My recovery story: from migraines and so much more, to a joyful, peaceful internal world
- Susie Bonczyk
- Jul 4
- 7 min read
We are thrilled to share this moving recovery story from Susie Bonczyk, who healed from migraine and other debilitating chronic symptoms using a mind-body approach.
My chronic symptoms: how it all began
I originally started out on my healing journey because I was experiencing unexplained migraines and had been for well over a decade. And then, as I began the ‘work’ of healing, marinating myself in the theory behind mindbody medicine, I began to realise that I have had symptoms of one kind or another for most of my adult life (and during my childhood, I recently found out from my mother).
These symptoms have never entirely stopped me from living my life, going to work and socialising. They weren’t always bad enough for me to seek medical help. What they did was create a constant malaise, a low feeling because I often just didn’t ‘feel well’.
My symptoms included:
periods of being constantly nauseous (on my honeymoon, I remember spending the majority of it lying in our beautiful bell tent, feeling sick)
neckache which would spread into my shoulders, head and upper back; I spent years seeing an osteopath for ‘maintenance’ on my neck
migraines which would land me in bed for days at a time and then linger around when I managed to get back to work. I had scans and when nothing was revealed, I was given prescription medication to take when a migraine showed up and later offered betablockers as a preventative because the medication wasn’t working. When I first had my baby, I suffered with extreme pain in my head whenever I bent down to pick her up. This remained unexplained but was patched over with strong painkillers, which I didn’t want to take because I was trying to breastfeed.
At times my symptoms surrounded me like a dark mist, floating away for seemingly random periods of time and at other times, landing me in bed for days at a time.
My efforts to resolve my symptoms
I remember going to talk to the doctor about the constant nausea and she basically asked me what I’d had for lunch as an example of my diet, decided there wasn’t enough protein in it and that I needed to take more care with my nutrition – job done! I felt completely dismissed.
Doctors would also suggest that I keep a food diary in order to see if any particular foods triggered the migraines but I always had this niggling feeling that what I ate had nothing to do with any of it. And so I thought, well, this must be just how life is for me. This must be it. (I think that in the UK healthcare system, if you push for something to be taken seriously, it will be. I believe my self-worth has always been very low and so I didn’t advocate for myself; I just accepted how it was.)
A new approach to my symptoms
And then, I went on holiday with a very dear friend who was suffering from chronic back pain and knew that I struggled with migraines. She told me about the work of a psychotherapist called Nicole Sachs who was, at the time, publishing a lot of content around migraines as a form of ‘neuroplastic’ or ‘mindbody’ symptom.
Neuroplastic symptoms are very real and physical symptoms but they do not result from structural damage or disease in the body. Instead, they induced by the brain as a result of repressed or unconscious emotions threatening to become conscious. The brain perceives these emotions as dangerous, as a real-life predator – and symptoms are produced as a warning.
Nicole Sachs developed JournalSpeak as a way of processing these emotions through free, unfiltered expressive writing. It is a way of processing emotions without overwhelming the nervous system. It involves 20 minutes of written emotional processing followed by a 10-minute meditation on a regular basis.
As my friend explained this to me, I literally began JournalSpeak there and then (writing on the cover of a packet of Weetabix because we were camping and I had no paper with me!). From that moment, I started I felt some form of immediate relief! Because my symptoms weren’t constant, the first thing I noticed was a lightness, a clarity to my thoughts. Something was beginning to lift off me. I couldn’t really explain it but there was a definite shift.
Then as time went by, I began to notice my migraine episodes gradually reduce (I would say I had at least one a week, which would linger around for 3-4 days even if it didn’t cause me to take to my bed). In myself, I began to feel more confident and relaxed. I was beginning to understand myself, my life and especially how my childhood had impacted me. I allowed my inner-child a voice and wow, it was like a magic trick!
