Maggie’s stress
related migraine
Maggie came to me on a Saturday evening with a terrible headache that
had been troubling her all day. She had been feeling very tensed all day and
her belly was also bloated and uncomfortable. We started with one full round of
the basic recipe directly on the headache:
Although I have this
terrible headache, I truly and deeply accept myself.
From an intensity of 10 out of 10 she went down to 7 or 8. Maggie also
noticed that the headache did not feel the same anymore and had shifted
slightly to the left side of her head.
We did another round on the remaining headache:
Although I still have this
terrible headache, I truly and deeply accept myself.
The intensity went right down to 1 or 2.
I did one rolling of the eyes to
“cap” it and Maggie said her migraine had completely vanished.
I wanted to find out a bit more about the origin of the migraine.
Maggie told me that it was stress related due to an unusual situation at work. Maggie
manages a team of nurses and, due to industrial actions, her team was being
asked to perform tasks for which they had had no training. As a result, Maggie
was extremely anxious that the wrong message would be conveyed to the public
and that she would ultimately be blamed for it. She had a certain amount of
anger towards her hierarchy which, in some ways, were imposing this impossible
situation on her and her team. We tapped on the fear she had of messing up
using the “choice procedure”:
Although I am afraid of
messing up, I choose to remain calm and confident.
Incidentally we used another (“stronger”) word than messing (beginning
with "f") as it felt more appropriate here. That stronger word also
enabled Maggie to express the anger which she felt. After that round we carried on
talking and Maggie told me she was due to attend an important meeting on the
following Monday. The thought of the meeting was making her literally “sick”.
We did one round of the choice procedure about the meeting:
Although I am dreading the
meeting on Monday, I choose to be in control.
After one round she felt much better at the
idea of the meeting.
This concluded our session and when she stood
up Maggie noticed immediately how much better and flatter her belly was now feeling and how
much “lighter” in general she felt.