Lyme Life Monday ~Headaches

Lyme Life Monday – Headaches

Headaches are one of the 300 symptoms of Lyme. I often find my shoulders raised, in a tense state with headache pain. It occurs to me that I could be tense because of the headache or I could have the headache because of tension. I woke up with a headache at 4am. It was too painful to go back to sleep. My thoughts reverted to emotionally painful situations. So, which caused which?

I suspect we’ll never know for sure, but one thing is clear. The physical pain didn’t dissipate with the change in mindset. I worked hard to recognize that the situation, wherein a person suddenly turned on me, was not to my detriment. That it gives me more opportunity to work on healing. That it may open doors that no one can shut.

I’ve been reading about the mind/body connection in the disease process and how we might be able to overcome. Pain has been a way of life for me. Some days, I just want relief, any relief. Temporary relief would be more than welcomed.

We all have headaches in our lives. They might not manifest as physical pain like mine do, but we still call them headaches. It might be a problem with insurance or a coworker or a troublesome car. Life’s little irritations are often referred to as headaches. They are problems that are not life threatening.

How often do we say things that, if literally translated to the physical world, would be very damaging indeed?

Things like,

• She drives me crazy.
• This is a pain in the neck.
• You gave me a heart attack.
• He makes my head spin.
• You’re a pain in my backside.
• My head is killing me.
• Her words were a punch in the gut.
• She’s a good-for-nothing.
• He’s trash.
• I’m so stupid.

Suppose our word were full of the power to create the reality of what we say. We’d use different words to be sure. Our whole life experience would be so much different.

In a very real way our words do impact the world around us. It may not always be as clearly evident as actually getting a headache when we say, “This is such a pain in the neck.” The tension of our frustration may induce a headache, but we usually cannot tie it directly to our words like that.

A child, however, may readily show signs of the words we use to describe them. They are influenced more obviously.

For years, I was super careful about what I said, even if no one else could hear me. This last couple of years, I have been slacking. As an experiment, I plan to get back on track with more diligent filtering of what I allow to come out of my mouth.

I do think it will make a difference. What do you think?