In the migraine headache, the blocked feeling is longing; that is, the desire for closeness and contact with another person. A throbbing, very painful pressure builds up behind on eye though it may take in the whole side of the head. The throbbing is due to the pulsing of the blood in constricted arteries.

   Anger as an aggressive emotion represents a strong energy charge moving upward through the large muscles of the back. Longing is an erotic emotion and stems from a strong flow of the blood (the organ of Eros) to the erotic areas of the body -- the mouth, the breast and genitals. These organs become filled with blood producing the erection of the penis and the engorgement of the vagina. The sexual and erotic nature of this flow is not experienced by the migraine sufferer in whom there are unconscious blocks of sexual feelings.

   A main block is at the level of the diaphragm which results in the nausea and vomiting often associated with a severe migraine attack. Concomitantly, there is a diversion of the blood upward which could produce a blush of shame in a healthy person. I have also found an area of extreme muscular tension with the carotid artery. Pressure by a finger on the scalene where the headache commonly occurs. It has some connection in the side of the neck below the angle of the jaw on the side muscles at this point produces a sharp pain that shocks up to the base of the eye. Pressure in the same place on the other side of the neck does not have this effect.

   My insights into the dynamics of this kind of headache were devised from intensive work with one patient over many years. When I first saw this woman whom I will call Mary, her headaches were so severe and persistent that she was almost incapacitated. There were days when she could not leave her home. Medication helped somewhat but when her headache was bad, relief was very slow. Her headaches were always right sided, the pain shooting up the neck and striking behind the eye. On one occasion the pain was so terrible that a friend had to drive Mary to my home for emergency treatment.

   Many times I was able to relieve an attack by helping her to release the tension through expressing her feelings. She would cry or scream and the pain would slowly subside. It was always necessary for the crying (sobbing) to be accompanied by tears for the pain to leave the eye. At other times, when the headache had lasted for many hours, this procedure reduced its intensity, but it did not eliminate the headache. However, after a night's rest following the session, the headache would be gone.

   For about half of the fourteen years that I worked with Mary, she lived in New York City and I saw her regularly in therapy. Of course the therapeutic work dealt with all her personality problems which I shall shortly describe, not just the headache. Then she moved to a distant city and I saw her only form time to time. The move was made possible because of the progress Mary made both in terms of personal growth and relief from the headaches. There were time when she was completely free from them. She also developed the ability to deal with an incipient headache and forestall it, through the use of the bioenergetic exercises she learned in her therapy.

   However, the attacks always recurred and this report is about a recent incidence of such persistence that it necessitated a visit to me. The headache had gone on for days, mostly in the form of a low-grade chronic pain but which at times became severe. Mary was also frightened by the progressive loss of weight due to an inability to eat or hold her food because of her continuing stomach distress. The visit proved very productive, I was able to alleviate the headache, and I gained further insight into the problem. Before I describe this visit, let me briefly sketch the person and the problems she had when I first met her.

   Mary was an attractive woman with a very agreeable disposition. However, her body was very tense; her shoulders were rightly held in a raised position. Her breathing was very shallow and restricted to the upper half of her body. The respiratory movements did not extend below the waist. Her pelvis was immobile and her legs had an inactive quality. Mary had great difficulty in expressing any feeling, particularly the longing for closeness and contact. She was embarrassed and frightened by my suggestion that she touch my face with her hands in a soft, feeling way. She was also greatly inhibited sexually as one would expect from such a severe block to any expression of the desire for closeness. She would often develop a headache just before going out on a date if she had any feeling for the person. Her anxiety about social gatherings was so great that she used alcohol to combat the anxiety and became an alcoholic. However, prior to beginning therapy, she had joined AA and had stopped drinking.

   The most important trauma in Mary's childhood was the loss of her father. He died when she was five years old. Strangely, Mary was not told that he died. She believed that he went away because she was bad. In this connection, "bad" means sexual. The loss happened right in the middle of the oedipal situation that Mary could only believe that she was being punished for the sexual feelings she had toward her father. There was a very strong anti-sexual attitude in her home. In her religious training sex had a sinful connotation.

