The Mindful Migraine

You’ll hear a lot on this website about chronic pain triggers: “dehydration triggered my migraine last week, and stress triggered my pain-brain yesterday”, and so on and on. Sometimes the potential triggers can be super-quirky, but potentially still very real, and might include your pillow, drafts, or even nightmares. This focus on triggers is important – you need to know what triggers your migraine (and that’s why I have a free trigger tracker on my resource page (here))… knowledge is power – acknowledge your weaknesses, and work on them either through prevention or boosting your resilience.

That said, the main intention of tracking triggers is to assist you in ‘reducing pain’ rather than ‘increasing joy’. That’s a bit of a debbie-downer mode of thinking if we spend too long there. As such, I was thrilled to recently discover that someone has come up with a word for a trigger’s opposite: GLIMMER.

Psychologist Deb Dana apparently popularized the term around 2018 to help you reset your nervous system.

Her Rhythms of Regulation website (Rhythm of Regulation – GLIMMERS) explains glimmers this way: “Glimmers are micro-moments of regulation that foster feelings of well-being. A glimmer could be as simple as seeing a friendly face, hearing a soothing sound, or noticing something in the environment that brings a smile. They are personal to each of us and one person’s glimmer may be another person’s trigger. Glimmers are a cue in the day, either internal or external, that sparks a sense of wellbeing. These tiny moments gently yet significantly shape your system toward well-being.  They help you become regulated and ready for connection.”

How lovely!!

[I agree that these micro-glimmers are likely to be intensely personal: the smell of grass will remind one person of blissful backyards and make another person sneeze for an hour straight, whilst the approach of a stranger’s dog can make someone curious or afraid, and the sound of a song from the 1980s can be a welcome nostalgia or white noise…]

As the VeryWellMind.com website clearly puts it: “Triggers are cues – accurate or not – that move the body into those fight-or-flight or freeze states. Glimmers are also cues – but they are cues that move the body into that feeling of safety and connection and into the ventral vagal state.”

[Read more about your vagus nerve on my post here.]

I found a great infographic that shows some of the differences between glimmers and triggers on ThriveWise.com.uk. If it’s a bit hard to read, it includes text that indicates glimmers allow us to enter an anchored state, versus triggers which put us in a survival state, and glimmers move us to a zone of comfort and learning whereas triggers put us in the danger zone where we panic:

[Image source: Glimmers: How Micro-Moments Can Re-Shape Your Nervous System and Wellbeing | ThriveWise | Edinburgh]

Now that we know the power of a glimmer, we can return to Deb Dana’s site where she outlines a “Basic Glimmer Practice” to encourage you to find and appreciate the glimmers in your life:

See / Stop / Appreciate / Remember / Share

At the risk of sounding rather rude, I’m a huge fan of anacronyms to help my muddled brain remember things (such as when I posted about SWANEY to start your healing journey from fuddled duck to the swan you really are, combined with PARTNERS to set up good healing foundations, or the use of CHARLES mantras to help me feel safe) – because of this infatuation, I would reword ‘stop’ to ‘take a moment’ – that way you can use the anacronym STARS to remind yourself what to do (and of course, because I want us all to glimmer like the stars that we are!)

Based on the new label, her process is as follows:

See – What did you see that made you happy and what happens in your body to tell you this is a glimmer?

Stop / Take a moment – now that you know what makes up your glimmers, look for them in routine places (whilst also being open to new and unpredictable glimmer-locations).

Appreciate – let the glimmer land in your system, enjoy it, and consider doing something to recognize and reinforce the moment as it occurs (such as whispering an affirmation, or placing your hand on your heart).

Remember – create a “glimmer library” of all the things that make you happy, in whatever way works for you.

Share – find a “glimmer buddy” or set up a community of glimmer-sharers so that your joy can grow.

*

I love the idea of a “glimmer library” and am always partial to a bit of (over) sharing, so here’s a quick and messy montage of photos I found on my phone (and prior blog posts) that might be the start of my glimmering library:

And with that – anything more that I write will just get in the way of YOUR thinking / living / enjoying / remembering / journalling… so go forth and seek glimmers – the world is amazing, and so are you!

Take care taking care, glimmeringly, Linda x