Migraines

[maddnessreturns]

Does anyone else get physical reactions to your parents? My mom is the BPD and dad is the enabler. When I was NC I had no migraines and was getting healthy. Heard my dads voice when we talked on the phone. By the next hour I had a migraine that landed me in the ER due to severe pain and dehydration from throwing up. Which is how it was when I wasn't NC last year I ended up on a week long IV. I feel like I must be insane to get migraines from them. But from what I understand the emotional and the high anxiety can cause it.

Am I alone?

[Kwamina]

I definitely don't think you are alone and don't think you are insane. Several members have posted here before about health issues that seem to be related to the stress they experience as a result of their interactions with their BPD family-members.

I have certain muscular problems including severe tension and muscle spams in my neck, shoulders and upper back. This is partly due to a congenital issue but I do believe that this is also at least partly related to the chronic stress caused by growing up in a BPD environment. The moment I started really working on healing from my past, the muscular problems immediately started to intensify and also for the first time ever I started experiencing headaches.

Then there's also an auto-immune disorder I struggled with just a few years ago. I can't tell for certain if it is related to the stress caused by my BPD family-members, but what I do know is that the symptoms started on Mother's Day a few years ago and that says a lot.

[isilme]

I tend to get migraines at times of stress.  They started pretty much at the onset of puberty, and came to a peak, I realized years later, during my parents' very volatile last months together.

My father was diagnosed manic depressive in the 80s, and my mom as bi-polar in the 90s.  From 1990-1992, their relationship was on a very downward spiral, we lived several states away from any other relatives, and I was isolated by them from having friends, and I was in the house as an only child.  So it was me, and two very emotionally unstable people, who were getting more and more violent with each other and themselves.  By the time I was 15, I had a migraine each day by 5th period in high school.  My mother, ever the one to medicate, got a doctor to prescribe me Fiorinal, and I was told to take them at lunch (never mind how sleepy and disconnected it would make me at school), and then come home and sleep.

Later, after dad tossed me in a car and we drove 18 hours to his parents and left my mom, I realized that getting out of the influence of one of them was enough to stop the raging migraines int he afternoons.  I realized I was getting them because I did not want to go home.  Of my 9 schools, I really hated that one, was physically threatened in some classes because other students thought all white girls are rich (and did not know my family had been homeless a few months prior to my starting school there, and that I was lucky to have lunch money is any), but I"d still rather be there then go home to face mom and dad fighting, dad threatening to murder-suicide and take us all with him while brandishing kitchen knives, and me, the teenage girl trying to corral and keep calm two dangerous 40-somethings. 

Recently, my migraines have come back, a little, but it has been a very stressful couple of years with job changes and losses in FI's family, and it's mostly aura/vision stuff, not as much of the splitting-all-light-sound-hurt ones I had as a teenager.  I also feel that as I approach my 40s, hormones are playing more of a role in their incidence.

But yes, my parents were a root cause of the number I had and the timing as a teen.

[ijustwantpeace]

Short answer is yes.  My BPD mom would stress me out so much it would feel like I was having a heart attack.  I asked if she cared and she didn't so long as I would listen to her.  I have gotten severally ill and had it trigger my gout that layed me up all last winter.

Until recently I was begging to thing I was doomed to one chronic issue after another when the root source is BPD mom.  I really wish she would get treatment so I can stand to be around her.

When things are really bad I will start to think about the next episode over and over driving myself nuts.  The truth is that there are not episodes, mom is BPD all the time.  It is only when I get around her that I get sick.

I am not talking to her now, and I know that makes her sad, but she does not add anything useful to my life.  It is so miserable that if she was paying me $1,000 per hour it would not be enough.

You can't put a price tag on health or peace of mind.

[daughterandmom]

Yes absolutely. I had headaches my entire childhood. Later major IBS issues. Both are mostly under control now with very limited contact with crazy-making people. I believe it is pretty well acknowledged by doctors that many digestive issues and headaches and back problems have emotional roots.

[maddnessreturns]

Thanks everyone. That makes me feel better. The scientific part of me finds it fascinating that non physical reasons can lead to migraines, IBS, etc. For me I think it's because I'm on like high alert ready to run or freeze when I'm anywhere near my parents or talking to them. Even when I'm not my anxiety runs high stupid panic attacks.

[daughterandmom]

Are you getting therapy for yourself? I don't know how old you are, but I am in my mid 40's and I had the high anxiety my whole life without addressing it until a year ago when I pretty much ran out of steam and was unable to do much of anything. If I had gone to therapy sooner, I could have prevented that. What I mean is, if your parents affect you that much when you have contact, the issues are still there the rest of the time even if it feels like the solution is just no contact. A therapist can help you purge some of the childhood garbage and teach you skills that will prevent the anxiety from taking such a toll on your health and your life in general.

Take Care 

[maddnessreturns]

Are you getting therapy for yourself? I don't know how old you are, but I am in my mid 40's and I had the high anxiety my whole life without addressing it until a year ago when I pretty much ran out of steam and was unable to do much of anything. If I had gone to therapy sooner, I could have prevented that. What I mean is, if your parents affect you that much when you have contact, the issues are still there the rest of the time even if it feels like the solution is just no contact. A therapist can help you purge some of the childhood garbage and teach you skills that will prevent the anxiety from taking such a toll on your health and your life in general.

Take Care 

Yes I've been in therapy about a year. For the first time my therapist is helping me through the trauma and anxiety instead of previous therapist who only addressed how it plays out for me to cope which is an eating disorder. It has been helpful. And it's made me realize that I survived the only ways a kid knew how. I'm 24 also.