How I went about JournalSpeak
JournalSpeak just spoke to me. I enjoy writing but this wasn’t ‘writing’. It was, as Nicole sometimes delightfully puts it, ‘like blowing your nose into a tissue’! Sometimes I would rant, I would cry (read: howl) and some days I would make huge realisations like ‘I’m just a human being so I can make mistakes!’ – who knew?! What a relief!
As I listened to Nicole’s guiding podcasts (on The Cure for Chronic Pain), I recognised myself in almost every episode – my ‘type A’ personality – perfectionist, people pleaser, needing everyone to like me, not feeling comfortable until everyone in the room was happy: all the attributes that point to trauma of which I began to realise I had plenty - the little ‘t’ type from my childhood.
What the healing journey looked like for me
As I entered my 2nd year of ‘doing the work’ or in other words a very regular JournalSpeak practice, I began to expose myself to what I had previously thought of as physical triggers for my symptoms, e.g. being in direct sunlight for too long, having a bright light shining in my eyes, certain smells, etc. When symptoms would threaten, I sent myself messages of safety. Previously I had met symptoms with fear-based thoughts: Oh no, oh no, I’ve sat too long in the sun without a hat. Instead, I would pause and say to myself, How interesting, this is what used to happen but now I know that I can sit in the sun without getting a migraine. I wonder what these symptoms are trying to tell me’ . Often the sensations would then begin to dissipate. I started to smile when I could feel sensations beginning - and this seemed to help too!
During my 3rd year, I began to notice that when I went to work, a difficult internal tussle would arise. There was a part of me that needed control, for example by writing an extremely detailed lesson plan full of amazing activities. But then the creative part of me would start pinging with other ideas on how to conduct my lesson and a huge conflict would be created within me as the two sides ‘argued’, with thoughts like, you can never stick to anything you’ve planned …. versus, you’re so straight laced and inflexible. Despite knowing of the importance of self-compassion, I would talk to myself in this critical fashion.
I had also learnt from Nicole the concept of ‘wearing life more loosely’ and how this can benefit the nervous system – and I realised just how much I physically and mentally braced, controlled and generally lived in a state of tension (the very oppositive of living loosely!).
I also became more aware of neurodivergence and the comorbidity of chronic symptoms* in this community and after a few months of waking up to a potentially different me, I was diagnosed as being AuDHD (a blend of autism and ADHD). And wow, did that start me on a whole new journey of self-discovery as well as a lot of grief over the life I had lived for 57 years. JournalSpeak has helped me to start processing this, without the need for migraines and other symptoms as an expression of my emotions.
What life looks like now
Although you wouldn’t know from the outside, internally I now live life very differently. I like to say ‘I feel on the inside how I have always seemed on the outside’. I am fully on my side, boundaried and present in the world. Migraines knock at the door and I am able to see them as a signal from my brain that there may be emotional distress there, and I know that it’s a learned neural pathway that my brain is going down so when I rest, for example, my brain will still question this and check-in: are we safe?
Key lessons from my journey
The tool of JournalSpeak has been a very effective treatment for my chronic symptoms. I still use it regularly today because I can still overthink and be ‘all in my head’ and this practice gives me a place where I can dump all that out, clear the weeds away and see life more clearly. It continues to help me understand me!
If you are interested in trying JournalSpeak, you might start by making three lists: 1) past stressors, 2) current stressors and 3) personality traits that create pressure. Each day, select an item from one of the lists, write it at the top of your page and then journal freely for twenty minutes. Just let your writing take you wherever it wants to go; let your emotions rise. You can say ANYTHING because afterwards you are going to destroy your writing. At the end of the practice, I like to meditate for ten minutes but you could take a walk in nature, listen to a favourite soothing song, whatever brings you back to a state of regulation.
For more information on JournalSpeak, you might enjoy watching Nicole Sachs describe the practice here on her YouTube channel.
References
*Quadt L, Savage G, Bond R, Davies KA, Critchley HD, Eccles JA. Likely neurodivergence and variant connective tissue in patients with chronic pain/chronic fatigue: a case-control study. J Psychiatr Res. 2026 Jun;197:125-132.
