Our previous article talked about recent research on stress and migraine. It talked about migraine-related stressors in broad terms, like professional development and relationships. But migraine is also stressful in many seemingly small ways. These smaller stressors can add up to a lot of distress. Some examples:

• Your responsibilities get dropped (or done half-heartedly) during an attack. Not only does this mean more work when the migraine attack relents, but it can leave you feel like you’re letting people down.
• You wonder (or, if you’re like me, obsess over) what you might have done to bring on the attack. Sometimes this can help find a trigger so you can minimize it in the future; often, it’s just fruitless rumination.
• With insurance limits on prescription drugs and the risk of medication overuse (rebound) headache, even deciding whether or not to treat the migraine is distressing.
• Between attacks, you wonder whether that floater in your eye, increased tooth sensitivity, or excessive yawning mean a migraine is coming on. This worry is often accompanied by a slight adrenaline release because you know what a migraine will mean.
• Managing triggers between attacks can also be stressful. Depending on your triggers, you may have to watch what you eat, stick to a rigid schedule, avoid fun activities because they include triggers.

Frequent or chronic migraine comes with the additional stress of having these things happen on a regular basis. You know you’ll have to cancel most plans you make and your to-do list will be left undone. You might feel like you’re a burden on your loved ones or that you’re not carrying your weight.

It’s important to consider the broad impacts of migraine on stress levels, but the smaller ways in which it is stressful can be just as difficult to deal with.

Click for more on the latest in migraine research