Are Your Migraines Fueled By Emotional Trauma?

“Someday the medical profession will wake up and realize that unresolved emotional issues are the main cause of 85% of all illnesses.”
-Eric Robins, MD. Co-author of Your Hands Can Heal You.

Have you experienced a traumatic event or repeated traumatic events?
Do you suffer from emotional trauma?
Do you wonder how emotional trauma can negatively affect migraine disease?

Emotional trauma can be experienced due to a wide variety of events. Reminders of a traumatic event can act as triggers and cause severe anxiety. In our society, many individuals have a very limited view of what constitutes a traumatic event. Traumatic events are not limited to incidents of war, hurricanes, earthquakes, terrorist attacks, and sexual abuse. Many events outside of these can be experienced as traumatic and have caused emotional trauma and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in individuals.

Traumatic events often include situations whereby a person’s regular ideas about the world, their identity, and their ability to be secure is shattered. Many events can be experienced as traumatic. It all depends upon a person’s unique perspective of an event and the way they mentally and emotionally process the event.

Emotional trauma occurs when a person is unable to assimilate the thoughts and emotions brought about by a traumatic experience. As a result, one can feel overwhelmed and unable to cope.

Symptoms of emotional trauma include:

• Feelings of emotional detachment
• Persistent and terrifying thoughts of a traumatic event
• Being easily startled
• Feeling numb/apathetic
• Having problems sleeping
• Confusion/inability to think clearly
• Memory problems.

How Trauma Influences the Nervous System

Emotional trauma influences your thoughts, beliefs, physiology, behaviors, and actions. It can negatively influence the workings of your nervous system, keeping it overly aroused and in a chronic state of fight or flight.

When the nervous system experiences a stress response (due to a perceived threat) stress hormones are released, and magnesium is excreted from the body. (Magnesium is an essential mineral that helps relax the nervous system and musculature.) The heart rate increases, muscles tense, blood vessels constrict, breathing rate quickens, and the body prepares to help you fight or flee the perceived threat.

What’s important to understand is that the body doesn’t know the difference between an actual traumatic event and the emotional trauma we can experience after a traumatic event. The body responds to emotional trauma in the same way it responds to an immediate threat. If you experience an immediate threat, the tension and stress hormones produced in the body to help you respond to the threat can be released by fighting or fleeing from the threat. But if you experience a psychological threat, one that stems from unresolved emotional trauma, the body doesn’t have an easy outlet for releasing the tension or hormones.

If you have migraine disease than you may already know that an overly aroused nervous system fuels migraine activity. It’s believed that people who suffer from migraines are also more prone to having an overly aroused nervous system than those who don’t have migraines. The physiological affects of emotional trauma can keep you locked into a perpetual cycle of stress and over stimulation of the nervous system.

Emotional Trauma and Migraines

Can a migraine attack be considered a traumatic experience? Yes.
Can living with migraine disease cause emotional trauma? Yes.
Can the physiological effects of emotional trauma negatively contribute to the frequency and intensity of your migraines? Absolutely!

If you have migraine disease unresolved emotional trauma can perpetuate the body’s stress response and the imbalance of your nervous system making you even more vulnerable to migraines. Make sure that your treatment plan for overcoming migraine disease includes therapeutic strategies for healing the emotional trauma that feeds your migraines.

For more information on healing the emotional trauma that negatively influences your ability to get relief from migraines please check out our multi-media program Natural Migraine Relief for Life