What Migraines Have Taught Me About Being Vulnerable

“Vulnerability is the core, the heart, the center, of meaningful human experiences.” ~Brené Brown, Daring Greatly

Migraines. I’ve had them since I was five years old. Sometimes they’re bad, sometimes they’re really bad. But I have them.

When I was five, I had electrodes placed on my skull to do an EEG. I didn’t understand the name, so I called it a “sleepy EG” since they put me to sleep to do it.

Back then, I didn’t realize how chronic pain could interfere with my daily life. I just knew that I was getting my sleepy EG.

It …

“Vulnerability is the core, the heart, the center, of meaningful human experiences.” ~Brené Brown, Daring Greatly

Migraines. I’ve had them since I was five years old. Sometimes they’re bad, sometimes they’re really bad. But I have them.

When I was five, I had electrodes placed on my skull to do an EEG. I didn’t understand the name, so I called it a “sleepy EG” since they put me to sleep to do it.

Back then, I didn’t realize how chronic pain could interfere with my daily life. I just knew that I was getting my sleepy EG.

It was also during my childhood that my personality started to form, as it does with everyone. I was a shy and introverted child, and I quickly learned the societal ropes of not expressing your struggles. I learned to say, “I’m fine,” when someone asked how I was, even if I really wasn’t.

I saw vulnerability as something to be avoided. However, as I got older and my migraines got more intense, my worlds of chronic pain and vulnerability ultimately converged.

As many with chronic pain would tell you about living with their conditions, my life has become a delicate dance between preventing/treating my migraines and enjoying my life. But the migraines’ frequency and severity have not made it easy.

When I was six, I got a migraine the morning of my dance recital. It was a Disney-themed recital, and I was supposed to wear a Minnie Mouse costume. I developed a throbbing pain in my head that debilitated me for a couple of hours.

The recital was in the evening, and I didn’t know if I would be able to go on to perform that night. I got incredibly anxious that I wouldn’t be able to perform that night while wearing my Minnie Mouse costume. I feared I would let my whole dance class down.

After lying down in the dark for a couple of hours, the migraine dissipated, and I was able to perform. But it was then that I became acquainted with the anxiety around my migraines and letting others down. It was both out of this anxiety and a fear of showing my feelings that I didn’t let anyone at my dance studio know that this was a struggle for me.

In my early twenties, I got a migraine that stands out as a turning point in my migraine and, frankly, my life journey. It was the Minnie Mouse costume scenario on a much larger, more disastrous scale.

I was doing a year-long internship at a theater company. It was a prestigious and selective internship, and I’d moved across the country for it.

I was qualified, but I was stressed about being new to the professional world, and stress is a trigger for my migraines. I was working at plenty of events that went late at night, and I hadn’t mastered adjusting my sleep schedule around those.

The combination of lack of sleep and stress was not good, and I got sick a lot with colds, the flu, and, of course, migraines.

During this internship, the theater company held a fancy gala at the Ritz-Carlton. I was working the event, running around setting up and checking donors in. I’d been in charge of another event the night before, and I was feeling exhausted and depleted.

About two hours before the gala, I saw the dreaded spots of light that usually fill my vision and precede a migraine. But I was working, an early-career professional, and I felt I couldn’t really do or say anything about it.