disclaimer: results may vary
On 1st February, 2007, Julie sent me an e-mail asking me to help her son. Matthew was twelve years old, and he was having a migraine every five days. School work was beginning to suffer, and Julie knew that the next few years would be so important for Matthew’s exams.
Julie had tried various different alternative therapies for Matthew. The latest one, acupuncture, hadn’t made any difference, but Julie was determined to find an answer. A friend in the Bournemouth area had seen a newspaper article about my work, and sent it to Julie. I went to meet Matthew and Julie in their own home. In those days, before the CD programme was available, I visited people in their own home.
I went through the first session with Matthew, and then I taught him how to do the active sessions when the first sign of his migraine began. Matthew took it all on board, and I telephoned weekly. I often spoke to both mother and son and one day I discovered that one of the first signs of a migraine approaching was that Matthew could be very angry the previous day.
I encouraged Matthew to do some exercises on ‘angry’ days, and I began to wonder how many other people had anger as one of their symptoms. Matthew’s migraine pattern changed from five to seven days immediately.
Matthew was going skiing with the school for the first ten days of April, and he was very worried about coping with his migraine while away from home. Julie was worried, as she knew most people have no idea what a migraine is all about. How would his teachers manage? People often think of migraine as a bad headache, not knowing about the other symptoms of nausea, dizziness and the overwhelming feeling of being ill.
Julie asked herself many times, “Supposing the migraine began on the way there. Would he be sick on the coach? Would other boys feel ill because of him? Is it too much? He shouldn’t go. Yes, he should. He needs to go. He needs to have this taste of adventure away from home.” Julie thought it round in circles continuously from the moment Matthew suggested the skiing trip in the autumn of 2006. However, there was a ray of hope now, as Matthew had already begun to make progress on the Resolution Magic Programme.
When the time came to set off, it all went without a hitch. Matthew sailed through the holiday without a migraine. As the weeks rolled on after the holiday, migraines reappeared, but they were changing in intensity, and also in duration. Matthew was finding that his migraines were lasting only a few hours, and then he was able to go into school for the afternoon sessions.
By August 2007, Matthew was so improved he reached a major milestone – his first full week at school. By November 2007, Matthew had a gap of seven weeks between his ‘headaches’. Migraine was disappearing from his vocabulary; it was six months since his last real migraine attack.
When I spoke to Julie in November 2007, I realised that Julie also suffered from Neurological Wave Syndrome. As well as headaches, she also had extremely painful IBS from time to time. The day after Matthew had a headache, Julie used to have one too! The coincidence was quite strange.
By this time, I had developed the CD programme, and so I sent her a package.
After a couple of weeks on the programme, Julie noticed a real difference. As she looked at her chart she could see the intensity and duration of her attacks beginning to reduce.
I rang Julie every couple of weeks. One day, I discovered that she was feeling very uncertain about some academic studying she had undertaken as a classroom assistant. Although she was able to do the studying, she worried about it. I sent her the CD to change her reaction to exams. Julie was delighted, and her two children, Emily and Matthew to listen to it too. Emily’s next set of exam results were outstanding!