I’ve been doing pretty well with managing my migraines during the day. I stay hydrated and mind my mindset. I’m quite proud of how far I’ve come. Nighttime, however, is a different story. For some reason, up to two or three times a week, I wake up in the middle of the night with a migraine. I take half a tablet and go back to bed and am (usually) fine by morning. It’s not a terrible situation but it’s confusing. Maybe it’s because I grit my teeth. Maybe it’s a perimenopausal surge of hormones. Maybe I’m overheating and my brain is overreacting.
Maybe, I realized recently… I’m having night terrors, and in the same way our brain can’t tell the difference between a current event and a memory, (and reacts in the same way physiologically for both), maybe my dream-thoughts are stressing my physiology out and giving me a migraine…
To get to the bottom of it, here’s two dream stories to consider – they get a bit long-winded, so I won’t be offended if you’re not keen to read (it can be a bit tedious when someone takes forever to recount their dreams – so sorry not sorry!)
The other night I watched a spy movie on TV with my husband. The covert group were all working out of a basement labelled Room 20. Curious, I thought, why make a point of it? Later in the movie one of the characters pointed out that the number 20 in Roman numerals is XX – a double cross – so cool! (I can’t exaggerate enough how much I love language and humanity’s imaginative use of it!)
Later that night I had a dream, for which I only remember the end. A medieval king called on the four lords that lived on the land surrounding his kingdom and asked them to join him to fight a common enemy. They agreed, and all met at the allocated battlefield. The king climbed off his horse and thanked the lords. He had his servant hand them each a backpack-goodie-bag and told them that their instructions on what to do next were inside. The four lords then began to act like my teenage daughters looking for their bus-pass at the bottom of their schoolbag and started pulling out all sorts of seemingly irrelevant bits and bobs until – finally – after a long time had passed, they reached the scroll at the bottom. The lords all pulled the scrolls out and unfurled them to reveal… nothing. They all looked at each other’s ‘instructions’ and found they were all given blank parchments. The king burst out laughing with a full bwah-ha-ha evil laugh then pointed over his shoulder to where the four lords’ troops were long gone, led away to serve in his own personal army, a giant army that was off to conquer the lords’ lands so his kingdom would be four times bigger and better. With a flourish of his fox-fur-lined-cape he leapt onto his horse and rode away. One of the four lords then cursed in an olde English accent and said something that equated to “I’m not standing for this,” and went into the nearest run-down timber hut, pulled a mobile phone and a charging cable out of his pocket and walked over to the power point in the wall to plug it in, and…
I woke up. It’s as if even my subconsciousness, ‘you can do ANYTHING in a dream’, rebelled at such an outrageous break with historical accuracy. I lay awake wondering if the spy movie had played a part. My mind was busy, but my body was restful. So no, I didn’t get a migraine, but bear with me…
The next night I had a dream that appeared as a cartoon. I don’t know if I was watching it as a movie in the dream or if it was the dream itself. The cartoon was a stressful collection of battles between Superman and the mystery-solving dog Scoobie-Doo versus the temperamental Hulk and a giant shark. They were going after each other, over and over. It was full on. Eventually Superman grabbed the shark by the tail and did the old flip-flop toss-away manoeuvre, grabbed Scoobie, said “take a deep breathe” and then propelled him deep underwater superfast (why he didn’t just fly is beyond me). Just as they were about to get to the other side of the lake, the enormous growly face of the Hulk appeared underwater and Superman, Scoobie, and I all did a silent scream. I woke up trembling and tense, sucking in air. So not spooky I know, but it WAS. The adrenalin rush was intense. My body was reacting as if I had just survived a near-death experience. Within an hour, I was taking my meds.
So now I’m not sure whether my midnight migraines are generally the result of hormones or overheating, but that night – for sure – the Hulk was to blame.
Take care sleeping, it can be rough in there, Linda xox
The Mindful Migraine 
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