Lounging Pup © by Teeejayy

There are a few people in my life whom I suspect may be depressed. This isn’t the kind of thing you can just ask about – unless you’re super close. Even then, it feels presumptuous, like advice-giving (which I’m trying to avoid).

But I have a strong urge to help, and I feel like I know a lot about this stuff (from struggling to help myself with migraine disorder.) So I thought I might post some links here just in case.

This is from Dr. Mark Hyman, who is an extremely knowledgable functional medicine doctor who can help with a lot of different conditions:

“7 Steps to Treat Depression without Drugs

1. Try an anti-inflammatory elimination diet that gets rid of common food allergens. As I mentioned above, food allergies and the resultant inflammation have been connected with depression and other mood disorders.
2. Check for hypothyroidism. This unrecognized epidemic is a leading cause of depression. Make sure to have thorough thyroid exam if you are depressed.
3. Take vitamin D. Deficiency in this essential vitamin can lead to depression. Supplement with at least 2,000 to 5,000 IU of vitamin D3 a day.
4. Take omega-3 fats. Your brain is made of up this fat, and deficiency can lead to a host of problems. Supplement with 1,000 to 2,000 mg of purified fish oil a day.
5. Take adequate B12 (1,000 micrograms, or mcg, a day), B6 (25 mg) and folic acid(800 mcg). These vitamins are critical for metabolizing homocysteine, which can play a factor in depression.
6. Get checked for mercury. Heavy metal toxicity has been correlated with depression and other mood and neurological problems.
7. Exercise vigorously five times a week for 30 minutes. This increases levels of BDNF, a natural antidepressant in your brain.”

Kris Carr survived cancer by radically changing her diet, life and mindset — and now she writes about it on her blog. Here you can find her site’s posts about depression.

I wish I had more time to write about this, but at least this is a start. Mood disorders are such a plague on creative people. Most of all, I want you to know you are not alone. And you are loved. By me.

X Julie

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I am reading:

Hollywood Hills © by djjewelz

I hadn’t talked to my dad in a few months because I was buried in script-mode. So I almost forgot just how crazy he is.

The point of the call was just to catch up – as I drove to a doctor’s appointment across town. But since all I’ve been doing for months is writing, I don’t have a lot to catch people up on. So I told him what I’m excited about – which is that I’m thinking about buying a house.

I asked him if he would consider co-signing a mortgage with me, since I don’t exactly have two years of stable job history. (One of the many perks of being a writer.)

I don’t even feel like trying to put down here all the crazy things he said. Like when he kept bringing up his divorce from my mother – and how we and all the lawyers keep going after him for everything he’s got. (If that were true, how did he end up on the sailboat, and we ended up with our lights cut off?)

In the midst of sobbing and trying to make sense of this craziness – I forgot I was actually on my way somewhere.

I think I’m posting this because I want to remind myself some day – in case I forget again – that I can’t keep treating him like a normal father. Because he just doesn’t want to be that for me. He refuses. He’d rather pathologically lie – claiming his credit is too poor to co-sign for me (p.s. he owns a Ferrari), claiming he was hit so hard by the recession he’s had to dip into his retirement (p.s. he “retired” a few years ago – isn’t “retirement” when you “dip into your retirement”?), he’d rather go on meaningless angry rants about how he doesn’t cheat people and walk away from mortgages the way all these other scumbags do -

I remember I had an appointment but I forget where.

I kept trying to pin him down as to why this innocuous (to me) request made him so upset. The way I see it – if co-signing the mortgage isn’t something he feels like he can do or wants to do, all he has to do is give me a normal reason (or not), be nice about it and move on. I don’t see the need to get vicious, cruel, and mean about it. To rip apart and belittle every part of what I’m doing (including the city I’ve chosen (Los Angeles), my chosen career, my idea to get a roommate to help off-set the costs of home-ownership (“you don’t think that would look ridiculous and weird?” any weirder than my own father refusing to co-sign with me?), and everything I know about the real estate process.) Oh and he managed to compare me to my sister (who has owned a house with her husband for a few years in a vastly cheaper market) – making the implication both about my being single compared to her, and their joint income being more, and their joint job history being stable – and I just wanted to scream at him -

I am single because you have mistreated me my entire life.

