East Bay Neurology

Happy Holidays to our lovely friends. We hope this Holiday finds you all happy, healthy and for our migraine sufferers without a migraine. BTW dont forget we are moving this month. We will start 2016 in our new office. We are all very excited. Visit eastbayneurolgy.com for more infomation.

I feel guilty that because of a migraine, I ___________________. Missed my son’s school play Couldn’t go to my daughter’s soccer game Canceled plans with a friend Skipped Sunday dinner with my family... Was unable to walk my dog after work Had to have a coworker cover for me Left my group hanging on a class project However you fill in the blank, most people with migraine have said that they feel guilty about something they did (or, more often, didn’t do) because of a migraine attack. The reasons for guilt run the gamut. I have even felt guilty for throwing away vegetables that went bad because I was too sick to prepare them. The first time I wrote about migraine guilt, a headache specialist who reads my blog asked why I felt guilty when I wasn’t to blame for any of my perceived failings. I didn’t get what she was saying. It didn’t matter to me that I wasn’t to blameI let people down (even my local farmer) and felt guilty for having done so. Recently, though, the seed that she planted nearly a decade ago began to sprout. Guilt is what we feel when we have or believe we have done something wrong. It’s often called a useless emotion, but it’s a great motivator for changing behavior. Social worker and researcher Brené Brown describes it like this: We feel guilty when we hold up something we’ve done or failed to do against the kind of person we want to be. It’s an uncomfortable feeling, but one that’s helpful. When we apologize for something we’ve done, make amends to others, or change a behavior that we don’t feel good about, guilt is most often the motivator.1 You can apologize for something you believe you’ve done wrong because of a migraine attack, but there’s no behavior you can change. Having a migraine attack is not a behavior, it’s a physical state over which you have no control. According to Brown and other researchers, the guilt that I’ve always associated with migraine is actually shame. Brown summarizes the difference between the two: Guilt = I did something bad. Shame = I am bad. Ouch. Because I’m a glutton for punishment, I read Brown’s book on shame called I Thought it Was Just Me.2 I swore an astonishing amount, not out of anger, but in disbelieving recognition. Shame was the fuel for so many things I spent the early years of my disability doing: chattering nonstop to keep people from asking questions about myself for fear they’d uncover my secret; frequently saying, I’m the kind of person who in order to define myself as something other than sick; beating myself up for doing and saying the wrong things. See more

Did you know that you could have a migraine without a headache? What type of migraine do you suffer from?

I would like to introduce to you our new Nurse practitioner. We are very excited to have Lauren Join our practice. Here is her Bio from our web site. Lauren Johnson is a board certified Adult Nurse Practitioner. She earned her B.A. in psychology from the University of Delaware, a Master of Social Work at Temple University in Philadelphia and a Master of science in nursing from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). While at UCSF, she pursued neurology residenc...ies with the Memory and Aging Center and East Bay Physicians Group. She also worked on neuropsychological clinical research with the Department of Anesthesia at UCSF. She has an additional two years of experience specializing in pain management and spine disorders as well as five years working in acute psychiatry. Her passion is to provide holistic, individualized treatment of neurologic disorders and to promote optimal health outcomes for her patients. See more

What an amazing young lady!

This truly the most amazing video I have ever seen. I thought I would share it with you!

Happy Halloween from your Friends at East Bay Neurology!