No More HeadachesEliminate headaches without medication

In order to change your tendency towards headaches, it is important to understand and apply the concepts of behavioral modification. It is possible to retrain yourself to become someone who used to have headaches. It is not necessary to change your entire lifestyle. Instead, you can raise your awareness of which behavioral elements encourage headaches and make alterations.

Behavioral modification is based on the theory that all behavior is learned and that habitual patterns can be replaced. While the physical pain of headaches is definitely real, there are habitual emotional and behavioral patterns that lead to the development of headaches. By changing these patterns, the physical outcome can be reduced or avoided.

For most people there are many elements to consider, some major and some minute. As you begin to identify your personal patterns, choices can be made to change those patterns. While each person is unique, there are common tendencies among people who experience migraines. As you begin to understand your own tendencies and patterns, it will become clear which elements are most important for you to address.

In order to understand your own personal headache patterns, it helps to keep a headache diary. In addition to tracking when you have headaches and what may have triggered them, also pay attention to all the other elements contributing to your life at the moment. Pay attention to whatever stress you feel at that time, to how you were feeling before the headache arrived, and to how your personal buildup pattern unfolds.

This is private journal, so be honest with yourself. Pay as much attention to what is going on inside as to your external environment and triggers. Again, this exercise is not intended to make you feel worse about yourself, instead it is meant to help you understand the root causes of your headaches. If you prefer to work with a support group and share information, you may notice patterns in others that can help them progress and vice versa.

The first step in modifying your own behavior is to gather baseline data.  Observe and understand your current behavioral patterns before beginning any adjustments.  This stage of awareness and recording assists transformation in two ways.  Firstly, it provides a pattern for comparative measurement.  Without knowing your own behavior in detail, how can you identify if any change has taken place?  Secondly, the act of creating a baseline makes us more observant of our behavior.  Understanding your issues can make it much easier to correct them.

When attempting behavioral modification, it helps to work on something direct and straightforward. While it would be nice to snap your fingers and change everything at once, the reality is that we must deal with the subtleties. There are many different elements that contribute to headaches. As you move towards becoming a person who used to have headaches, you must identify and address each of the contributing elements.

Lets start with something simple. In one of my work experiences, I delivered seated-chair massages at a call center. All of the people that I massaged spent their days with a headset on, talking to people and typing into a computer. As I worked on each individual, I could easily distinguish telephone operators from managers since those who worked the phones had shoulder muscles as hard as rock. In that particular call center, most of the callers were angry and the operators dealt with a lot of stress.

Many headaches occur due to stress and tension. For many people, a lot of that stress and tension is held in the upper body, particularly around the neck and shoulders. The physical tension is increased in most work environments when people sit at computers all day. Add on the stress of workload and deadlines, and the shoulders begin to rise. This tension not only strains the muscles, it reduces the oxygen flow to the head. Reduced oxygen is a major contributor to any muscle pain and definitely influences headaches.

Changing this situation requires awareness, persistence and intentional action. If you experience migraines along with neck and shoulder tension, then begin to pay more attention to your body. Check in regularly and evaluate the status of your neck, shoulder and jaw muscles. If they are tense, take specific action to reduce the tension. This may be as simple as changing your posture, or perhaps stretching and giving yourself a massage. If the tension is regular, you could also schedule therapeutic massage to help you relax the muscles.

While it is not always possible to ‘think away’ muscular tension, you can make subtle changes so that you don’t add to the tension. My particular challenge is posture at the computer. After a few hours of writing I sometimes find that the pain and tension in my neck is intense. However, if I evaluate and adjust my posture every half hour, along with stretching the muscles, the tension is reduced. For me, learning to reduce muscular tension was one of the steps in eliminating migraines.

Most of the activities in our lives are a series of repetitive tasks.  Look at what you do every day, and realize that you are repeating the same things over and over again.  Specific tasks may change on a daily basis, but if you look at them over a week they remain constant.  From laundry and cleaning to eating and personal hygiene, the general activities we undertake define the life that we lead. By identifying and changing behaviors that encourage headaches you can reduce your pain.

Self-modification of behavioral patterns works best when we learn and reinforce new behaviors rather than suppressing or punishing unwanted ones.  By focusing our energy on what we want instead of what we don’t want, we allow ourselves to create new patterns. 

Ridding yourself of headaches is not just a matter of willpower.  It is a matter of recognizing and changing the patterns in your life that lead to headaches.  There may be many steps involved, but even one step can make a difference. Change your life and heal yourself one step at a time.

Transformational Exercises

Review the Check-in exercise outlined in the article ‘Quieting the Mind’

Begin to keep a headache diary, focusing on your internal feelings as well as external triggers.

Try to identify some of your behavioral patterns that contribute to your headaches.

Practice deep breathing and stretching to reduce muscular tension.

Copyright 2008 Glenn Stewart Coles