116. The Problem With Migraine Awareness Month

June is Migraine Awareness Month, and I want to talk about it, but not in the way you might expect.

You won’t see me wearing the purple ribbon, posting Migraine Warrior content, or joining the walks.

In this episode, I’m going deeper than I did the first time I talked about this, because I’m seeing a pattern in almost every woman I work with that I don’t want to leave unsaid.

So many of us have been taught to white knuckle our way through migraines, show up no matter what, and identify with the fight, and while that survival mode might feel strong, it’s not healing. It’s control. And it keeps your attention locked on the disease instead of on the life you actually want.

I share why so much of the awareness culture is shaped by the pharmaceutical industry, why the “warrior” identity quietly keeps you stuck, and what real healing actually looks like when you shift from maximum effort to intelligent, root-cause effort.

If you haven’t already, I highly recommend going back and listening to

Episode 39 Why I Don’t Wear the Purple Ribbon

If you’re ready to address the root drivers of your migraines, you can book a free consultation at the link below:

https://www.drlesliecisar.com/apply

Free Training: 5 Proven Steps to Being Migraine Free (Even if you think you've already tried everything.)

https://www.drlesliecisar.com/5SHMN

Connect with us:

Website: https://www.drlesliecisar.com/

Free Facebook Group: Healing Migraines Naturally, with Leslie Cisar, ND

Ready to try something radically different that actually works? Read more about my approach here: https://www.drlesliecisar.com/map

