Migraine Management: How to Reduce Anxiety, Manage Pain and Prevent Attacks

By Holly Hazen

Improve your possibilities of having less pain and stress.

Is conventional migraine medication working for you (or not) but you still find yourself stressed out? Luckily this book can get you sorted.

In Migraine Management, award winning author Holly Hazen gives you a step by step plan to help make painful major decisions from a place of inner peace. This technique will help you to make any subsequent decisions, big or small, in an easy self-guided fashion.

With Migraine Management, the code to stress reduction can be cracked. Holly will help you create your own inner compass to reduce stress, manage pain and prevent attacks. Break free of feeling hopeless. By applying simple strategies, you can harness your own collective wisdom and step forward with confidence.

Go beyond the pain phase and tame your emotional chaos. Learn about stress and pain management with:

• Sustainable strategies you can use to reduce stress and anxiety

• Practical guidance on how to approach and make hard decisions when migraines create chaos

• A wide range of treatment options available

• Information on how to prevent migraine attacks and manage pain

• Real steps to follow to be prepared for the next attack and to take back control of your life

• And more

Are you ready to manage your migraines with confidence?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Holly Hazen
• Release date: May 12, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386990956

Book preview

Introduction: Tools For Transition

Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it. - Helen Keller (1903)

Are migraines making your decisions for you?

Migraines can leave you feeling powerless, and like you have no control over your own life. Being forced to change jobs, move house and alter your diet because of migraines can cause a great deal of stress and upheaval. And when you’re stressed out, it’s so much harder to make the right decisions.

And what if you’re no longer able to work due to your relentless migraine attacks? That can mean losing your financial stability, possibly your home - and it can also affect your relationships too.

Migraines can be ruthless and soul destroying - something I know only too well! And that’s exactly why I’ve written this book. Having a chronic health condition like migraines can diminish self-trust and self-confidence. Speaking for myself, it sure diminished mine. After 21 treatment failures with medication alone, that’s not really surprising. I began to question every decision I made.

We all face big decisions in life, and we need to be able to trust in our ability to make the right choices. Unfortunately, not all of us are blessed with good decision making skills. As a matter of fact, I imagine a good number of us have never really been taught exactly how to do it. But don’t worry - it’s absolutely a skill you can learn.

Being able to make solid, well informed decisions is crucial, especially when you have health issues. Having to deal with migraines might mean you need to make more changes than you’d like to. Moving house and finding a new career are enormous stressors (whether you’re dealing with health issues or not), so those are the two main examples I use in this book.

I’ll show you what to expect when you’re facing and living stressful transitions like these. I’ll also teach you techniques you can use to learn how to make major (or minor) decisions from a stronger position within yourself. You’ll discover key strategies that will help you cope and, in turn, this will allow you to feel safer in moving forward.

Making decisions can get harder the longer you are sick. Consequently, trusting that you’ve made the right choice can get even harder too. So, in this book, you’ll also learn how to prepare for - and deal with - any setbacks along the way.

I have combined a few gentle techniques to help you find and follow your own inner guidance. With newfound clarity, you’ll be able to determine the right way forward for you in the midst of the chaos migraines cause.

The processes you’ll learn here for dealing with moving house and changing jobs can be applied to any other important decision you’re faced with.

You’ll use visual aids and your senses to help your brain process thoughts and events. You’ll learn how to calm down the panic that occurs in your body when additional challenges arise, and trust in your ability to take the right action. To get the most out of this book, be ready to experiment to find what works best for you.

You may not be able to cure migraines, but you can learn to manage them.

Stress is a normal part of our biological functioning and a necessary part of life. It keeps us alert, aware and safe from danger. But too much stress can become paralyzing rather than helpful.

How do you reduce stress? The most effective thing I ever did was to focus on a migraine pain management strategy. Knowing what to do and when to act will reduce your stress and relieve your anxiety.

Discovering what works to stop an attack escalating to the pain phase is essential. I’ll cover key points of this strategy in this book and I’ve also developed a whole course that teaches the finer details.

Taking action reduces anxiety.

In this book, I’ll share with you many techniques to reduce stress and empower your decision-making skills. We’ll look at different relaxation techniques, explore simple body awareness, and experiment with sensory input.

Here’s a little preview: the fastest way to lower anxiety is to use your breath. Try this...

Close your eyes and imagine a migraine free life. What would your life look like without the disruption and suffering migraines cause? Take a deep breath in, and then exhale to the count of seven.

What sort of changes do you want to make in your life that you have not been able to achieve? (Yet!) What would your day look like if you made those changes? Or how about just one change?

Close your eyes and take another deep breath. Feel calmer?

With guidance, you really can imagine yourself into a calmer space. This book will help you do that - and the even better news? It gets easier, the more you practice!

We’ll delve into the techniques of my two favorite modalities: Focusing Therapy and Reverse Therapy.

Focusing Therapy was developed by Eugene Gendlin, PhD. Since 2009, I’ve used this method to help me deal with the impact of migraines, outside of the pain phase. I cannot move during the pain phase if I don't abort it.

Focusing is a gentle and effective way to talk to your body about migraine symptoms - or anything else, for that matter. It provides a way to acknowledge, step back from, understand, and listen to the body.

Dr. John Eaton founded The Reverse Therapy Approach for ME., Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia. His method connects your heart and your mind so they can work together. He refers to this as headmind and bodymind. The techniques help you to better understand your symptoms so you can find a way to work with them, listen and take action.

What I first loved about both of these therapies is that you can work through them with a trained professional, or you can guide yourself through the steps. Not everyone can afford a therapist - and with these therapies, you don’t need to.

Discover your inner strength and learn to trust yourself.

This book is based around a step-by-step process to help you both make decisions you don’t feel prepared to make, and lower anxiety. When you have repetitive migraine pain episodes, it's like having PTSD. You start to fear the next one. And fear can lead to panic.

But once you learn how to access your inner GPS with the tools and techniques in this book, you’ll have the skills at your fingertips to use whenever you need.

Learning to make more heartfelt decisions, instead of only logical ones, was new to me. Why would I need to know how a decision felt, if it made sense?

But - it’s one of the best things I’ve ever learned to do to help me