It’s been over half a year now since I decided to try using Functional Medicine to address my longstanding digestive issues and migraine headaches. This involved testing to assess my gut microbiota and other factors, changing my diet to a more gut-friendly mode, taking supplements and probiotics to support healing and good flora, and “brain balancing” neurofeedback technology.
As I described in a previous post, I ended up talking to a second practitioner when my first had a personal crisis and was unavailable; this one added therapeutic enemas and colon cleansing into the mix, which I found a helpful step for me. However, although overall I felt better about my diet and had gotten past a phase of feeling hungry and deprived, the migraines seemed to be a moving target. No matter what I did, after a while I ended up with about the same headache frequency as before, even though I was avoiding all the triggers and eating about 1000 times better than I had ever been.
Changing my diet helped me to recognize the binge eating habits that had likely contributed to my issues, and that could be considered a form of eating disorder. But even without those habits, even when I had stopped that line of addictive defense, my body still seemed to be trying to tell me something was wrong. Only what?
Was there something else I was missing? Had my gut dysbiosis not been resolved? I went back to Practitioner #1, now back in commission, to test again and see what if anything had changed. The results were encouraging, as a parasite had been cleared and my overall gut flora had improved by about half, while my brainwaves showed less limbic activation (a sign of stress) and more left-right integration.
With all of this, though, he thought I should be feeling better than I am. He suggested that some kind of toxic load (from black mold, bacteria, viruses, heavy metals, candida, or other factors) was still weighing me down, and prescribed a detox regimen.
I think this may be a fine idea, but I suspect that it’s still not the decisive factor. I think that there is something emotionally underlying all of this that will keep recurring until I dig it out.
Again, what is it? I do not have a history of obvious trauma and abuse. I have no memory of any attack, loss, or displacement that would make sense of my symptoms. Did something happen that I don’t remember? I have tried therapy to attempt to recover suppressed memories, without success. Did something happen to an ancestor that I took on somehow? (The new science of epigenetics is showing that this is possible, right down to the level of our genes.) I have some hints that this may be so, but not a full picture. The puzzle is still missing many pieces.
So I still don’t know what is behind my symptoms, and maybe I never will. But what I have come to realize is that I tend to have the headaches shortly after I have denied my own feelings, my grief or anxiety or shock, when I have tried to rationalize such unwelcome emotions and cover them up with thoughts I find more correct and acceptable.
Thinking is important, and I would never want to give it up or to suggest that we all ought to unrestrainedly act out of our feelings all the time. When I have occasionally tried that, it has been a disaster. But feeling is primal. Our spontaneous, natural feelings are what keep us in touch with the ground of reality. Feelings should not be erased by the way we think we ought to be feeling. The problem is that I’ve been doing this so long and it happens so automatically that I often cannot access the feeling itself at all any more. I can intuit that it must be there, underneath the mechanism that suppressed it, but I can’t sense it directly. It’s kind of like having a paralyzed leg that you can see is still there and can lift up and move around from the outside, but can’t feel inwardly.
There was one point in my life when I seemed to be totally paralyzed emotionally, completely numb inside. And that was worse than the worst physical pain I can imagine, a living death. But I’ve come a long way since that point. My feeling-part is not always numb any more, only sometimes. I’m not isolated by my sense of being frozen any more; I have come out of that prison, that death trap. I have my own family now, and friends and colleagues who can help me to feel even more, and to do it safely and gradually. There are exponentially more resources and greater knowledge about this field than there were in my youth, and I can make use of those.
And so along with whatever I need to do to support my long-suffering body, I sense that this is my next step: to try to grow my feeling capacity so that I no longer throw up instinctive walls against it whenever I’m under pressure or stress. I need to reclaim my real feelings and not censor them before they even get to my awareness. This is not the purview of functional medicine, and I don’t know exactly how to do it. But I think that I will find a way, as long as I have the will and the determination to follow through.
This path has led me to an unexpected place, and to fewer clear answers and less certainty than I had hoped for. In a way, I’ve just come back to where I started. And yet the journey has taught me much that I didn’t know before, and above all, given me a sense of knowing myself better. From this ground I can start again, with a clearer sense of my goal, and maybe get somewhere new at last.
Praying for solutions that are sustainable
Thank you, I appreciate your kind thoughts.
Well, I must say you have come a long way in only six months and learnt a lot about yourself and how you work. And you’ve got rid of your parasite. It’s really impressive, Lory! Hard, hard work though. And I think I am probably not alone in relating to your habit of replacing uncomfortable emotions with those that are more acceptable, that resonated. More power to your elbow on this next stage!
It has quite a year. Thanks so much for your encouragement, it means a lot to me.
I wish you much success as you continue to go down your path.
Thank you Deb, I appreciate your support very much.
It must be frustrating when even after everything there is still no solution but as you said, you also learnt a lot along the way. Hope you are able to get to the bottom of your problems soon.
It’s been a bit frustrating but also fascinating to learn firsthand about the mind body connection. This is the cutting edge of science! I think I’ll find my way eventually and meanwhile there is lots to ponder.
I certainly wish you the best in overcoming your reflexive thought patterns and finding a better way. It truly is so important to let ourselves feel our feelings, and also do that in an appropriate way that doesn’t cause hurt to others — something that I’ve been working on too.
Thanks Jean. The trick is to find appropriate outlets for one’s feelings. When they are not pretty and may be hurtful they still have to be validated somehow, but safely. Working on that.
Migraines are so individual. Mine were partly stress, partly hormonal, and partly about the kind of sugar I’d ingested. I had them from the time I could tell my mother what was wrong until my first pregnancy, and since that pregnancy, they’re much more controllable and less frequent, which is mysterious, but three things changed then: my hormones, the way I learned to eat frequent, small meals, and realizing my main trigger, which is the sugar in any kind of beer. Years of allergy doctors and migraine treatments didn’t help much, but listening to my body did. Now I never drink beer and won’t even try things with beer in them, and that’s made a big difference. The sugar in rum or candy can also trigger a migraine, but that seems to be a matter of how much. If I keep my blood sugar stable (I don’t have diabetes) then I don’t have as many migraines and can often head them off with aspirin and caffeine.
Very interesting. I think there are a lot of different factors and as you say, it’s individual. For me cutting out sugar was not enough, but maybe still it was a step toward emptying the “migraine bucket” to the point where it won’t overflow any more. Further research will show.
Yes, you’ve got to try some small steps and see what makes a difference. I realized that I eat more sugar when stressed/excited/overstimulated, so it’s not just the sugar; it’s a combination of things. For me, though, trying never to get too hungry is effective for cutting down on migraines.
Exactly, it is a combination. There are many things that can fill up the bucket, only the last thing makes it overflow. That confused me for a long time because I was only looking at the last thing as the “trigger.” But that trigger might be relatively innocuous in itself, only it was the final straw. One has to dig down to what’s underneath.
I’m glad to know you have found ways to manage your migraines. That is encouraging.
I’ve found being aware of myself and how I’m feeling so important. If I keep a log of sleep, diet, if I’ve had a glass of wine or not, how much exercise I’ve had, it all adds to me being able to see a pattern in how I’m feeling. I don’t have to do it all the time, but every now and then when things seem to be spiralling I now know to stop and make a record and get myself back on track. I’m just saying this because I understand and find very interesting your own journey, it’s good to take the time for healing once we’ve realised we can do it!
It’s incredible how distant we can become from our actual emotions and even sensations. Keeping logs is a good idea; I started taking notes each day about important things too. Thanks for the solidarity and encouragement, it really helps.