Reflecting on years of instability

So I had a little blip of late when I was reminded just how awful my migraine is when not being effectively managed. And the most striking thing to me was how very volatile my mood was. This triggered a very deep reflection of how horrible I must have been to deal with for so many years.

I want to apologise. That’s what it feels like anyway. But a very large part of me is screaming that no, I don’t have to apologise because I was never diagnosed, and then when diagnosed no one ever bothered to explain to me what living with migraine meant or how to manage it. It has taken me over 20 years to figure this all out on my own, that’s not my fault.

But facts are facts: I now understand that I was not an easy person to deal with for a very long time. The bouts of euphoria and depression that I now understand so well as being part of migraine were things that I was aware of as early as 22 – I even recall a doctor telling me I wasn’t bipolar because I was aware of the euphoria, and if it was mania I wouldn’t be aware of it or know it wasn’t right. But I still had them, would make people nervous by how much work I got done in the euphoric states, and then in the prodrome I was a very nasty person.

I now understand how incredibly short tempered and perfectionist I become in migraine postdrome – nothing is good enough, everything isn’t right, and I always feel like I’m repeating myself to others. And that this state would last for weeks. I really hope I didn’t project that onto my many employees over the years, but I do know that many volunteers have quit whatever grassroots thing I was working on because I didn’t show them enough love or gratitude or whatever when in that state.

I have worked very hard for most of my life to try and conceal this emotional volatility – I knew it was there, but this recent little blip has made me realise that actually it was far worse than I remember. So I probably didn’t have it locked down like I thought I did.

The one thing that has really blown me away is the extent to which I overthink and overanalyse things in a migraine state. My brain works fast all the time, and I have made a good career out of using that as a superpower to assess complex social structures and interactions to inform great strategies. But in a migraine state, my beast of a brain goes too fast for me to control or direct anywhere good. It just does what it wants to do, including catastrophizing, destroying relationships all on my own and otherwise being very destructive.

I imagine the relief I feel when emotionally stablised, as well as physically, by Aimovig is akin to someone with significant mental illness finding the right combination of medication. I imagine that my fear of losing Aimovig or that one day it may stop working is something they can relate to as well.

Now that I’m aware of it I will work on it more. Routine helps, I know that, so I’m going to make myself busy. I’m going to take myself off social media the second I think I’m going into a migrainous cycle. And I am going to up the exercise significantly, and earlier in the day, to try and clear the early morning cobwebs that I think are a significant part of the problem.

Let’s see how we go.