I didn’t say that – but I did say variations of -

Don’t you get – the way your father treated you – that’s how you’re treating me. 

And -

You want to know why I don’t call you or visit you ever? This is why. Because this is what awaits me on the other end. Would you call you? 

I keep driving and driving – maybe if I just keep moving I’ll see it when I pass.

He wanted to know why I didn’t ask my “mother and father” (stepfather) to co-sign. I was like “you’re the one with the mansion and the yacht out back – seems obvious that you would be the one with the great credit.” He said something like “you treat me like shit. The only reason you ever call is because you want something from me.”

I pull off to the side of the road. I give up.

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I went to my first Overeaters Anonymous meeting last week. I don’t know yet if it’s right for me – though my experiences clearly resonate with those of OA. However, I started listening to this podcast of OA speakers. And I am ob-sessed. I listened to Martha O. (12/17/11) tonight – who described getting cancer while bulimic, and looking forward to how thin she’d be. There’s something about how honest and raw these people are – how much I relate to what they’re saying – I just can’t stop listening to them.

lynda barry card w/ purple paint spatters © by xinem

… [Lynda Barry] told a story about the neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran, who helps patients experiencing phantom-limb pain. Barry discussed one patient who felt that his missing left hand was clenched in a fist and could never shake the discomfort — could never “unclench” it.

So Ramachandran used a mirror box — a compartment into which the patient could insert his right hand and see it reflected at the end of his left arm. “And Ramachandran said, ‘Open your hands.’ And the patient saw this” — Barry opened two clenched fists in unison. “That’s what I think images do.

“I think that in the course of human life,” she continued softly, “we have events that cause” — she clenched her fist and held it up, inspecting it from all angles. “Losing your parents might cause it. Or a war. Or things going bad in a family.”

The only way to open that fist, she said, is to see your own trouble reflected in an image, as the patient saw his hand reflected in a mirror. It might be a story you write, or a book you read, or a song that means the world to you. “And then?” She opened her hand and waved.

I read this article about Lynda Barry – who became a writing and creativity teacher when the market for her comic strips dried up.

I was pretty troubled in college – and whenever people (people like the other girls in my eating disorders recovery group, for instance) would suggest to me that writing was therapeutic for me – I thought this idea was bullshit at best.

However, I do think writing has a cathartic quality – not in a confessional, I’m-making-my-audience-my-therapists! way. Rather, in the way Barry describes above.

If something has caused you to close, cave in, get smaller – writing about it, creating around it, reflecting it in the world again and again – gets you bigger again.

via Cartoonist Lynda Barry Will Make You Believe In Yourself – NYTimes.com.

I don't know what nationality this werewolf perched in London is, but I have to think he's American.

If I were to make blog t-shirts, the first would say PROVOKE ANXIETY.

This feels like a founding principle to me – of the way I write, the way I live, the way I encounter the world.

If I’m doing something that doesn’t make me anxious – that doesn’t make me delay, worry, perseverate, talk about it endlessly – it doesn’t feel worth doing.

I don’t want to waste my time feeling safe and comfortable.

I provoke anxiety – in myself, in others – because that’s where art lives.

Art is anxious. Not safe.

In an effort to take you behind the scenes here on the blog, I bring you a picture of this blog post being written -- in the lobby of The Hoxton, London.

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I’m listening to Julie Klausner’s amazing podcast “How Was Your Week.” She really loves the things she loves (1970′s stars, animals reading her book, musical theatre, reality T.V.) — and helps you love them too.

I took this pic yesterday while writing at a Soho pub. This image feels so London.

One of the many bad habits I have is I tend to spend too much time staring at one thing.

