Challenges of NLD, Chronic Migraines, and PTSD
Happy Friday, everybody. I hope that you all had a good 4th of July and that you got to celebrate in some way with your family and friends. Last week I posted an interview because I was, I had a little vacation with my family in Virginia, so I hope that you enjoyed the interview with,Taylor.
So, let's see, today's episode. Do you struggle with more than one incurable condition or learning difference? Or do you have challenges living with more than one condition or learning difference that are invisible? Do you have issues with theorems not being a cure for these conditions, diseases, learning differences, et cetera, now or possibly ever.
I would say yes to all of these questions, and that has been true for the past 16 years from my PTSD, the past 10 years for NLD and chronic migraines. I know that I've been living with comorbidity for 16 years and will be for life. I don't find this depressing unless I get in a downward spiral of all the challenges that NLD, chronic migraines, and PTSD can present in my life, relationships, and experiences.
I try to stay positive through and remember myself of how far I have come since I started this podcast about four years ago. I'm not the same person I was before I disclosed my traumas to my family in late August of 2008.
I'm also not the same girl who realized she was different than everyone else in her family and followed that hunch to being diagnosed with NLD in her second year of college. And finally, I'm not the same person. patient who was living with unexplainable pain in her head for five years before getting any medical help for the chronic migraines that started in 2014.
I have been through eight years of therapy. Actually, more like eight and a half. Four years of college at UC Berkeley. Six years of being out of college, living with my parents and in the adult working world to get where I am now. I also have been conned twice through two romantic relationships and breakups.
I have lived on my own with my first boyfriend for five months and regretted it because of how twisted his thinking of independence was., I also have worked five part time jobs before getting my full time job with my parents that I've had for about four years now. I love working for them and, and being able to do well in several areas of work and tasks. I love the flexibility, creativity, and responsibility I have in this job. I also love, really enjoy the different areas and titles that I work in because I'm never bored. And, for those of you, if you, who don't really know what I do, I am a, I have a lot of different titles, but main titles, I am an admin assistant, social media and , tech assistant for my, mom, who is a minister at a unity church called the unity center. I'm not going to give a background of unity cause that doesn't really, really relate to this topic, but if you. So if you need a background of it, I would just go to the unity center. net and you'll get a good description of how it's different from other, I was going to say religions, but it's not a religion.
So how it's different from other denominations, and it's not even a dominations part of the new thought branch actually. So anyways , I do that and I also help with tech tutoring for people on the side. And, I like, like, like I said, I like what I do because I don't, I'm not bored and it's flexible and it works for me. At least for now. So the first article I want to use is titled, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Migraine, Epidemiology, Sex Differences, and Potential Mechanisms by B. Lee. Peterlin and Sitsatnam S. Najara and Gretchen E. Teatron. I have not said any of those names right. Sorry if I didn't.
"Migraine is a common, often disabling disorder associated with a significant personal and societal burden. In the presence of post traumatic stress disorder, PTSD may increase, these disabilities sustain. Substantially. Migraine and PTSD are both up to 3 times more common in women than in men. The divergence and prevalence rates of migraine and PTSD that occurs between the sexes after puberty suggest that godanal. Hormones play an important role. In addition, the preponderance of PTSD in women may be related to their higher rates of interpersonal trauma, the most common cause of PTSD. However, recent data suggest that Although the odds of PTSD are increased in both women and men with episodic migraine, this association is stronger in men than women. In this paper, we examine the ology of PTSD and migraine with an emphasis on the known sex differences. We then discuss the neurolo neuro neurobiological changes associated with PTSD, the current hypotheses for the mechanisms related. Relating PTSD and migraine and the treatment implications of these findings. Migraine and PTSD are more prevalent in women than men Although both women and men Migraineurs have greater odds of PTSD than those without migraine male migraineurs Transcripts may have even greater odds of suffering from PTSD than female migraineurs. The mechanism for this association is not known. However, dysregulation of the autonomic system and HPA axis as well as structural alterations in the corpus callosum in response to PTSD may play a role. The presence of PTSD in migraineurs is associated with greater headache related disability than migraineurs with PTSD. And data suggests that behavioral PTSD treatment alone can positively influence chronic pain conditions and disability. Taken together, the current data suggests that migraineurs and in particular male migraineurs should be screened for PTSD and that cognitive slash behavioral therapy alone. Or in combination with pharmaceutical therapy, further research on the association between PTSD and migraine with attention to sex differences as well as to treatment implications is warranted."
