes, is what brings
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harmony to life and health. It teaches that pushing too hard in any direction, whether it's
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constant striving, rigid discipline or even excessive self-sacrifice, can lead to imbalance
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and illness. Instead, the middle path invites gentleness, moderation and presence. It's not
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about giving up ambition or passion, it's about moving through life with a steady rhythm, one that
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honors both effort and rest, action and stillness. And in the context of migraines, this philosophy
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offers a gentle reminder, healing isn't found in perfection but in the quiet space where you
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stop trying so hard and simply let yourself be. Confucius, an eastern philosopher, once said
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excess and deficiency are equally at fault. In other words, too much or too little of anything,
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effort, emotion, even goodness, can throw us off balance. Lao Tzu, the sage behind the Tao teaching,
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spoke to it too. The way is not in the sky, the way is in the heart. The Tao or the way
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is about flowing with life, not forcing it, something I'm learning over and over with migraine heroes. Just
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I want things sometimes to be really good, I have to respect the flow and go with the flow in the
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universe. And in Buddhism, the middle way was the Buddha's answer to both indulgence and self-denial,
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a path of moderation that nurtures both the body and the spirit. In the context of migraine,
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this wisdom whispers something many of us forget, you don't have to live at the edges,
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you don't have to be everything or do everything to be worthy. Sometimes the most healing thing
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you can do is pose in the middle, soften your grip and let go of the pressure to be perfect.
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There's a beautiful practice in Japan, I don't know if you've heard of it, it's called
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Kintsugi. When a bolt breaks, instead of throwing it away or trying to hide the cracks,
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they repair it using lacquer mixed with powdered gold. The breaks aren't something to be ashamed
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of, they are to be honored. The golden lines become part of the ball's story, making it even
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more beautiful than before. And I think healing, especially from something like migraine, chronic
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migraine and perfectionism, is a lot like that Japanese ball with gold. We all have cracks,
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moments when we've fallen apart, felt overwhelmed, not measured up. But what if those weren't flows
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to hide? What if they were places where gold could flow in? What if the parts of you that feel
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broken are the very things that make you more whole? You don't have to go back to who you were
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before the pain, you get to become someone softer, wiser and even more radiant, golden seams and all.
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A hero is someone who rises so others can stand. All of my co-workers are heroes, they rise
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and they shape more heroes, migraine heroes in our community, not because we're perfect
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but because we make you shine and we make you rise so that collectively others can stand.
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If you're ready to step away from perfection, start small, let yourself make a mistake on
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purpose, send the email without rereading it five times or leave the dishes in the sink overnight, practicing
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good enough and really meaning it at home. I always say done is better than
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perfect, it drives my husband insane. Give yourself permission to rest before you're exhausted,
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speak to yourself like you would to someone you love with kindness, with softness, with space
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to be human. Try replacing the question did I do it perfectly with did I show up with care?
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Remember you are not here to impress the world, you are here to live, to feel, to grow and none
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of that requires perfection. And if this podcast resonates with you, listen to it again, maybe today
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and maybe in a month from now and see how you feel the progress that you've made. And remember
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every small step you take moves you closer to freedom, you are powerful, you are resilient
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and you are no longer alone. Keep rising Migraine Hero!
