Off-Topic Tuesday: Weather, Migraines and Dealing With It

It's been a crazy year for weather here in Southern Ontario.  This past winter we had less than half of the usual snowfall.  We didn't have one snowstorm that significantly impacted life as usual here.

So far Spring has been like a seesaw.  We've had some beautiful warm days where we could quite comfortably go outside in shorts and t-shirts, but now we're back to cold weather.  No snow, just cold and windy. Even though I have the furnace set low, just in case of the cold, I was surprised to hear it going when I woke up this morning.  

This past week has been a time of blustery wind, cool temperatures, warm temperatures and thunderstorms.  This is not good weather for migraine sufferers such as myself.

It can be frustrating for me to be at the mercy of the weather as to how I feel physically.

Life with migraines is an unsteady life.  I never know from one day to the next just how much or how little I'll be able to accomplish. For a long, long time, I would get upset with myself for not getting things done. That would cause me to feel guilty, which made me feel depressed, which led to anxiety, which only made the migraines worse.  It's a viscious circle that so many migraineurs fall into.

I am trying to learn to keep my to-do lists flexible so that I'm not disappointed in myself if I'm having a bad migraine day. I have a to-do list ready for a regular day, and an alternate, realistic to-do list if I'm having a migraine day.  I keep it short and anything extra that I manage to do is a bonus.

So I do what I can around the house and other than that I try to relax and not panic about the things I haven't done. If I do a few chores and then just relax and watch a movie on television, I'm trying feel okay with that and feel no guilt. It's not easy.

I'm trying to learn to take one day at a time, and to celebrate what I can accomplish on good days, and give myself credit for whatever I can achieve on bad days, feeling no self-recrimination for what I can't manage to do.  It's taking a real shift in thinking, and not entirely easy, but I think that it will pay off, once I have really adapted to my new thinking.

The strange thing is, I'm so much harder on myself than I would be on someone else in my own shoes.  I really have to learn to treat myself as well as I would others.

Why is it that sometimes I expect more from myself and have less empathy for myself than I would a friend, a loved one or even a stranger?

I can't answer that at this point.  But I'm trying to figure it out.  I'll tell you if I ever do.