Flashback Migraines

[Deleted member 1860]

Hi all,

I'm wondering if anyone else experiences sudden onset migraines when a flashback hits.

I've suffered from migraines since I was a teenager. Most are due to stress or diet. However, these are different.

Up until now I've been able to get away with bumming the occasional Imitrex (migraine med) off of family members as my migraines would only warrant this medication once or twice a year. Now that flashbacks trigger migraines, I'm going to get my own script from my doctor. (I had been prescribed this med years ago, but never kept up with refills due to the infrequency of my need for it.)

And, these migraines are different than my other ones. Usually the intensity builds over time. However, the flashback migraines come on full force, almost instantly. Hence the need for medication as there is no opportunity to cut the migraine off before it gets bad.

Anyone else experience anything like this? Advice?

My therapist is doing a Neurotherapy protocol that helps, but it's not a fix.

Thanks,
SOL

 

[Lionheart]

I used to get flashback migraines' and was treated with the medication Maxalt. The PTSD/Depression was treated with a number of meds that included Celexa, Prazosin, Abilify and also ongoing therapy sessions.
I don't really have any advise for you outside of medication and therapy, but I certainly wish you all the best.

LH

 

[Keeper of the Wheel]

I have experienced having instant huge headache just after a flashback, and other symptoms. I think it is the physical body remembering at the same time as the emotionnal and the mental.
When you are able to ground yourself or go to your safe place it could disppear just as it came. It did for me

 

[Sorrento]

This happened to me a few times too I think. I feel a certain type of headache. Not throbbing. Not like a tight band. More like my eyes have popped out of my head. And I can see everything and it's in focus, but the environment doesn't register any meaning in my brain. Then it is likely I'll forget all of societies niceties and I'll blast anyone who is mean or threatening to someone else, putting myself in a dangerous situation. Because I feel nothing. Then I look in the mirror and my pupils are like pin heads.

This happened after my last ptsd episode after I went to the place where the trauma happened. I didn't get a full blown migraine but the GP said it sounded a bit like a small migraine.

 

[maryel42]

I get these, but they're more of a tension-induced migraine than a migraine. When something big is coming, my head gets worse and worse, and the harder I fight the memories and flashbacks the more my head hurts. I can't think, my eyes start to blur, there's an icepick ramming through one eye and out the back of the opposite ear, and the skin over the back of my skull feels like a too-tight rubber band.

As soon as I stop fighting it, it starts to fade. The sleeplessness I had the other week? That I started posting here during? As soon as I left the therapists office I started to feel a little less headachy. I slept for three nights right after that. Now, I can feel something more from the wave; I am not sure what it is but I know I am fighting against it. My headache started Tuesday, and I was back to the not-sleeping.

I've never told anyone how my headaches really follow the intensity of how I resist dealing with my own crap. I haven't bothered really searching out a med for them, not much works on my pain anyway and I didn't want to always seem to be running to my doctor for "imaginary" pain that they can't find answers for. With my kids, I need to be able to still function very well under medications, so that limits options too.