   Mary had made a strong transference to me which enabled me to help her sense and acknowledge the feelings she had for her father. As she became able to feel and express her longing for closeness with her father or a man, the intensity of her attacks diminished. It was, of course, necessary to free her from her sexual hang-up. In migraine, the erotic charge goes upward to the head instead of downward into the genitals where it can be discharged. The head does not provide an appropriate outlet for the feeling. Through the crying and screaming, the immediate tension can be released, but it is no solution to the problem, whereas the ability to have an orgasm is. Over the years of therapy, Mary became increasingly capable of accepting her sexual feelings, relating to a man and having pleasure. I wrote, however, "Only when she gained the ability to express these feelings in her eyes and in her voice was I sure she would remain free of this tormenting condition" (Bioenergetics, 302). She was near-sighted and wore contact lenses. There was great tension in her eye muscles. This tension paralleled that around the genital organs.

   Let me turn now to Mary's recent visit. She told me that everything had been going very well for her lately. Her business was prospering and she developed a very fine relationship with a man. More important, her sexual pleasure had increased lately. She was using the stool regularly now and felt that her body was becoming vibrantly alive. Therefore, she was surprised and frightened that she could not break the grip of this headache which seemed to be undermining her hard won gains.

   Looking at Mary as she talked to me, I observed the tension around her eyes, especially the right one where the pain was. In describing to Mary what I saw, I said that the look was demonic. In response to this remark, she said, "It's like a demon is pounding at my head." Then she added, "She's coming to see what I am doing wrong." This last was in reference to her mother. Then, her next statement was, "However, I can't get it in focus. The vision blurs. I feel sick to my stomach."

   In the course of the therapy, Mary had talked about her relationship to her mother. The latter had never married after the death of her husband. Between mother and daughter, there was much hostility. Mary felt that her mother was extremely negative to her. She commented, "I didn't think anything of myself. She had convinced me I was a nothing. She had won. I never understood why I fought on, why I didn't kill myself. I was miserable all my life."

   But since Mary now feels that she is "somebody," that she is not miserable, that she has some pleasure and even joy in her life, why the present headache? I wanted also to find out what it had to do with vision.

   I had the image of a demon stabbing at her right eye, in effect, blinding her. Such headaches are known as blinding headaches. When the headache has a grip on her, Mary literally can't see.

   Mary reacted to the image I had saying, "I feel that as long as there is something I am unable to see, I will have [a] migraine. I am near-sighted. There are days when I can't see anything. When I have a headache, I can't focus on a book or any distant object with or without glasses."

   So far, all we know is that the headache disrupts Mary's vision. But as we talked, Mary revealed more. She said:

   These remarks indicate the presence of a paranoid element in Mary's personality. The look which I described as dark and demonic is one I associate with paranoia whenever I see it. In Mary, it is very rare. Her most common expression is one of wide-eyed innocence and fear. The look I associate with paranoia is not only one of suspicion, the person looking out from under lowered brows to see where the danger is. It is also one of hate and hostility. If Mary's mother looked at her in the past with an expression of hate and hostility in her eyes, Mary has now introjected that expression and can look with a similar expression. Thus, she is both the victim and the victimizer, the frightened child and the demonic mother. The demon is in her now.

   She had mentioned earlier that she felt the demon watching her. She now identified the demon as her left eye which she believes represents her mother. That eye has tendency to turn inward as if it were looking at the right eye. She experiences that eye as hard and tough. This tendency to strabismus interferes with her ability to focus.

   Mary's mother was watching her to make sure that no sexual thoughts or feelings entered the child's consciousness. But what about her father's watching? Mary realized that he, too, was observing her sexuality. She became aware that he looked at her sexually. We can imagine the situation of the child. One parent's look is sexually provocative and exciting, the other's is damning and hostile. The child is frozen in a state of torment sexually excited but unable to acknowledge or release the feeling. That torment has continued into the present in the migraine attack.

   We did no more in this session than discuss this problem sitting opposite each other. As the talk proceeded, the tension slowly left her eyes. At the end of the session, the headache was completely gone.

