I suffer from migraines on a day to day basis. Well, I get headaches every day. Luckily, I only have migraines about once every 7-10 days.
I’ve been in this situation since I was about 4 years old. My mom would tell me that I was constantly coming to her as a child to say, “Mommy, my head hurts.” It’s been a long-standing condition that has seen many doctors, taken a number of medical scans, kept “headache journals,” been on many different diets, and tried just about everything in and out of the book to fix them. Clearly, they haven’t been fixed.
Recently I was put on a new medicine that was thought to finally be the solution to my condition. I tried it out for months hoping that it would decrease the number or severity of my headaches, but to no avail. Honestly, I think it may have even made my migraines worse. Here’s why: I was constantly thinking about them.
Whenever I took my medicine, I thought about them. Throughout the day, I thought about them. At the end of the night, I thought about them, contemplating whether or not the medicine had had any effect that day. I was constantly thinking about and aware of my pain.
Whenever I took my medicine, I thought about them. Throughout the day, I thought about them. At the end of the night, I thought about them, contemplating whether or not the medicine had had any effect that day. I was constantly thinking about and aware of my pain.
Because I’ve had, give or take, 5,000 headaches in my lifetime, you could say that I’ve become accustomed to them. Yeah they’re still painful and unpleasant, but my tolerance has increased and I’ve gained the ability to live life in the midst of them. When I run into trouble, however, is when I think about them.
It may seem silly, but it’s true. I don’t really know that I can explain it, but because migraines have become so common and so seemingly natural to me, I can oftentimes forget about the pain. (Now obviously there are extremely debilitating aches that won’t let me think, walk, function, or pretty much do anything other than sleep, but luckily those don’t haunt me daily).
Anyways, back to the point … forgetting about my pain. It doesn’t always work, but sometimes I am able to forget the pain of the headache if I stop thinking about it. You know, it’s like when a mom distracts her child after falling from her bike and shifts her attention to something other than the gash on her knee. The child doesn't acknowledge the pain long enough that the mother is able to nurse her to recovery. It’s similar to that. I just go throughout my day thinking about anything and everything else other than my headaches, and sometimes I can forget that they’re there. (If only this worked every day!).
Moral of the story is this: when I focus on my pain, I feel it, sometimes worse than before. It becomes more real, more prevalent, and more painful. When I focus my attention on something other than my pain, it lessens, and sometimes it’ll even “go away” for a little while.
Unfortunately with my headaches, I can’t trace back to the root of them. Doctors have tried to find the source, but we’ve never been able to track it down. I have discovered some of the triggers throughout the years (exercise, loud noises, a windy day, reading for too long, bright lights, car rides … actually, it’d probably be quicker just to list the things that don’t trigger them) but we have never found the true root source.
It's clear that I can’t discover the root of my headaches to then rid myself of them, and focusing on this only makes them worse.
Unfortunately I can't fix the pain in my head, but I do have the opportunity to deal with the pain in my heart. As my head does, my heart hurts in a number of ways in a number of magnitudes, and there is a host of triggers.
But, unlike my headaches, I can attack my roots and my pain. God gives me weapons to fight as to not allow them free reign on my heart. God teaches me lessons from the wounds of past mistakes. God gives me the strength to forgive the hurt from my enemies. God uncovers the cutting lies I’ve been fed and gives me truth to re-teach my heart. All of this allows me to work with God and heal the pain in my heart and in my life.
Focusing enough to move past the hurt is one thing, but thinking about it, dwelling on it, is another.
Although the pain in my head differs from that in my heart, one aspect remains the same: don’t focus on it. When I focus on the pain, it gets hard to see past it. It gets hard to ignore, hard to live life, hard to move forward.
If I do nothing more than focus on my pain, what else am I going to feel?
Don’t focus on the bumps and bruises in your life. Instead, remove them from the forefront of your mind and move past them. Dwelling on your afflictions is blinding. Sometimes it’s hard enough to see and hear the truth as it is; don’t make it any harder by choosing to focus on your pain.
