Category: Strategies
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Wearing a mask / Resting B!@#$ Face
I couldn’t decide what to call today’s post. The polite version of what I want to write about relates to “wearing a mask” when you live with chronic pain. I often find myself smiling politely to people when I really feel like sleeping / sighing / crying. It’s not the…
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Whispers and screams
The other day I read a comment on the blog Thriving Chronicles – it immediately struck me as so simple and yet deeply profound: “I try to listen to my body when it whispers, so it doesn’t have to scream!” My goodness – why hadn’t I thought of that!?! This…
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No spoons (or forks) for me…
A while ago I wrote about the history of “spoons” – the metaphor people with fibromyalgia use to explain how people with chronic pain allocate their limited amounts of energy. Today I want to go into a bit more detail to explain the idea, AND tell you why it doesn’t…
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Migraine Love Language
We need help when we are sick. Sometimes we ask for it. Sometimes we just hope that our loved ones will read our mind and turn up with what we need when we need it. Sometimes our family and friends want to help so they provide what they think is…
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Have you had a nervous breakthrough?
When I look back over the past few years and try to figure out “what went wrong” and why my occasional migraines became chronic… no BIG OBVIOUS answer appears. What I THINK happened is a series of smaller, negative events (hormonal, lifestyle, emotional, financial) presented themselves all at the same…
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Find your WHY
You’ve probably heard the saying before – find your why – like all sayings, they tend to do the rounds for a while then fade away… for a while. When I thought about it the other day though, it seemed to take on a new resonance. I had been thinking…
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Pain + Fear = Chronic Pain
I often wonder why my occasional migraines switched over into a chronic migraine condition about three years ago. To try and understand what might have been the cause, I tried to remember what was happening in my life at about the time of the change. I realized that five significant…
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The migraine-pain-brain-train
The other day I had to catch the train into university to see my PhD supervisor. It takes about one hour, as long as everything goes right. If there is any sort of problem, then it can be even longer. Very occasionally, I’ve had to get off and change to…
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Be prepared… but like, REALLY prepared
The Boy Scouts have a saying (or at least they did when I was there earning my merit badges while backpacking with leeches) which is “be prepared”. The idea is to hope for the best but plan for the worst. Don’t head off into the wilderness without a bottle of…
The Mindful Migraine 