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What if your migraines aren't just triggered by what you eat or do but by invisible mental loops running in the background all day long?
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Welcome to Migraine Heroes, a podcast for people living with chronic migraines with years of pain,
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misunderstanding and lack of answers. I'm Diane Ducarme.
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I've helped more than a thousand people reduce the burden of migraines and feel more in control.
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My mission in life? To help a million people.
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Each episode brings you grounded insight into what your body might be asking for and what can truly help.
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Just to keep you fully supported, this podcast is educational. For diagnosis or medication,
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always work with your doctor.
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Now, take a breath and let's dive in.
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this episode, you will learn three hidden mental loops that silently lower your migraine threshold,
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even when you think you're doing everything right.
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How to recognize which loop you're stuck in and why awareness alone can start to shift your symptoms and a simple, powerful way to
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interrupt these loops and bring your nervous system back to safety.
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Stay with me till the end, because at the end of this episode, you will be able to identify your dominant
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migraine loop and begin to step out of it with clarity and compassion.
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So, if you live with migraines, you already know this. It's not just the pain,
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it's the mental load that comes with it, the constant analyzing,
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anticipating, hoping and hurting. Over time, this creates a very specific internal environment,
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one that keeps your nervous system on edge. And here's the framework to understand it. The three migraine mental loops framework,
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they're not just thoughts, they are repeating neurological patterns that influence your brain
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excitability and your body's stress response. So, let's explore them. The loop number one is
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the I thought it was my fault loop. It's sort of a self-blame loop.
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So, one of the most
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painful parts of living with migraine is the quiet belief that it might be your fault.
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You check everything, like the food, the sleep, the stress, the weather, and when the migraine stick comes, the mind goes,
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what did I do wrong this time? And the cycle is, I have a migraine, therefore, I search for my mistake,
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therefore, I restrict myself,
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therefore, I stress,
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therefore, I have a new migraine. And from a scientific perspective, this loop is driven by error prediction systems in the brain.
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There's some research in Nature Reviews Neurology that shows that chronic pain patients have heightened activity in regions responsible for
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detecting errors and assigning meaning to pain. And this is going to lead to overattribution,
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like linking migraines to personal actions,
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even when causality isn't clear. The result is you increase cognitive load and stress, both of which are known to lower
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migraine thresholds.
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The second loop is the always one step away
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loop. Even on a good day, part of your mind might be scanning, will it come today?
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You're having a good day, and that anxiety is coming, kind of, to ruin it. So, this is anticipatory anxiety.
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So, the cycle goes like this. You have pain, therefore, you have the fear of the next attack, therefore, you're hyper-monitoring,
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therefore, the nervous system is getting tensed,
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therefore, that lowers your threshold,
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therefore, for any other trigger, you get a migraine. And the loop is deeply rooted in that predictive coding. The brain's attempts to
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anticipate threats. And so, according to some research, like, for example, in the Journal of Neuroscience,
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anticipation of pain can activate similar neural pathways as the pain itself.
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So, even when you're not in pain, your brain may be preparing for it.
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So, this creates increased muscle tension, height sensory sensitivity, and a persistently activated stress response,
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all of which makes your system more vulnerable.
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And then, there's a third loop, the loop of hope and disappointment.
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You try something new, and you feel hopeful,
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this might be the thing, and then the migraine comes back. The cycle is, I have hope,
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therefore, I'm gonna put in effort, therefore, my mind is very well relapsed, therefore, I feel discouraged,
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therefore, my nervous system is fatigued, therefore, I have a migraine more easily. This loop is
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emotionally draining, and it's physiologically so impactful. It's interesting because, you know,
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when we work with people, we can get to a stage where people get a full month without a single
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migraine, and we're happy, and they're happy, and then something can hit. It can be a factor,
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a single factor, or a combination of factors. For example, she is getting a cold, or COVID, or
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she gets into a really big fight with someone who's very toxic, she kick-starts perimenopause
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almost from one day to the next, she has seasonal allergies, she's traveling for work,
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she's solo parenting, and then one of these things, or a combination of them, suddenly hits,
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and she goes backwards. And we know in that moment that it's extremely important. We'd be
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incredibly supportive, because it feels, I had massive hope, was this just a big coincidence?
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To the point that, nowadays, we mention those as unbalancers, things that will tip you off balance
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when you have reached balance, so that you can balance back very fast. These repeated cycles
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of hope and disappointment are linked to dopaminergic fluctuations, the brain's reward
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system. And according to Neuron, when expected reward fails to occur, the brain experiences a
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prediction error, which can lead to emotional stress and reduced motivation. And over time,
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this creates learned helplessness, a concept described by Seligman, where the system becomes
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fatigued and less resilient to stressors. And again, this is going to lower the migraine threshold.
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So what's the big picture? All of these three loops share one thing in common, they keep your
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nervous system in a state of chronic tension and vigilance. So it's not just what you eat or do,
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it's the state of your system and the state your system is living in. There's a quiet story in the Daoist
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philosophy about a man who carried a cup of water everywhere he went. He held it carefully,
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watching it constantly, afraid it might spill. And when he walked, he adjusted his steps.
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And when the wind blew, he tightened his grip. And when others spoke to him, he barely listened.
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His attention was on the water. And over time, his hand began to tremble. The more he tried to
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keep the water still, the more it moved. In Eastern thoughts, the mind is often compared
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to water, not because it should be still, but because it moves best when it's not being forced.
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And suffering does not come from movement itself, but from the effort to control movement.
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If we look at the first pattern, the tight grip, there's a saying that says the more you try to
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straighten the river, the more it resists. When you search for the cause again and again,
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when you deeply analyze correctly, it's like trying to hold the river in place. But rivers are not
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meant to be solved, they're meant to be followed. And so tension appears not as failure, but as
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friction against what is moving. The second pattern is the listening for the thunder. In Zen, there's
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a teaching that says the anxious mind hears a thunder in a clear sky. When you begin to anticipate
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pain, the mind leans forward into the future. It starts listening for something that is not yet
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there. And in doing so, it leaves the present moment slightly behind. Not dramatically, but
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just enough that the body no longer feels fully safe where it is. And so it prepares, not because
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the danger is here, but because attention has moved away from now. So the third pattern is
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chasing the horizon. So there's sort of another quiet idea in Eastern philosophy that I really like,
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is hope that pulls you forward can also pull you away from yourself. So when you place your energy
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into this will fix me, you begin to walk towards the horizon, but the horizons move. And so each
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time you arrive, they're still just out of reach. And this creates a subtle exhaustion, not just for
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your body. And I feel I've really related to that because migraine is a moving target. And trust me,
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in the Migraine Heroes app, we do everything to be able to swiftly move it with you so that at all
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times, you know what's happening, you can explain things and you know what to do to prevent them.
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And oh my god, this is hard and intense. So bear with us. We're coming, we're marching, we're
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determined, we're using all of the technology possible in the world. This is complex. And so it
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really resonates. We're trying to put the load on the machine and not in your brain so it doesn't
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exhaust you as much. So today, simply try to notice which loop you're in without trying to fix it.
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Just name it. Ah, this is the self-blame loop. Or ah, this is the anticipation loop. And then you can
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take one small step that does the opposite of that loop. For self-blame, you can choose
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self-compassion. For anticipation, you can return to the present moment. And for disappointment,
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you can do something gently nourishing without expectations. This small shift begins to signal
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safety to your nervous system. And remember, every small step you take moves you closer to freedom.
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You are powerful, you are resilient, and you're not alone. Keep rising, My Green Hero.
