Emotional Cause of Migraines? What Your Body May Be Holding

The warning comes first. The stiff neck. The yawning. That wrung-out tiredness in the afternoon. And some part of you already knows how tomorrow will go: curtains shut, the room dark, every sound too loud.

Maybe you’ve noticed it doesn’t always come in the hard week itself, but on the Saturday after, when everything finally stops.

So you typed the question in, late, with the screen turned down as far as it goes: is there an emotional cause of migraines? Is my body trying to tell me something?

We want to answer honestly. That means starting with what nobody knows.

Is there an emotional cause of migraines?

The plain answer: nobody knows exactly what causes migraine. The NHS says it straight out, that it’s not known what causes it, and that it happens when there are changes to nerves and blood vessels in the brain. It also tends to run in families. (NHS: Migraine)

What is known is that some people find certain things set off an attack. On the NHS list, next to skipped meals and too much caffeine, you’ll find anxiety and depression, stress and tiredness.

So feelings are not “the cause.” But they’re not nothing, either. And that’s where our work begins, as a question, never as a diagnosis.

Migraines and emotions: what the body may be holding

We’re not doctors, and we can’t tell you what your headaches mean. We can tell you something we wrote in our book, because we have both lived it.

Most of us were taught that anger is bad, ugly, unspiritual. “So we smile over it. We swallow it. We turn it into politeness, into overeating, into headaches, into a sharp tone with the wrong person three days later.”

That’s not a claim that swallowed anger gives you migraines. It’s an invitation to ask a quieter question: what if this pain is also carrying something I haven’t let myself feel?

It could be anger you were too polite to show, or grief that never got a day off. You don’t have to work out which. Naming it pulls you straight back into your head. A tight chest, a clenched jaw, a hot face, that’s enough to go on.

Spiritual meaning of migraines

Many body-mind traditions see the head as the home of the thinking mind: the planner, the worrier, the voice that never clocks off. We have a name for that voice: the dragon. It explains, it worries, it compares, it plans, it rehearses tomorrow’s argument in the shower.

We don’t read any spiritual verdict into a migraine. Pain doesn’t mean you’re broken or that you did something wrong. Illness is not a punishment, and we will never call it one.

What we would ask is a simple question. How much of your day do you live from the neck up, thinking, managing, holding it together for everyone? And how much attention does the rest of your body get before it has to shout?

Emotional meaning of headaches you can feel coming

Not every headache is a migraine, and a migraine is not “just tension.” But most of us know the everyday version. The jaw clenched through a meeting. Shoulders crept up to the ears. The back of the neck like a fist.

Feelings can wait in places like these. Our book puts it like this: “The mind’s voice makes you contract. Notice your shoulders, your jaw, your breath.” If it’s your shoulders that carry it, there’s more here: emotional meaning of shoulder pain.

Two minutes, before it builds

This isn’t for the middle of a bad attack. Then, follow your doctor’s plan, and lie down in a darkened room, as the NHS suggests. This is for earlier in the day, when something lands on you and you feel yourself clench around it. A sharp email. A comment at the table. The moment your shoulders go up.

Practice2 min

Two minutes in the middle of the day

1. When something hits you, find the closest quiet place, even a bathroom.
2. Close your eyes.
3. Find where it presses.
4. Stay with it for two minutes, changing nothing.
5. Then go back to your day, and see what you do differently.

What you might notice: it may be in your head. It may be somewhere you didn’t expect, the stomach, the throat, the chest. You might feel heat, or a flash of anger, or an urge to cry. Or, the first time, very little. That counts too.

We know the swallowing from the inside. Rytis had a great deal of anger in him, and for years he covered it with a thick layer of spirituality. It cost him a part of his strength, and in the end he had to meet the anger anyway. What worked wasn’t managing it or releasing it. It was feeling it.

We can’t promise that the book means fewer attacks. What it has is the longer version of those two minutes, lying down, step by step, written the way we speak in a session. It’s the method behind every Feeling Session we lead.

What you can do this week

• Add one line to your migraine diary. The NHS suggests keeping one. Next to food and sleep, write: what was I feeling the day before, and where did I feel it in my body?
• Catch the jaw. When you notice it clenched, put a little of your attention there for ten seconds. Change nothing.
• Say hello to anger. When it rises, sit or lie down and say inside: “Hello, anger. I allow myself to be angry.” Feel it without pouring it onto anyone. More here: how to release anger stored in the body.
• Lie down on a good day. Ten or fifteen minutes, eyes covered, palms down, no goal. Nothing to fix, nothing to get right.

If the pain has been with you for years, this one may speak to you: chronic pain and emotions. The jaw, the neck, the back and the stomach each have their own page in Body, all written from the same question: what is this part of you carrying?

So, is there an emotional cause of migraines? Nobody can say that, and we won’t. What you can find out is what your body is carrying on an ordinary Tuesday, long before the curtains have to close.