In health,
Dr. Leslie Cisar

Episode Transcript

welcome to the Healing Migraines Naturally podcast
I'm your host Doctor Leslie Caesar
and I'm a licensed naturopathic doctor
former chronic migraine sufferer
and I've dedicated my life to helping other women
rediscover a migraine
free life
so June is Migraine Awareness Month
you'll see the purple ribbons
the Migraine Warrior posts
the walks the foundations
and if you've been in any of the big migraine
Facebook groups you'll know what I'm talking about
it's everywhere in June
and you will not see any of it from me
I did an episode on the podcast a few years ago
it's episode 39
called why I don't wear the Purple Ribbon
and if you haven't listened to it
go back and listen
everything I said at that time still stands
but we're back to another June
and another migraine awareness month
so today I wanna go further
because
there's something that I didn't say in that episode
that gets closer to a very
real problem and it has to do with a pattern
that I see in almost every migraine sufferer
that I work with
it's a pattern that culture doesn't just ignore
it actively reinforces so
I want to talk about what that ribbon actually
represents so let me give you sort of the short version
the recap of episode 39 so
the purple migraine ribbon
was created by the National Headache Foundation
so go to their website and look at who funds them
you'll find a list of pharmaceutical companies
and the pharmaceutical industry
has a particular world view
and that world view is that
you have a chronic condition
it cannot be recovered from
and the best you can hope for
is to manage your migraines
manage your symptoms
and this world view shapes everything
the awareness campaigns the research
the education all of it
is built on the Assumption
that you are stuck with this
so Migraine Awareness Month
is not raising awareness
that migraines can be resolved
it is raising awareness
that millions of people are suffering
the poor unfortunate souls
and the best we can do is to fund more research
into better ways to suppress the symptom
not find the cause suppress the symptom
I mean we're sicker than ever
we're getting more migraines than ever
how many more miles do we have to walk
and that is why you will never see a purple ribbon
from me it represents a worldview that I know
from my own migraines
and from working with hundreds of women
I know that this worldview is false
but the ribbon is just the symbol
what I want to talk about today
is what that worldview does to a person
once it gets inside them
because it doesn't just give people false information
it hands them a way of being
in relationship with their own body
and that way of being is actually contributing to them
being stuck with migraines
hi there I wanna jump in real quick
and tell you about my client Beth
she was getting 15 to 20 migraines and headaches
per month and as you can imagine
this was impacting her work performance
and her confidence she also has two small children
and she was
starting to feel like she was a horrible mom
because she had nothing left for them
at the end of the day but she reached out
and she booked a free consult call with me
and after I asked her about her migraines
and her health history
I felt confident that I could help her
I help women uncover
the root drivers of their migraines
and follow a step by step plan to dramatically reduce
the frequency by up to 90%
without adding more medication
or taking a bunch of supplements
so we built her personal migraine map
followed the plan
and now she will get one to two migraines per year
which she uses ibuprofen to treat if she needs to
verses up to 15 to 20 per month
when we first started working together
that weren't responding well to any medication
she just reached out to tell me that
she got a promotion at work
she's on top of her career again
and has been able to come off all of her migraine
medication but most importantly
she's a confident mom again
and she's attending birthday parties at Jump Zone
with her kids and saying yes
instead of saying maybe later
I've worked with women like Beth
from all over the United States
who were told this is the best we can do
but they were still willing to dig deeper
so if you're serious about changing your migraine story
go to Doctor Leslie Caesar dot com slash apply
or tap the link in the show notes
and on our free consult
we'll map out why your migraines keep coming back
and the first three steps you can take
over the next 30 days
I do cap new client spots each month
so if the calendar is full
the doors are closed for now
but if you're done feeling helpless
and ready to do the work to heal
pause this episode for 30 seconds
and book that console call now
so I wanna talk about something that I see
in almost every woman that I work with
migraine sufferers are white knucklers
you've had to be
you've white knuckled your way through jobs
through parenting
weddings and holidays and family obligations
showing up doing what needed to be done
while your head was splitting
you've gotten very good at pushing through pain
at keeping it all together
when everything in you wanted to stop
this is not a character flaw
this is what survival looks like
when you have a condition that nobody
around you fully understands right
your
your coworker tells you that she just takes an Advil
and a Coca Cola and goes on with her day
I mean your cousin
who just can't understand why you spent
Christmas in the back bedroom
you've Learned a white knuckle because you've had to
but here's what I've noticed
when women who come to me
and they are serious about getting better
they are serious they are committed
many of them
bring that same white knuckle energy to their healing
they track every food morsel
they monitor every symptom
they analyze every thought
every night of sleep every variation in their routine
they are working so hard to get better
they're trying harder than almost anyone I know
and it's not working
or it's not working as well as it should
and they can't understand why
here's why
white knuckling is not healing
it is control
and the body does not restore itself
through force of will
it restores itself when the conditions are right
the hypervigilance the tracking
the monitoring I want to say something
important about where that comes from
because this is not about blaming you for doing it
in my clinical work
I found that this hypervigilance is often a symptom
not a personality trait it developed for a reason
sometimes a physiological reason
a toxin load within the body
that has made the nervous system keyed up
and it's filtering less out
sometimes
it developed because you grew up in an environment
where you had to read the room carefully
just to stay safe you became the fixer
the peacemaker
the one who paid attention to subtle signals
of facial expression a shift in tone
because you had to
because that's how you tried to bring calm to the chaos
and now
you're applying that same skill to your migraines
you're watching every signal
you're trying to anticipate
to control to prevent
I get it and I wanna say clearly
it got you here it kept you functioning
but it's an old coping mechanism
and it's not the same thing as healing
so now I want to talk about the term migraine warrior
and this is why
the migraine warrior language bothers me so much
I understand why it exists
when you're in pain and nobody around you gets it
finding a community of people who understand
what you're going through
that matters but
look at what that word is actually
telling you about your future
a warrior fights
a warrior is not dreaming about life after the war
a warrior is trying to survive
that is not the story I want for you
and it's not just the words
it's what it does to your attention
when you are in warrior mode managing coping
enduring fighting
