I noticed this gem come across my Twitter stream: “I have been sitting with a headache for ages just realised its cos of my hairclip” from @AhaShake3

While this young woman identified this insight as a #blondmoment, I actually feel it is quite brilliant. This short post actually tells us quite a lot about the behavioral management of headaches. First, she has been suffering from a headache (hopefully mild) for some time and despite her suffering she didn’t really know what to do to stop her headache. Somehow she had the insight to ‘PAY ATTENTION’ and she noticed that her hair clip was causing mechanical problems resulting in persistent headaches. I suspect that her hair clip was pulling her scalp too tightly resulting in irritation and then headache.

Now, she might have noticed a slight irritation in her scalp when first using her hair clip but quickly got used to the irritation so it failed to register anymore. But, then the headaches started and she didn’t immediately connect the scalp irritation with her headaches.

While this is an unusual and very specific example, this type of event occurs all the time and headache sufferers are so far down the road from the time the initial irritation started that they have no recollection of the original events that cause or aggravate their headaches; all they know is that they have headache and they are getting worse over time.

So, what events am I talking about? Well, stress for one. I know, I know, stress has gotten to be a fairly meaningless word because it can be used to describe so many events inside and outside of us. But, the fact is that when we humans go through a stressful event our bodies do react and these reactions cause changes to occur that put pressure on our bodies and ourselves and which often end up in symptoms if the stressful reactions are not dealt with and stopped. So, it could be said that the tight hair clip is a ‘stressor’ and literally putting pressure on her scalp resulting in a headache. There are many other stressors that put pressure on our bodies and if we are prone to headache these stressors will make sure we get more headaches and after time if these stressors are not relieved you can be sure that more and more headaches will occur and they will become increasingly painful. What are some of these ‘other’ strssors? Well they are things like clenching our teeth or tightening our shoulder muscles or furrowing our eyebrows or pushing the tongue forward, etc. We humans are prone to all kinds of minor habits caused by stress that can and will cause headaches in someone prone to headaches.

That is why I think the post by @AhaShake3 was so brilliant. She was able to take a look at herself and see that a hair clip she was using regularly was causing her problems. And, for her the solution was pretty obvious. Unfortunately, after years of suffering from chronic headaches the solution is not this obvious for most. That is why we start our training program with awareness training. The body has a marvelous ability to push sensations outside of our awareness if these sensations occur regularly. This is great in most cases but if a person genetically prone to headaches is not aware that they carry muscle tension in any of the muscles of the face, head, jaw, neck or shoulders then they have no clue what to do to stop the pressure or the headaches.