Coping, Treatment

Discombobulated After Seeing Naturopath

Yesterday started off with a wonderful yoga class, followed by a fall-off-the-edge downturn. I saw (yet another) naturopath yesterday.

The main selling point of alternative and complementary medicine is treating the “whole person” instead of the illness. I’ve never wanted so much to be a collection of symptoms.

The best question of the visit: What was your life like when your headaches turned chronic? Gee, I was in junior high/early high school. It was obviously the happiest, most well-adjusted time of my life. HA!

How did I deal with the stress at that time? Umm, I slammed doors and listened to loud music. How else do kids that age cope?

Then came the tears. I get it, OK? Crying is healthy. You can’t heal until you process every little part of your life to bits. Any questioning I’m resistant to indicates something I need to work through.

I’m usually an active participant in this. But my head hurt and I was exhausted. I wanted to go to bed, not talk about my deepest insecurities. Tears and sadness are the antithesis of migraine abortive.

It’s not even that I dwelled on the issues after the appointment. I just felt crappy and drained. My attention span was shot. Blogging, working on eBay listings and reading, all activities I’d been excited about earlier in the day, were out. Instead, I took comfort in garlic and basil gnocchi and a movie.

Today I stayed in bed for an hour after I woke up, but managed to gather myself up. I took a long bath, read and ruminated on this post. I was excited to get on with the day. Thirty minutes later, my head hurts and I’m dizzy and tired.

I’m going to go “home” for a while and add some Dave Matthews Band in for good measure. (Funny that part of my coping strategy of nearly 20 years ago has a similar component to my current methods.)

2 thoughts on “Discombobulated After Seeing Naturopath”

  1. This post reminds me of my first visit to an acupuncturist. He asked me so many questions that delved into all facets of my being. There were even questions about my dreams. Towards the end I just wanted to say, “Enough! Fix me! Let’s get on with the needles!” 😉

    ********
    Maybe it was all about soothing fears about the needles? 🙂

    Kerrie

  2. Tears are healthy if you are grieving. Tears are not healthy if they give you a migraine!

    And this: “you can’t heal until you process every little part of your life to bits.” Well, if you happen to believe in Freudian psychoanalysis, perhaps…

    But, what if your depression and headache just happen to be genetically-based? Can you heal by processing at all? Maybe your symptoms are not due to a lack of processing, a failure of sufficient therapeutic work. Maybe, just maybe, it’s NOT YOUR FAULT.

    Would you be beating yourself up like this if you were diabetic?

    ********
    Thanks for the reminders. Knowing me, I would beat myself up if I were diabetic!

    As Freudian as I get is loving Christmas Freud from This American Life. http://www.thislife.org/pages/descriptions/96/47.html

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