From 18 migraines a month to having hope and living again
- Sally Tether
- 2 days ago
- 6 min read
We are grateful to have Sally Tether blogging for us this month. She beautifully shares her remarkable story of recovery from debilitating chronic migraines.
The Headaches Started Early
I vividly remember coming home from school with a headache. Regularly.
From a young age I was taking medication to get through the day.
I was a very sensitive child. Shy. And from early on I learned to mask it. I pretended to be confident, strong, and like I had it all together.
I was an only child, and I often felt lonely. My mum worked full-time and my dad was the stay-at-home parent. We were very close. He had a really fun side and I adored him. But he was also strict. “Children should be seen and not heard,” he’d say. Especially at mealtimes, and especially when he was watching sport on TV.
So I became hypervigilant. I was eager to please. I learned to be a “good girl”.
When Migraine Got a Name
My first migraine hit when I was 16. The same year my dad left my mum. It was a very stressful time. My mum didn’t know what was wrong with me, so she called the doctor.
Migraine. It was genetic, they said. There was a lot of it in my family.
I didn’t get another one until I was 18, at my grandad’s funeral.
I met my husband when I was 18. We married when I was 21. I had my first daughter at 24, and my second at 27. I had headaches all the way through both pregnancies. I was convinced it was hormonal.
After my youngest, Lilly was born, the migraines became consistent. I went to the doctor again and again. Stronger abortive meds were prescribed along with preventatives with extreme side effects I couldn’t tolerate.
I saw neurologists and headache specialists. The message was always the same: You’ll just have to manage the pain.
Once, a doctor asked if I had a stressful life. It offended me. I had a wonderful husband and two healthy, amazing children. From the outside, my life looked lovely.
If only I could get rid of the migraines, everything would be how I wanted it to be.
When I had a rare day without pain, I felt incredibly grateful and cherished every moment spent with my family and friends. Those good days gave me a renewed appreciation for life. My mum would often say how well I always bounced back, but as the years went by, finding that resilience became increasingly difficult.
The Cycle of Medication
When my youngest was 5, a neurologist looked at my history and said the words that stopped me: medication dependent.
I was taking too much over-the-counter medication and triptans. They were making it worse.
I had to stop everything. Cold turkey, with the help of steroids. It took three months.
And it worked — for a while. The migraines eased.
But eventually they came back. I became medication dependent again. This time I tried a different route: acupuncture, vitamins, and counselling. I came off the meds again and got a few months of relief.
Then lockdown happened. And something unexpected: my migraines dropped from 17 a month to around 6.
Looking back, it makes sense. I wasn’t working. My days were calm.
I loved my job as a beauty therapist, but I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of tasks every day.
The Pressure I Put on Myself
All my life, I put extreme pressure on myself to get things right. I never cut myself any slack.
Late nights working. Running a house. Two dogs. Two girls and their hobbies. Trying to be a good mum — and feeling like I was failing at every turn.
I never said no. I never spoke up.
From the outside I looked happy, confident, self-assured. Inside, I was crumbling. I had so much self-loathing.
At my worst I convinced myself I was bad. That I must be bad to deserve migraines so awful they’d stop me in my tracks and put me to bed. So much self-pity.
I’d push through the work week, then crash all weekend, and take to my bed.
I had so much guilt regarding my family, I thought I was letting them down. So many cancelled plans.
After lockdown I went back to work. I ran my business from home. And I still couldn’t say no to clients.
Life got busy again. Surprise: the migraines went back up to 17–18 a month. I was anxious. Depressed. I lived in a haze of pain and self-loathing.
I thought everything was a trigger. I stopped socialising. Reduced my work hours. My world got smaller. I was fearful every day of the pain, and of not being able to cope. Life felt too big for me. The overwhelm was huge.
Rock Bottom and a New Path
I was referred to the top headache specialist at Guy’s and St Thomas’ in London.
He told me I would always have migraines.
That was rock bottom. I couldn’t see a way out. No hope for my future.
I tried injectables. They worked for a couple of months, then stopped.
I even had a hysterectomy because I was sure hormones were to blame.
The turning point came on a Saturday afternoon. I was in bed, scrolling, while all my friends were away celebrating a 50th birthday I was supposed to be at.
I found the Curable app. I ran to show my husband. He said, “Download it.” And I did.
One of the interviews was with Nicole Sachs, a psychotherapist who specialises in treating chronic pain. I started listening to her podcast, The Cure for Chronic Pain.
And for the first time, I had hope.
I believed I had neuroplastic pain. No doubt.
Neuroplastic pain is not caused by ongoing structural damage in the body. Instead it is rooted in changes and dysregulation within the nervous system, driven by emotional and psychological stress.
The Three Legs of a Stool
Nicole’s protocol became my lifeline. The protocol has three elements:
· Believe you have a mind-body condition
· Do the work: 20 minutes of expressive journaling every day
· Be patient and kind with yourself. This was the hardest one.
I dove in. I carved out time to JournalSpeak (a form of expressive writing developed by Nicole) and to meditate. It felt like I was finally being kind to myself. I even journaled on Christmas Day. I never ran out of things to write about.
It baffles me now that I didn’t see it before — how much I’d been holding inside. How my repressed emotional world had been contributing to years of suffering.
About a year in, I became a Group Expert on Nicole Sachs’ Facebook page. I help people like me. That community has been a huge part of my recovery.
Where I Am Now
I can safely say: I no longer have chronic migraines.
They still crop up sometimes, when emotions are hard. Life is lifey. I’m a sensitive soul. I take things to heart.
But I live a full and wonderful life now. And I’m incredibly grateful.
The reduction in pain was slow. But by being consistent, and by trusting the process, I got my life back.
The biggest shift was self-compassion. It’s a practice. I started small: one nice thing to myself in the mirror each day.
That grew into having my own back. Creating boundaries. Being there for myself in hard moments. Wanting the best for myself.
I started figuring out my likes and dislikes. I’d lost myself in self-doubt. I introduced hobbies. I started to enjoy my life again.
And my relationship to the symptoms changed. I wasn’t as fearful. To heal, I had to learn to live with the symptoms present. To trust that I was safe in my body.
And as I did that, the severity lessened too.
Key Lessons to Share
1. Pain is not always a sign of physical damage
For years I searched for a physical explanation, hormones, genetics, medication, food triggers, anything that would explain the migraines. Learning about neuroplastic pain helped me understand that pain can also be driven by a sensitised nervous system, and that recovery was possible.
2. Suppressed emotions can have a powerful impact on health
I spent much of my life being the "good girl", people-pleasing, avoiding conflict, and keeping difficult emotions hidden. Through journalling and self-reflection, I realised how much stress, fear, anger, and sadness I had been carrying beneath the surface.
3. Self-compassion is not a luxury, it's a necessity
For years, I pushed myself relentlessly and criticised myself when I couldn't keep up. One of the biggest shifts in my recovery came from learning to treat myself with the same kindness I would offer someone I love.
4. Fear and resistance can keep us stuck
The more I feared migraines, the smaller my world became. Recovery began when I stopped organising my life around avoiding symptoms and started trusting that I was safe, even when discomfort was present.
5. Healing takes patience, consistency, and hope
There was no overnight cure. Progress happened gradually through daily practices, persistence, and believing change was possible. The journey taught me that small, consistent steps can lead to life-changing results.
In one sentence: My greatest lesson was that true healing began not when I found the perfect treatment, but when I learned to understand myself, process my emotions, and treat myself with compassion.