   Mary left for her home the next day. I had asked her to call me before she left, but I didn't hear from her. I did get a call that evening which didn't surprise me. She said that she had planned to call from the airport, but there wasn't time. She had left feeling good. On the plane, she developed a headache. But then she had a nosebleed and the headache disappeared. She related that she always got a headache before she was going to menstruate. She would have a migraine for a whole week before the menses began. Then when the bleeding started, the headache would diminish.

   I was surprised, however, when Mary said that she had another headache when she got home. The only thing she knew which might account for it was the news that one of her associates was coming to discuss her work. She immediately realized that this news brought up the anxiety about being watched even though that was not the reason for the visit. In the course of our talk, Mary made a remark which I found interesting and relevant. She said, "The more I can see into it, the more I can handle the pain. If I could put it into focus, if it makes sense, it could pound, but it wouldn't hurt." I believe that means there is still some aspect of this problem which she doesn't understand and which I didn't either.

   What didn't she see? I could only surmise that her very success was making her vulnerable to the headache in some way. This could be explained in terms of her relation to her mother. The more Mary tried to prove to her mother that she was somebody, the more she provoked her mother's wrath. Or, in terms of her relation to herself, it can be expressed thus: the more Mary tries to prove that she is worthy of being loved, the more she admits that she is unworthy. Mary expressed it differently. She said, "I have to do it right." It is as if an accusing finger were pointed at her right eye, saying: "You never do anything right." This is the finger of the critical mother which Mary accepts since she keeps trying to prove that she can do it right. At this time in Mary's life, the conflict is internalized. Her very struggle predisposes her to a migraine attack.

   What Mary couldn't see was that the struggle didn't make sense. By struggling, she maintained the state of conflict in herself. By trying to do it right, she admitted she was wrong. She did not see that to be right in her mother's eyes meant that she had to deny her sexuality. This led to a migraine. Thus by trying to do the right thing, she was setting herself up for a migraine.

   In this discussion, she recognized the compulsive nature of her drive. She said, "I have to keep going and going." At the same time, she knew that she was exhausted. She recognized that she was too tired to sleep. She rarely slept more than five hours a night. She would awake tired but she could not go back to sleep. If she slept only three hours, she would generally wake up with a headache.

   We spoke on the telephone for almost an hour. At the end, she was completely free from the headache. It was late and I was tired so I want to bed. I trust that she did the same. I thought that we had all aspects of the problem worked out.

   Imagine my surprise when Mary called two days later in the morning to say that she had a headache. All I could think of was that she was still struggling not with her mother this time, but with the headache. I said to her, "Don't fight it. Sit down and put your right hand over your eye and say, 'I can't fight it any more.'" I was busy so I asked her to call me back that evening.

   She did. She said, "I put my right hand over my eye and said to myself, 'Don't fight it.' Do you know what happened? I fell asleep in the chair of fifteen minutes. When I awoke, the headache was gone."

   At the time of this writing, I haven't heard from Mary again. Presumably, she has not had another attack. Will she get one? I believe so. However, another headache will not invalidate the understanding above. It will mean that she is in a situation of greater stress than she heretofore experienced. This greater stress will be due to a higher charge or increased feeling in the patient. If Mary will find it difficult to tolerate a greater sexual excitation, she will develop a headache. Then, as her body becomes increasingly able to contain and discharge higher levels of excitement, she will be free from migraine attacks. It is my understanding that a problem is worked out for a certain level of excitation. When the level increases, one needs to rework the problem. Such reworking of characterological problems from time to time is the basis of growth.

   In presenting this article on a case of migraine, it is my hope that other bioenergetic therapists would describe their experiences with this disturbance. I am sure there are aspects of this problem that I have not seen. Has anyone had a similar experience with a migraine patient? I would be most interested to hear from you.

Reference
Lowen, Alexander. 1975. Bioenergetics. New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, Inc.

[Source : Bioenergetic Analysis - The Clinical Journal of the International Institute for Bioenergetic Analysis, Volume 1, Number 2, Spring 1985, pp.117-124]

Disclaimer : This information is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice. You should not use this information to diagnose or treat a health problem or disease without consulting with a qualified healthcare provider. Please consult your healthcare provider with any questions or concerns you may have regarding your condition.