You Are Not Alone
Whether your migraine disorder is classified as episodic or chronic, migraine can be a deeply isolating experience. When attacks become frequent or severe enough to impact a person’s quality of life, migraine can drive a wedge between us and the people in our lives who don’t have migraine or who have migraine but can easily abort attacks. It’s that quality of life factor – when migraine changes what we’re able to do, when it forces us to hide in a dark room instead of have fun with our kids, when we fear the next attack – that really separates us from others.
Migraine.com is full of helpful tips, medical information, and personal stories, but its most important message is that you are not alone. You are not alone in the anger at having swathes of your life overtaken by migraine, your fear that the migraine attacks will never lessen or stop, your grief for all you have lost to migraine. You are not alone in feeling isolated from and misunderstood by the non-migraineurs in your life. You are not alone in the feelings of defeat and worthlessness that comes from being out of commission for days. You are not alone in the frustration that the medical establishment doesn’t understand migraine better and that all our preventive medications are secondhand treatments originally used for other conditions.
Migraine is a neurological disorder with symptoms that affect all of the body’s systems and can be felt head to toe. The medical community is beginning to understand that. Migraine’s emotional component – and not just the emotional symptoms that accompany migraine’s physiological processes – but the isolation and grief aren’t readily acknowledged by many doctors. Fortunately, they are readily acknowledged on Migraine.com.
If you’re feeling isolated, please visit the Migraine.com community page and forum. You don’t have to participate if you’re not ready, just read what others have written. You’ll soon learn you’re not alone in this at all. That there are many people who will support and care for you in your struggles with migraine. People who understand the experience intimately because they live it, too.
Although Migraine.com wasn’t around when I first looked for support online, another site’s forum saved me from utter despair when I felt like no one else in the world understood what I was going through. Connecting to others with migraine gave me hope and the strength to keep seeking treatment, helped me pick myself up and try again when a treatment failed, and introduced me to kindhearted people who understood exactly what my days were like. Facing each new day – each new migraine – courageously became a whole lot easier once I learned I was not alone.
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