'I had put my writing, my ambition, and my success over not just my health but my experience of life,' says chloekbenjamin
Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photos: Getty Images I’ve probably had thousands of migraines. I started experiencing them in my early teens, though they weren’t frequent then, and I dealt with them begrudgingly but not proactively. Medication worked well. By grad school, they were worsening but still manageable.
My migraines were getting worse and worse, but I just thought, I have to push through. Once I get home, I’ll be able to rest. Then my migraines escalated to an incredibly intense pain level — a 14-day migraine during a short tour in California landed me in the ER for the first time in my life. I reluctantly canceled the next day’s event but continued doing them through the end of the year. It was the best time in my life professionally, and I felt so lucky for that.
At that point, I realized I needed to transform my relationship to my body. I knew the old ways weren’t working. I found a physical therapist who had expertise in headaches. I’d already had a headache-specific provider who managed my medications, but I added non-pharmacological treatments: I did acupuncture, eye-movement desensitization and reprocessing, cognitive behavioral therapy, vision therapy, and mindfulness and meditation.
I used to push myself so hard when I didn’t have a headache to the point that I would get a headache. Now I think of working like a wave: Anytime I bring my energy up, like during a writing session, I bring it back down afterward. I’ll do a five-minute meditation or take a walk. I put boundaries around my brain and the extent to which I let it run and run and run. I used to stay awake in bed thinking about a problem in my book, which was impacting my sleep. I don’t do that anymore.
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