When you live with migraine disease, sometimes it can be very difficult to explain your pain to people who have never had a migraine attack because a lot of people think it’s just a bad headache, including doctors. It can feel isolating sometimes because a lot of people lack understanding and aren’t willing to educate themselves. Most people want to support their loved ones in pain, but it can be difficult to know how to support your loved ones when they have a condition that has so much stigma surrounding it. It can be difficult to understand pain that you have never experienced and can’t even begin to understand what it’s like. People who live with pain need more support than someone who doesn’t live in pain, and sometimes people say things to migraineurs with good intentions, without realizing that they are not being that helpful and are causing more harm than good. What shouldn’t you say to a migraineur? In this post, I am going to talk about a few things you should never say to someone who is struggling with migraine disease.
It’s just a bad headache– It can be difficult to explain to people who have never had a migraine that it’s not just a bad headache and is a full-body disease, because so many people believe that. Migraine is considered to be a type of headache, but it is not just a bad headache and goes beyond head pain because it affects your entire body. Many people with migraine struggle with light sensitivity, vertigo, and vomiting, and may experience no head pain at all because head pain is not the only symptom of migraine. You should never tell someone who struggles with this condition that it’s just a bad headache because it’s very dismissive of the severe pain that someone may be experiencing.
I get bad headaches too- When I am experiencing a migraine attack, and people say that I get bad headaches too, I know that most of the time, people mean well and are trying to relate to what I am going through and think they can. If you have never had a migraine, you are not going to be able to relate to the severe pain that comes with it, and that is okay. You don’t have to relate to what someone is going through to be supportive of it, and sometimes not relating to my pain is the most supportive thing you can do. Please don’t say “I get bad headaches too” because it’s not just a bad headache and is a complex neurological disorder that you will never understand until you have it.
Have you tried Excedrin?- When you are in pain, sometimes you will get a lot of unsolicited health advice because people want to help and may think they are. Unsolicited health advice is often ableist, and people say it because they think they know how to manage our disabilities better than we do. Sometimes, unsolicited health advice that people think is helpful can be a little insulting because it’s the most obvious suggestion. Yes, I have tried Excedrin, and it’s the first thing I try, and I am a little insulted that you think I wouldn’t have thought of that. Excedrin can help some people get pain relief, but over-the-counter remedies very rarely touch a migraine. Unsolicited health advice often sounds dismissive and assumes that I have not tried that well-known remedy.
You are just stressed- Some headaches can be triggered by stress, and sometimes you may get a migraine if you become too stressed, but it is not often the cause of your pain. Stress management is important for migraine prevention, but you aren’t going to cure yourself by meditating more because it’s a neurological disorder that isn’t going to go away by doing some yoga. You should never tell someone that they are just stressed because stress doesn’t always trigger your migraine attacks, and sometimes you don’t know what triggered it. Stress can trigger a migraine, but it is often not the root cause, and usually migraine attacks aren’t triggered unless you are super stressed. A small amount of stress is not going to trigger a migraine in most cases, and a lot of the time, the trigger is not stress-related.
You just need to eat healthier- Medication can help some people get some relief from pain, but diet plays a major role because you can improve pain by eating healthier. Healthy eating can help improve pain, but you can be eating healthy most of the time and still get a migraine because diet changes do not cure migraine disease. It can be harmful to blame someone’s migraine pain on their diet because it makes the person who is struggling feel like their pain is their fault, and that is never okay. Healthy eating and drinking water can help prevent some attacks, but believe me when I say I am probably already doing that and am still in pain.
I know how you feel- When you are disabled, often people will approach you and say that they know how you feel because they think they are being supportive. Some people truly believe they understand what you’re going through because they know a disabled person. Don’t tell a migraineur that you know how someone feels because unless you also get migraine attacks, you don’t understand what I am going through, and that is okay.
You don’t look sick- When you live with chronic pain, often people will approach you and say “you don’t look sick” like it’s supposed to be some kind of compliment. Migraine is an invisible illness that you won’t know someone has unless they have visible signs of pain, which most people don’t, or they happen to tell you. Telling someone that they don’t look sick is not a compliment but is insulting because it is dismissive of their pain and implies you don’t believe their pain is real. You should not say “you don’t look like you are in pain” to anyone with chronic pain because it makes people question whether their pain is real.
Living with painful conditions such as migraine is hard because you are never going to understand how hard it is to be in constant pain until it affects you. You don’t have to understand what someone is going through to support them, but it is so important that you be mindful of how you talk about someone’s disability because words can hurt. Unsolicited advice that you thought was helpful often is not, because it’s a common remedy that we have heard a million times before. People with migraine do not need to hear your remedy that we have probably tried, and we just want to be believed. Sometimes, the most supportive thing you can do for someone in pain is to offer to help them with a task and not give them unsolicited health advice. I am always looking for ways to improve my pain, and I promise you, I have tried the remedy you think I haven’t and didn’t work. What would you not say to a migraineur? If you liked this post, please leave a comment below and share it with your friends.
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