C G Jung, Dreams, IFS, inner child, lived experiences, reflections, Self-care, therapy

When Migraines speak

aleksandrastaneva

I’ve lived with migraines most of my life. Sometimes they’ve crept in like a fog, other times they’ve struck like lightning, sudden, punishing, and unrelenting. For the past three days, I’ve been moving through yet another one. The world narrows. Light hurts. Sound feels like shards. My body curls inward, asking for darkness and silence. And yet, through the pain, something deeper stirs—something that both Jungian work and Internal Family Systems have helped me to meet with more compassion and curiosity over the years.

The Body as Psyche

Jung taught us to listen to symptoms as expressions of the unconscious. What if the migraine isn’t just biochemical, but symbolic? A pressure in the head could be the psyche’s cry for relief from too much thinking, too much control, too much persona. In the language of dreams, light sensitivity may symbolise an inability to face what is being revealed. Nausea may signal the soul’s revolt against something unpalatable in our daily lives.

Instead of suppressing it, we might ask:

What archetype is moving through me?

Is this the Crone demanding rest?

The Puer exhausted by flights of intensity?

The Self breaking through my rigid structure?

In Jungian terms, the migraine could be the unconscious flooding the ego, insisting on psychic reorganisation through the somatic gateway.

Meeting the Pain with Curiosity

In IFS, we understand that symptoms often arise from parts that carry burdens or protect us. When a migraine hits, instead of bypassing it or numbing it immediately, we can gently turn toward it:

Is there a part of me that feels overwhelmed, unheard, or over-responsible?

Is the pain a protector, trying to shut down stimulation so I can finally rest?

Is it a burdened exile crying out through my nervous system, needing to be seen and soothed?

By attending to the migraine with Self energy, curiosity, compassion, calm we may find that a younger part is carrying tension it never had the chance to release. Or that a manager part believes collapse is the only path to safety and reprieve.

The Integration: Dialogue Between Worlds

Neither approach blames the sufferer. Both invite dialogue with the body, the psyche, and the parts within. The migraine may need medication and rest. It often does for me. But it may also long to be listened to. Through dreams, art, somatic tracking, or guided inner journeys, we can begin to know this pain not just as pathology but as a threshold.

Migraine becomes initiation. A portal. A fierce and inconvenient grace.

If you let it.

I sometimes do. Especially when a force carries me THROUGH the threshold of pain, and I surrender and let it.

With light,

Aleksandra

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Published by aleksandrastaneva

Aleksandra She, who remembers. I work at the threshold, where psyche speaks in symbols, and the soul remembers. Rooted in Jungian depth psychology and Internal Family Systems, my work invites women and seekers into the quiet, often forgotten places within: the underworlds of grief, the wild terrain of desire, the sacred chambers of the inner child, inner mother, the Shadowlands, and Self. With a background in women’s heath research, in ritual, and in lived experience spaces, I do not offer diagnosis or treatment, I offer devotion to the unfolding Self. On the threshold of becoming- where we always are. Through dreams, parts work, myth, and the body, I walk beside those ready to meet themselves fully, fiercely, and tenderly. This is not fast work. It is sacred work. It is not about fixing, it is about remembering. I do not promise certainty. I promise presence, and a deep trust in the wisdom already within you. My work is rooted in the wild: in the seasons and the body, in the wisdom of the land, and in the deep ecology of the soul. I honour the personal as political, and the psychological as inseparable from the cultural. Feminism, ecopsychology, and embodied awareness are not add-ons here, they are the soil this work grows from. I offer one-on-one soulwork sessions, women’s circles, and immersive psychoeducational experiences that weave together depth psychology, parts work, and embodiment. Some of this work unfolds indoors, some in wild places—always with reverence for the wisdom of nature, the nervous system, and the feminine psyche. Welcome to the HORÓ nest. I think you might just be ready to re-member your Self.

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