I basically wanted to quote that article because I feel like it. presents a good correlation between migraine and PTSD. It doesn't really say why there's a correlation, but if I were to speculate why there's a I would say that when one goes through something traumatic, such as sexual abuse or domestic abuse or, kidnapping or, there's a lot of things that can be traumatic. So those are to name a few, you usually try to block out your emotions and memory of what happened to you. And then when you do disclose about it to your family and your friends, the ones that you trust and love, you feel more, you feel more comfortable about disclosing it to them. And then, as you're going through your letting go process and your healing process and your therapy, you learn coping skills and you might also remember things about what happened to you that you weren't remembering before because you were suppressing them. And those might bring up some, well, not might, they will bring up emotions that you're not used to feeling. And, , I think that can kind of create chronic pain because if you think about it, you were suppressing your emotions in a bad way. Let's say in a bottle before just pushing them down into the box.
And then you're trying to express them and you don't know how to control it because before you were just suppressing them, you're not laying them out. And then you are letting them out and trying to express them. And sometimes it's hard to control that. I remember in the very beginning when I was, um, healing from my traumas and doing therapy and letting go. There are times where I just cried a lot because I didn't, but I did know why I was crying, which made me cry even more. Ironically, eventually I was like, you know what? I'm not going to worry about why I'm crying. I'm just going to let myself cry and get out. And that was a good practice because, sometimes I think people hold back tears when they really need to cry, whether it's happy or sad tears. And, you just need to let out that emotion, whatever it may be. Because it's not very healthy to keep it up. And I think when you keep it in and you get stressed and you get more emotional, then you're more retentive. You're more open or gonna have more pain in your life or stress. The second article is titled "23 Health Conditions Linked to Migraine Headaches," medically reviewed by Sabrina Felsen,, on October 13th of 2022, written by David Steen Martin.
"Depression and anxiety Migraine is common in people who have anxiety. If you have both migraine and anxiety, you're also more likely to have depression. Some research suggests that aurora makes you anxiety and depression more likely, but we need more studies on this. Insomnia, those with migraine are two to eight times more likely than others to have sleep disorders. What's the connection? Poor sleep can contribute to migraine headaches. In turn, migraines may disrupt sleep patterns. The pain might keep you up at night, or it might cause you to sleep during the daytime, interfering with your sleep schedule and PTSD. If you have migraine, you may be more likely to have post traumatic stress disorder, PTSD. One study found the likelihood of having PTSD is five times higher if you have migraine."
So that wasn't all of them. Things aren't connected to migraines, but those were the things that I can relate to. I have been depressed and anxious before , and I know others who have been in that state. And, I'm not in that state anymore, but looking back on when I was more depressed or anxious, definitely having those when I was, healing from my traumatic experiences and in college as well, actually, because, I was away from my family and, well, most people in my family had my brother in college, but. It was a tricky experience because I felt like it was still healing from my traumas and I was going to school, trying to study and didn't know I had a learning disability until I got the testing for it or learning difference. And then when I did know that, it was dealing with going to school with a learning difference, PTSD, and well, I didn't know yet were migraines and then trying to juggle all that at the same time. It was challenging, at least for me. Maybe some people will handle it better than I did. And then, I always felt like I had a problem with trying to stay asleep. Not stay asleep, but fall asleep. Sometimes I also stay asleep. And, like, it takes me an hour to fall asleep, but if I listen to podcasts that are bedtime stories, I fall asleep faster than I would without that.
And if I have my CPD gummies before I fall asleep, that also helps, because that gets rid of the pain from the migraine. And then, sometimes I do take naps during the day. But that doesn't usually help me with sleeping at night. It actually doesn't really impact my sleep schedule. If I take a nap during the day, at least for me, it doesn't. That depends on how close that nap is to my actual bedtime and how long that nap is. So if it's like an afternoon nap and it's not, Late in the afternoon, then I'm fine with falling asleep at night, but if it's really close to when I'm going to be going to bed, then it's like, well, I might as well just go to bed early.