I’m thinking of scripts and novels right now, but I’m also thinking of life.

I freeze. I hesitate. I spend way, way too long staring at the same thing – when I should just keep moving the minute I realize I don’t know what to do.

Because doing nothing is almost always worse than doing anything at all. When you’re moving, you may be moving in the wrong direction – but it’s easier to figure that out when you’re doing something, when you’re in motion. Because when you freeze, you stop course-correcting, you lose any sense of your bearings. You forget where you are.

Worst of all, when you freeze you send yourself and the world the message that yeah, you shouldn’t be going anywhere. This spot right here feels safer and less uncertain than any random direction you might pick. And since staying in one place is far less anxiety-provoking than moving, you feel a sense of relief. But it’s illusory relief, akin to the relief you may feel when you refuse to get out of bed in the morning. Yes it feels better in the moment, but as your life and your work grind to a halt, your losses far outweigh the temporary comfort.

It’s the same with staring at the same beat in a script for too long – or staying at the wrong job or relationship or whatever it is – it feels better in the moment, but it can be subtly, silently devastating.

Any moment in your writing (or job or relationship or whatever) requires some thought, yes. But you know when you’ve paused too long. And when you do, make yourself go somewhere else, try a different spot. You’ll have a million excuses for why you can’t or don’t want to, but also you can just try it and see how it feels.

This is the outside of the pub pictured above. I'm in love with all the window boxes and hanging plants everywhere in London.

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I’m reading Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour by Kate Fox. It’s an entertaining ethnographic study of what makes the English tick – the perfect thing for my hostess to give me to read during my first visit here in London.

Questioned Proposal © by Eleaf

Someone asked me to answer this question on Quora, so I thought I may as well throw it up here:

Question:

What is the difference between story writing and screenplay writing for movies?

My answer:

There is no difference.

People who don’t know what they’re doing or are not particularly confident in their screenwriting will go on and on about structure and formulas and hitting this goalpost at that mark and blah blah but the fact remains -

A screenplay is a story told visually (and with some dialogue). There is absolutely no other difference. It’s just a different style of telling a story (through pictures, sounds and spoken words rather than written words).

The more you focus on telling a story (rather than hitting all the goalposts the books talk about) – the better off you will be.

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I would also like to recommend this answer to the same question by Mark Hughes. He gets more into the nitty-gritty of the “story by” vs. “written by” credits.

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Today’s “What I’m Reading” is a “What I’m Listening To” -

I really love podcasts. There’s a handful that I listen to every episode they do. I’ll try to post about all of my favorites, but today’s favorite is “Extra Hot Great” – a podcast by three true lovers of T.V. and movies and all things pop culture. (They are Tara Ariano, David T. Cole and Joe Reid). They’re funny, insightful, and best of all they infect you with their love and sense of ownership over wonderful (and some terrible) things to watch.

Night London Panorama with Full Moon © by Dimitry B

I’m going to London for a month.

I’ve got to turn in a script first, then I’m going. Because I can. Because this is the kind of thing I always fantasized about as a child – this is what I thought my life would be like. And so far, for the most part, it hasn’t been.

But something big shifted inside me this year. Maybe it was that I got so sick – (I’m feeling a lot better now, thanks to some good doctors and a ton of work on my part) – but all of a sudden I just got on a really gut level how important it was for me to make myself happy. How, if I don’t do it now, no one will do it for me. How I can’t just wait for it to happen.

Even a few months ago I would have laughed at the idea of *me* leaving L.A. for a month. But what if I miss something amazing! I never would have done it.

But then I got really sick – and felt really alone – and suddenly the prospect of missing something amazing in L.A. felt a hell of a lot less scary than the thought of missing my entire life – the thought that if I didn’t do something drastic, now, I might never have the kind of life I always just assumed would be mine.

Believe me – I know it’s not possible for everyone to just leave town on an impulsive whim. But I think it’s more possible than you might think. I used money as the excuse for far too long – telling myself “you can start doing what you want when you have more money.” But I think that’s an excuse, because at a very deep level I needed to not move forward. I’m trying to figure out where that need came from – possibly knowing that my father would reject me if I did pretty much anything to benefit myself or make myself happy?

But my father has already rejected me, countless horrible times. So why does this childish voice inside me keep insisting that if we just do it better this time, it will be different? If we just freeze and stay needy and stop growing, he’ll have no reason to be upset.

So I’m going to London.

And my question is – what’s your London? And why aren’t you going?

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I’m reading
Great mystery novelist.

I’ve been thinking about this guy I dated.

He was smart, engaging, interesting, sexy. Great writer. (Most of the guys I date are writers – not because I have some rule or fetish about it. Instead I think it’s because I love my career so much, and I want to spend time with people who are interested in what I’m interested in, and who can talk with me about the stuff of my life.)

This guy made a big show of being interested in what I was doing. Would even flatter me by saying he thought I was a great writer. And then, as reality set in, I realized we were always talking about his writing (not mine). The fact that I was a writer too just made talking about his writing easier and more natural.

No matter how many of my scripts he read, I read more of his.

He always wanted to give me notes (which was great and which I appreciated, mostly, unless it felt like it came from a place of needing to be superior to me.) He got prickly and resistant if I gave him notes.

And then there came a point when the sitch no longer served him. So he moved on and found someone – else. Maybe someone who didn’t have any scripts she wanted read, who knows. But who could still talk about his. Maybe.

More than one guy I’ve dated is going to think this story is about him.

It’s about all of you.

It’s about that sinking feeling in my stomach when it seems like no one likes a woman who doesn’t think or feel or act like she’s less.

It’s about my father – a narcissist – and his maid/child-bride -

And that I’m struggling to reach escape velocity in terms of who I’m attracted to. My dad’s pull on me has the gravity of a planet.

Most of all it’s about me. Because chances are those guys don’t act like that when they’re dating someone else. Or maybe they do – hard to say – but I’m trying to be kind and take responsibility for my piece in this. I’ve definitely thought about what I’m doing, what’s in me, that generates this. Maybe it’s just my determination to see it like this.

It’s about me trying to never feel less again.

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For the record: I haven’t dated that many guys. In fact, I tend to hold relationships at arms’ length. I’m working hard on releasing the need to do that.

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And for the record: dating writers has never helped me in my career. Except maybe in the sense that I’ve gotten some great notes from great writers, and I’ve learned from them. Which I’m grateful for. But they would have done that even if we were just friends – that’s what writers do for each other. I think dating them removes me from the realm of where they might help me make contacts, etc, and I sort of regret those lost opportunities (that I might have had if we had just become friends). However, I’ve always put love first, even ahead of my beloved career. This might be a mistake.

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One more thing for the record: I realized after writing this there’s something very narcissistic about mainly dating people of your own profession. I’m not opposed to dating to someone who’s not a writer – that’s just who I usually find myself liking.

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I’m finally reading and it’s pretty great, as everyone says. I’m reading it on audio, from my Audible subscription, but I couldn’t figure out how to link to that.

In Part 1, I talked about “highly sensitive people” and the similarities with people who have migraine. Now I’m going to address what having a migraine disorder has to do with me sussing out relationships.

Last week, ex-staffers of Rep. Michele Bachmann revealed she suffers from migraine disorder and that they’re worried whether she could fulfill the duties of the Oval Office considering her condition.

In an article subtitled “Migraine is miserable, but manageable,” neurologist Christina Peterson responds with the following. I’m quoting her at length because she says everything I want to say, and says it with the authority of research:

When Minnesota congresswoman and presidential candidate Michele Bachmann was revealed to suffer from migraine disorder, it caused a lot of debate. Bachmann herself, however, was eager to change the subject.

This is understandable. When it comes to migraine headaches, lots of sufferers clam up. In fact, as a doctor, I’ve found that people are more willing to admit to chronic depression or bipolar disorder than they are to having migraine. (You’ll notice I write “migraine” and not “migraines.” That’s because migraine is a disorder and not an incident. For the same reason, we say “epileptic attack” instead of “an epilepsy.”)

It’s not clear why this is. Part of it may be due to insufficient funding for migraine research. Part of it may be due to sexism. (Migraine affects three times as many women as men.) But most of it is probably due simply to misunderstandings about what’s in fact a very common, although painful, disorder.

When I was a neurology resident in the early 1980’s, the Handbook of Clinical Neurology explained that migraine disorder often seemed to strike frigid, uptight, and perfectionistic housewives who might be neurotic. To be fair, this edition was written in 1952, but it reflected a mindset towards migraine that remains surprisingly prevalent. For instance, the notion of a “migraine personality” is still with us, even though it’s of dubious validity.

Over thirty years ago, in her essay “In Bed” from The White Album: Essays (1979), Joan Didion wrote:

There certainly is what doctors call a “migraine personality,” and that personality tends to be ambitious, inward, intolerant of error, rather rigidly organized, perfectionist. “You don’t look like a migraine personality,” a doctor once said to me. “Your hair’s messy. But I supposed you’re a compulsive housekeeper.” Actually my house is kept even more negligently than my hair, but the doctor was right nonetheless: perfectionism can also take the form of spending most of a week writing and rewriting and not writing a single paragraph.

My neurologist – who used to run the neurology program at UCLA – said “there is no such thing as a migraine personality.”

However, perhaps what some perceive as the migraine personality is as I wrote in the last post – that migraine sufferers might actually be “highly sensitive people” – a set of traits which are also, like migraine, a neurological variation and biologically based.

I suspect the myth of the “migraine personality” has lasted because it’s more convenient to blame the victim than it is to ask – why do doctors have no idea what causes this extremely common condition?

The fact that it’s an overwhelmingly female disease (and very poorly understood) means it’s easy to write off as the by-product of a hysterical personality. It would have been called “nerves” a hundred years ago, and that’s essentially what they’re calling it now.

Migraine is sort of like rape – sufferers don’t want to talk about it because the implication is always “what did you do to get it?”

Peterson writes:

How bad is the stigma?  In 2010, at the American Headache Society Annual Scientific Meeting, researchers presented some numbers on the subject. These were based on the Stigma Scale for Chronic Illness, a tool created at Northwestern University to measure factors such as how often people feel criticized or outcast for having an illness. The scores for those with episodic migraines were only slightly lower than for those with epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, or Alzheimer’s.

So let’s clear up a few basic facts. “A migraine” isn’t just a really bad headache. Migraine is a neurologic condition, often inherited, and it affects more than one in ten Americans…..

The sufferer of migraine disorder does not bring it on himself or herself. Strength of will cannot prevent an attack. Nor do women get migraine attacks because they are “hormonal.”  (Estrogen does play a role in the migraine process, affecting certain receptors in the brain, but it is only one of many, many neurotransmitters involved.)

What we know today is that several genes, some identified and some not yet tracked down, appear to be responsible for migraine. It is a brain disorder of intricate complexity. It does not spring from neuroticism or repressed anger. Certainly, some people with migraine might have repressed anger, but there’s no sign that this causes migraine disorder. People can have migraine without repressed anger or repressed anger without having migraine.

So basically – just because I’m angry doesn’t mean I’m causing my migraine condition.

That’s not what the neurologist/headache experts I saw at the Mayo Clinic seem to think however. The hospital’s procedure is to send every patient the contents of their patient file (which is actually pretty great – many doctors resist and get controlling when you want your records, even when they already know you’re seeing multiple doctors in an effort to control your disorder.)

I received not only my lab reports but also the notes the doctors wrote about me. The doctor who was a real prick (Dr. Vargas) wrote this:

Her mood and affect are somewhat defiant, somewhat abrasive, and suspicious at times. Overall there does not appear to be any outward sign of depression or anxiety.

Impression:

1. Probable chronic migraine; rule out secondary causes.

2. Probable medication overuse headache.

3. History of emotional abuse with history of anorexia and bulimia.

4. Probable underlying psychologic contributors.

The Mayo Clinic doctors didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know about migraine. And besides the spinal tap (to reduce my cerebrospinal fluid pressure), all they had to offer me were more drugs (all of which have significant side effects. The steroid they prescribed for me – dexamethasone – is used by Bangladeshi hookers to gain weight.)

I already knew I was using too much Immitrex (a vasoconstrictor that shrinks the dilated blood vessels in the brain). And I knew that Immitrex has serious side effects, including holes in the heart wall. But if there’s a pill that will take away your migraine in minutes, and let you live your life like a normal person, who wouldn’t take that?

I told my neurologist/headache specialist here in L.A. what the Mayo Clinic doctors had written. She laughed and said “they must not understand what those words mean. You are not abrasive. You do get teary when you get upset, but their egos must be too weak to have a patient stand up to them.”

Then she told me about how she had referred another patient to the Mayo Clinic. The patient came back without her uterus.

“I knew she had fibroids, and I saw the lab reports afterwards. But I never, before or after, thought she needed a hysterectomy,” said my neurologist.

So The Mayo Clinic’s approach for my doctor’s other patient was to cut the woman parts right out of her.

“Gave her a hysterectomy,” my doctor kept repeating under her breath as she prepared my injections.

In the Mayo Clinic office, I was never disrespectful, but I was assertive and direct. When they suggested antidepressants, I told them about the new books that have just come out where author/researchers have run meta-data analyses on the FDA clinical trials for antidepressants and found that they don’t work and possibly change your brain structure permanently. That’s when they started treating me like a hysterical housewife who doesn’t know what’s good for her.

They told me how much good these drugs would do for me. I told them that I didn’t travel long-distance to devote almost a week to being at a hospital just so I could find new drugs to mask the symptoms. I am trying to solve this problem – find the trigger to which I’m mounting an inflammation response in the brain. They kept patronizing and mollifying me and said what amounted to “this is not something that has a cause. It’s just genetic. You can’t solve it.” (I find this ironic considering they then wrote in the notes “probable psychologic contributors” – acknowledging they do believe there are contributors and it’s not purely genetic.)

They also were extremely patronizing about my desire to not want to spend the rest of my life on heavy-duty drugs if I don’t have to. I told them about taking an anti-seizure drug for five years which seriously impacted my ability to think and form words. (I’ll tell you that story in another post.) They reassured me by saying the new drugs they were giving me wouldn’t do that. I told them I suspected I was having a complex allergic reaction – say to mold or something else common – and the allergic response was triggering my migraine episodes. They said “we have no way to test for what that could be.”

As it happens, I’ve seen another doctor since then – an M.D. who practices “functional medicine” which treats disease as symptoms that the body’s complex, interworking systems are going off. This new doctor very quickly zeroed in on what’s going on with me, and I’m already starting to feel better. Which proves in my mind that my migraine disorder is not a result of anything going on with me psychologically.

The Mayo report ends by saying they were going to refer me for a psych consultation (which they never did – I suspect they already knew what I would say about that). Just to be clear – I have nothing against psychiatry or psychology. I see a therapist and find it very helpful and encourage everyone to do it.

Peterson writes:

The pain of migraine attacks is often severe, but migraine-specific medications often stop migraine attacks, and most people with migraine are able to function fully in life. Various articles written over the past few days refer to Bachmann’s “chronic migraines,” but this seems like journalistic shorthand for “occasional migraine attacks.” In the world of medicine, “chronic” migraine means having fifteen or more migraine headache days per month. It’s doubtful that this is Bachmann’s condition. Even if it were, many people are able to work and function successfully with it.

Should simply having a migraine diagnosis prevent a man or woman from becoming president? We know that Ulysses S. Grant and Thomas Jefferson suffered from migraine disorder, and that was long before the era of modern treatment. And lots of politicians presumably suffer from the disorder. Since 12 percent of Americans suffer from migraine, it’s quite possible that 12 percent of our Senators and Representatives do so, too.

I do suffer from chronic migraine, and I’m grateful to Peterson for pointing out that many people are able to work and function successfully with this condition. However, just because my migraines can be controlled with prophylactic and acute drugs doesn’t mean I want to be on drugs for the rest of my life. What I do want is to understand what triggers my attacks and do what I can to prevent or control my body’s response to those triggers.

So what does this all have to do with my ability to suss out relationships?

As I said in Part 1, I’m very sensitive, meaning I’m really good at picking up what’s going on with people, with the environment around me. A lot of scientists think what we call “intuition” is really the rapid absorption and processing of many small sensory clues that we understand on a subconscious level. This is what I have. Or, rather, this is what I do.

I often get migraines when I’m around toxic people – people in dysfunctional relationships, people who are not telling the truth to themselves or each other or me – people who are not good for me to be in relationship with. This isn’t because of the “psychologic contributors” the Mayo Clinic doctors blamed my condition on. This is because either consciously or subconsciously, I’m picking up all kinds of little clues about the person I’m interacting with. And some of those people (or relationships) are people (or relationships) my body needs me to not be around.

If I am one of the 15-20% of people and higher animals who have the neurological differences that make them “highly sensitive,” then it would make sense for someone like me to pick up something wrong in someone else and mount my genetically predisposed neurological reaction (migraine) to alert me.

So instead of migraine personality – you could call it “migraine nervous system.”

To put the theories together – if migraine evolved as a biological warning system to keep us away from stuff that can hurt us and our tribes (as many researchers think) – then I’m the member of the tribe you can ask to check out the newcomers.

To illustrate this ability in action: I got a migraine attack in the presence of those Mayo Clinic doctors.

Here’s the thing.

I’m very sensitive.

To many, that’s a bad thing. And I get that.

To me — it’s like a secret weapon. Some scientists think migraine developed through evolution to make some members of the tribe into human barometers. We always know when a storm is coming because Tik-Tuk gets a migraine. A human signaller that something nearby is dangerous, and we shouldn’t eat or smell or live in that.

By now migraine has probably overdeveloped – outstayed its usefulness. It definitely has in me.

But the same qualities that give me migraines also give me heightened insight, an outside that’s extremely permeable (“spongey” as my friend P calls it) and liable to take in whatever’s around me – someone else’s mood, that there was just a fight in a room, etc.

I recently heard about this thing called “Highly Sensitive People” – people having the innate trait of psychological sensitivity. Apparently these people process sensory data more deeply and thoroughly due to a difference in their nervous system. Research shows that about 15-20% of humans and higher animals have a nervous system that is more sensitive to subtleties.

On this self-test, I answered yes to every question except “I make a point to avoid violent movies and TV shows.” Not only do I not avoid them, I write them.

What’s interesting is that the descriptions of highly sensitive people are very similar to the descriptions of people who have migraine, or even their symptoms (reacting to smells or visual triggers, etc.) Since migraine is a nervous system disorder, and highly sensitive people appear to have altered nervous systems, maybe they’re related?

I want to note that clinical studies have found that stress or psychological factors don’t contribute to migraine, even though doctors such as the ones I visited at the Mayo Clinic continue to tell patients that’s a cause.

However, what I’m theorizing is that perhaps many people with migraine are highly sensitive people, and migraine is one of the ways their body signals there’s something wrong in the environment and they need to remove themselves from the offending trigger.

An offending trigger like – people in bad relationships anywhere near me.

Ok, I’m tired now and have to adhere to my strict bedtime. But I will write part 2 of this post tomorrow.

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I’m reading “The Gifts of Imperfection” by Brene Brown. She said this amazing thing about shame – something like “shame doesn’t like having its story told.” That is what this blog is about.