all of your attention is on the condition
on the migraines on the next attack
on what might trigger it what might prevent it
what you need to survive it
the ribbon does the same thing
the tracking does the same thing
the bubble wrap right
wrapping yourself in bubble wrap
you're shrinking your world
never sleeping in never traveling
avoiding every person and situation that might push you
over the edge all of this does the same thing
all of it keeps your attention locked on the disease
and you cannot heal if you are constantly on edge
with a death grip on the steering wheel of life
so here's what separates
my approach
from almost every migraine program out there
conventional or natural
most programs hand you a protocol and send you home
here's your supplements here's your food list
come back in six weeks
and when you come back and you're not better
the question they ask is are you following the protocol
are you taking everything
they never ask
what is your life actually like
what are you going home to every day
is there something in your environment that is working
against everything you're trying to do
and when I say environment
I don't mean whether you're eating gluten or not
I mean all of it your physical environment
your mental and emotional environment
your spiritual environment
no supplement no medication
no medicinal herb
is going to overcome the environment that you're in
if those environments are not conducive to health
you're not gonna feel better
you can take everything in the world
you are not gonna feel better
the chronic stress the chronic negativity
the old wounds you've been carrying
these are not separate from your migraines
they are part of the environment
in which your body is trying to heal
and if the environment stays the same
you are not gonna feel better
no matter how carefully you're tracking your food
this is what intelligent healing actually requires
not more surveillance of the condition
honest attention to the conditions
that allow health to return
I had a client who had been through migraine program
after migraine program
she came to me exhausted and definitely skeptical
she had been told by someone
who was supposed to be helping her
in one of these programs well
you know you have everything you need
I don't know why you're not better
this is one of the most harmful things a practitioner
can say because what it actually means is
I gave you the protocol you're not responding
so it must be you it puts the failure on the client
instead of asking the real question
is her environment conducive to health and well being
I wanna share something from naturopathic philosophy
so this is from a foundational text about 100 years old
and this text
lays out the six things that a naturopathic doctor
should do when they're working with a patient
and the sixth thing
and I believe that this is the most important one
says this
arouse the individual in the highest possible degree
to the consciousness of personal responsibility
and to the necessity of intelligent
personal effort and self help
intelligent personal effort
not maximum effort not the most thorough tracking
not the hardest push intelligent effort
effort that is conscious and deliberate effort
directed at the conditions that allow for healing
not at controlling the symptoms that signal disease
let's go back to my client who had been told well
you know you have everything you need
I don't know why you're not feeling better
she started doing something different with me
instead of tracking and monitoring and bracing
she started pausing
when she felt head pain beginning to build
she'd ask what's going on right now
what is my physical mental
emotional environment right now in this moment
and then she'd make a deliberate choice
she'd choose a different path
than the one her nervous system was defaulting to
and you know what she's noticing
the head pain isn't developing
she's getting fewer migraines
and this is not you know
positive thinking positive affirmations
healing mantras
that is
someone who stopped white knuckling her way to health
and started doing something genuinely different
wanting to get better
is not the same as white knuckling towards it
the shift I'm asking for is not more effort
not more walks not more fundraising
not more awareness campaigns
it's a different effort it's turning your attention
that same careful
detailed attention you've been giving to your migraines
toward what your body actually needs
your physical environment
your mental and emotional environment
your spiritual environment
the voice you use with yourself
whether the conditions
in your life are conducive to health
or working against it this is intelligent
personal effort and it is the opposite
of what Migraine Awareness Month is pointing you toward
so this June when you see the purple ribbons
and the migraine warrior posts
I'm not asking you to be angry at the people posting
them
I'm asking you to notice what all of this has in common
it keeps your attention on the condition
and I want something different for you
I want your attention on your health
on what your body needs
on the environments you're living in
and whether they're working for you or against you
on the difference between white
knuckling your way through another month
and actually
doing the things that allow your body to restore itself
you do not have a migraine brain
you are not defective
your body is sending a signal about your
nutrient status your toxin load
your resiliency and vitality
your environments when we address those things
the body stops generating the symptom
I've watched it happen over and over
it's happened to me personally it's not a theory
the shift starts with one question
what if instead of managing this condition
I turn my attention to giving my body what it needs
that's where it starts I'll talk to you soon
hi there
I wanna jump in real quick and tell you about my client
Beth she was getting 15 to 20 migraines and headaches
per month and as you can imagine
this was impacting her work performance
and her confidence she also has two small children
and she was starting to feel like she was a horrible
mom because she had nothing left for them
at the end of the day but she reached out
and she booked a free consult call with me
and after I asked her about her migraines
and her health history
I felt confident that I could help her
I help women uncover
the root drivers of their migraines
and follow a step by step plan to dramatically reduce
the frequency by up to 90%
without adding more medication
or taking a bunch of supplements
so we built her personal migraine map
followed the plan
and now she will get one to two migraines per year
which she uses ibuprofen to treat if she needs to
verses up to 15 to 20 per month
when we first started working together
that weren't responding well to any medication
she just reached out to tell me that
she got a promotion at work
she's on top of her career again
and has been able to come off all of her migraine
medication but most importantly
she's a confident mom again
and she's attending birthday parties at Jump Zone
with her kids and saying yes
instead of saying maybe later
I've worked with women like Beth
from all over the United States
who were told this is the best we can do
but they were still willing to dig deeper
so if you're serious about changing your migraine story
go to Doctor Leslie Caesar dot com slash apply
or tap the link in the show notes
and on our free consult
we'll map out why your migraines keep coming back
and the first three steps you can take
over the next 30 days
I do cap new client spots each month
so if the calendar is full
the doors are closed for now
but if you're done feeling helpless
and ready to do the work to heal
pause this episode for 30 seconds
and book that console call now