How I "Do" Mindfulness During Migraine Pain

When I first heard of mindfulness, I thought it was some woo-woo made-up wishful thinking activity. Or worse, woo-woo made up wishful thinking which required you to sit still and hum or chant something.

I saw it as 'denial' wrapped up in a pseudo-spiritual ribbon, complete with a popularity bow on top! When I first heard of it, it was very popular, and all the 'cool people' were doing it. If there were 'influencers' at the time - they'd have made a real splash on TikTok.

I equated mindfulness with acceptance, but the acceptance I had understood then was a 'bad word.' To me it meant 'giving up,' and not in a good way.

What is acceptance?

I see acceptance differently now - it is, for me, a giving up - but in a way that allows more freedom and energy to actually solve or experience a problem (like migraine, like work stress, etc.) differently and more constructively. It doesn't mean not working toward a solution. To me it means setting aside the struggle when I cannot, in that moment, change what is happening. This helps me conserve energy.

What is avoidance are mindfulness different?

Mindfulness is one way in which I can actively practice and achieve this acceptance - and I wanted to explain what that looks like when I'm actually experiencing migraine pain.

Example: My head is throbbing with a searing hot pain and my left eye feels like it wants to pop out of my head. I can almost feel my pulse in it.

Avoidance would be: Do anything to stop the pain (even though I can't right now) - and that would result in a struggle, increased stress, more pain, and lack of connection to other things I *can* do in that moment.

Mindfulness would be: Shifting my focus to things outside of the pain AND exploring the pain. Mindfulness can be 'used' in concept to avoid what is happening, but I choose to view it as a tool for creating a balance in a moment of pain that I cannot change.

How does mindfulness bring balance during migraine?

I can shift my attention from 'fighting' the pain in my face, to hearing the birds outside, the coolness and dampness of the coarse freshly unfrozen cloth on my face....and then back to my pulsing eye. If I don't avoid focusing on that pain as part of my whole experience, I can physically feel it shift and change. (In moments of great pain, shifting and changing can bring great comfort!). Sometimes the pulsing is more tense, sometimes it is more fluid or softer. It doesn't - and cannot - stay the same. But I can't experience that if I stay in 'avoidance' mode.

That doesn't mean I have to sit and focus on the pain, but I can again shift to feeling something else, like the crispness of my sheets. Anything I'm feeling in the moment is fair game for attention.

Do I avoid or acknowledge the bad?

If I stay stuck in my thoughts about the past (Why has this happened to me?!, What a sad thing to have missed so much!) or the future (What if I never find an answer?) I stay in a suffering place. I can't change the past or the future, not in that moment. I can acknowledge that those thoughts are there - they are not bad things, just the things a brain generates about a situation - but I do not need to be stuck in them.

What do I focus on?

That drop in the struggle gives me energy for recovery - which I can focus on finding new solutions when I'm more able.

I can move back to needing to get up to use the bathroom or how dry my mouth is feeling because I've avoided fluids out of fear of vomiting. I can then listen to the cat asking for food and feel the shifting ache across my head and the change in my eye. Some of these things are pleasant and some are not - but none of them are stuck, fixed, or isolated. And when I can be more mindful during migraine - neither am I.