And then, the last article is titled, "struggling with an obscure learning disability called nonverbal learning disability (NLD) " by Steve Kurlis, who is a neurodiverse person. I don't even know how to say this word. Aler file. A-I-L-U-R-O-F-O-B-I-A. I can't even spell it right. A-I-L-U-R-O-P-H-I-L-E Auto dac. You know what, I'm not gonna even try to read all of these because I don't know. I don't know what some of them are, but I'll place them in the transcript of this so that you can see them. So anyways, I need some water.
Okay. So quote from struggling with an obscure learning disability called nonverbal learning disability. A decade or so ago, I consulted a neuro, a neuropsychologist for comprehensive testing and formal diagnosis. And he confirmed what my research had led me to suspect. He said I exhibited nonverbal learning disability or disorder, NLD, even though it isn't listed in the predominant psychiatric and medical diagnostic manuals.
NLD has been acknowledged by researchers and learning specialists for decades. It's understood to comprise A broad constellation of neurologically based cognitive deficits in areas such as visual spatial skills, ability to draw inferences, carrying out mathematical and other abstract reasoning, organization, schools, and social competence. The psychological impact, I'm extremely grateful that I can speak and write as fluently as I can, but this wonderful gift has not been without its costs. People don't pay. I believe that I can verbally express myself so well and be as challenged as I am in other areas. They think I'm joking with them or I'm not trying hard enough. I dilute about being disabled. And VLE has also made me just smart enough to be painfully aware of how dumb I am. Sorry, that comment was a little funny. And it has endowed me with just enough spotty intelligence to yearn to know and do countless things. My deficits won't permit me to explore in depth and master because those pursuits also require normal to highly vulnerable intelligence.
Vocational impact, for example, in my involuntary exile from the world of physical reality. I'm drawn to the world of words, ideas, and abstractions, but lack the ability to plumb its depths and be the mathematician, theoretical scientist, professional philosopher, or educator I would love to be. And just as my NLD has precluded me from exploring deeply academic disciplines and from pursuing related professions.
It also undermines my social skills enough to lock me out of the helping professions such as psychology and social work. I've always had the desire to help people, but no knack for understanding their problems and no people skills to succeed at helping them to succeed. impact on my writing. And VLD even impacts my greatest strength, which appears to be writing my deficits and discerning non verbal patterns and doing abstract and metaphorical thinking, and in my ability to form a Clear mental images of physical details and conceptual mechanical functions severely limit the range of writing I can do for remunerative publication.
After all, if I struggled in all these areas, how can I co-author a cognizant philosophical, theological, or scientific treatise? About a subject or issue of compelling interest to me and to my intended audience. And how can I explain social and cultural patterns I don't understand or describe physical settings and characteristics for works of fiction or nonfiction well enough to write engaging prose in either domain?"
So, that article is good because it gives time to think. different areas that that person feels impacted by NVLD, the psychological impact, the vocational impact, impact on their writing. Those are those three areas he feels impacted in. And I want to say that, those are just for and I don't want to minimize it.
I just want to say that the areas might be different for somebody else who has an LD. Like for me, I would say I do have the psychological impact and I do have the vocational impact and I do have an impact on writing as well, but he didn't mention anything about visual spatial. I definitely have that.
And I do also have challenges with thinking. To literally sometimes to black and white and he didn't seem to mention that either, which I thought was interesting. And, when he did mention, which is true for me is I like helping people, but sometimes I'm not very good at it because I don't know how to relate to their, , emotions when they need support, unless I've been through a similar experience and can re imagine myself so that would be an area I can relate to that he mentioned that he has an impact and, and with the writing, I like creative writing, but when it comes to Academic writing, it's hard for me to, be able to, know how to make changes and where to make changes. So that's an impact. And then, psychological impact. I can be very verbal, but I'm not always coherent and I'm not always , easily understood and I'm not always, sometimes it makes more sense to somebody else than it does to me.
And, basically, that was this episode and I hope that you got something out of it and were able to learn about the different challenges that one with NLD or any learning difference to that matter that can deal with and live with and as always I will just I will give you the links for the articles and the podcast description and I hope that All of you have a good weekend and that you have some time off to be with your family and friends I will talk to you next week.
Links for articles:
