Life Isn't Happening to You, It's Just Happening.

When things are going downhill with our child's migraines we can feel like life is happening to us. "Why is this happening to my child?" "What are we doing wrong?" Why does my child never get a break?"

When we feel like life is happening to us there is a lot of extra emotion and hopelessness that swirls around in our bodies. It amplifies our pain and intensifies our hopelessness. It can keep us stuck.

It can be freeing to realize that life is not happening to us. It is just happening.

Greta just happened to get a migraine that never ended. A few things may have contributed to pushing her over the edge: several concussions that year, a stressful year of moving back to Canada after living overseas, changing hormones, and pushing herself to do well in school. However, many kids go through these things and never end up with migraines.

So Greta happens to have migraines. And 24/7 head pain. It isn't personal. A few other kids have it. It just so happens to be what she is dealing with at this stage in life.

When we are able to step back and get a little distance from what we are dealing with it can simplify things a bit. Remove some of the heavy emotional layers that have been built up over the years.

Our kids' chronic migraines aren't personal. They just are. We haven't done anything wrong to make them start and we aren't doing anything wrong when we can't figure out how to fix them. It sucks. Profoundly. But it isn't personal.

You are all doing an excellent job trying to support your child and figure this all out! You are handling a difficult situation very well. It's just a really hard chapter of life. It's up and down and backwards and forwards and sometimes it just stands still for longer than we would like. It's not personal. And you're not doing anything wrong. It just is.

It can help to lighten the load if we can take a layer off. If we can take off the layer of guilt, shame and blame, then pain can be a little easier to deal with. A little less complicated.

~ Carla Friesen

Licensed Psychotherapist, Pain Coach

The general contents of this website are provided solely for educational and informational purposes and are not meant to provide professional medical or psychiatric advice, counselling or therapeutic services.

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