after 40 years in bed...I AM NOW MIGRAINE FREE!!!

HELLO
My name is Sandy and I live in New Paltz, NY. I began to experience migraine headaches when I was a teenager, and they got worse as I got older. I am now 67 years old and have spent the better part of every week of my adult life completely bedbound. I met with over 20 neurologists (at the world’s best institutions like NYU and Yale) and tried various approaches that either didn’t work at all or made me worse. My symptoms of migraine resulted in me not being able to show up for many life events like my daughter’s high school and college graduations. As you can imagine, my marriage and friendships also suffered.

When I couldn’t make our planned Christmas festivities this past year, my husband’s college roommate referred me to Dr. Sarno’s teachings and I found the list of practitioners on the PPDA website.

I believe that finding Dr. Steinberg and learning her method for preventing the migraine mechanism was a god-send for me. I am now completely symptom free for 3 months…I was going to write sooner but didn’t want to “jinx” it. However, I now realize that I’m fully in control.

Her program is amazing: we met once a week for an hour and then for no extra fee we communicated briefly every single day to make sure I was following the program correctly...until I truly was all better.

If you are stuck in what she calls the “downward spiral” of migraine pain, look no further than Dr. Laurel Steinberg. I thank god for giving me the opportunity to have learned “The Headache Preventive Lifestyle” (a holistic approach she has had great success with) and for bringing this nice lady into my life. Her knowledge on migraine headaches and psychology is remarkable (she's a psychology professor at Columbia too)-- and she also helped me with my anxiety and relationships (sister and husband). Thank you.

 

Wow @JaneSandyJane! Thats an amazing story. It is miraculous how these concepts can transform our lives. I know they have mine. Thank you for sharing!!

 

Thank you Tim! I'm so happy that you found healing as well. Have a great weekend. I am thrilled to say I'm very happily about to leave the house for the whole weekend

 

Congratulations on your success! Would you allow us to publish your story on the Thank you, Dr. Sarno! website? https://www.thankyoudrsarno.org/ (Thank You, Dr. Sarno)

 

Yes! I would absolutely love to participate -- how do I do that? I'm not familiar with that page.

 

The site is here: https://www.thankyoudrsarno.org/ (Thank You, Dr. Sarno)
you just give me your text to post, I will post it for you.

 

Hi TG957: can you use the text that I already posted above? It's all correct.
Or is there an area to make a video?

 

There is no area to make a video unless you can post it elsewhere and I can put a link to it. I made small omissions from your text, since the website is Thank you Dr. Sarno, not Thank you, Dr. Steinberg, but left the essence of your post intact. Let me know if you are OK with it. Congratulations again!

 

While Dr. Sarno's work is a very important part of The Headache Preventive Lifestyle that she taught me, the program is so much more than just Dr. Sarno's teachings (I also read his 3 books and kept waiting to get better, but never did). I saw two other TMS psych practitioners before her with very little improvement (who I won't name).

Please make sure you put her whole name in so others can find her (She also told me Dr. Sarno had passed away, but I'm definitely appreciative of Dr. Sarno and this group) -- there are a lot of "Dr. Steinbergs" out there, including my dentist, as I believe it's a very common name. I had all but given up before my work with her, thought I had no options left and was going to be like that forever. I put my post up to help others not waste their time (or lose hope).

If you are reading this and have been through the rigamarole of migraine failures (or even if you are new to the world of migraine), see her immediately (the neurologists even had me on infusions of a dangerous medication called vyepti which tore up my esophagus -- the neurologist at NYU called me a "statistical failure," and also got crankier as time went on, ultimately asking me to not return). On our first call Laurel said, "I can help." She was right!!!

When I color my grays, I'd like to do a video - please send me the email address to submit it to. I wish I could print my story in the newspaper, to be honest. I now pray every day for a long life...but know I'll be enjoying whatever time I DO HAVE LEFT.

Thank you!!!!!! Sandy

 

Hi Sandy, I am so happy to read your post as she was my doc, too. I posted my story a few months ago. Dr. Steinberg helped me with migraine headaches! and even sent me a diploma w/ a gold seal granting me "Masters of Headache Prevention". Did you get one? I framed mine and put it on the fridge. Forget what I said above. This work didn't just help me, it saved me. And while migraine wasn't going to end my life, it sure was no way to live. I am completely symptom free now and back in graduate school.

I found the whole ordeal pre-healing to be traumatizing so I find myself scouring this page looking for stories like mine. High 5 to you, lady! What we went through with untreated and undertreated migraine was crazy for sure. I really loved The Mindbody Prescription and knew right away that my mind played a role in my symptoms (and a number of other symptoms throughout my life). Enjoy New Paltz. Mohonk is a family favorite; if you like Mohonk on Facebook they post 40% off deals sometimes FYI. D

 

DannyAndDana, I'm thrilled to hear of your success and I send you high 5's and hugs.

 

Jane, you can check your post and see it for yourself. I Dr. Steinberg's full name and only removed what I thought was duplication of your praise from the post.

 

Hi TG. Thanks for your note. Did I look in the wrong place? I'm not great with the computer. I'm including what I found below and don't see her first name, just Dr. Steinberg, which there are probably a lot of. Could I be looking in the wrong spot? I apologize if I'm not looking in the right place. I did ask my grandson for help.

Here is what I copied:
My name is Sandy and I live in New Paltz, NY. I began to experience migraine headaches when I was a teenager, and they got worse as I got older. I am now 67 years old and have spent the better part of every week of my adult life completely bedbound. I met with over 20 neurologists (at the world’s best institutions like NYU and Yale) and tried various approaches that either didn’t work at all or made me worse. My symptoms of migraine resulted in me not being able to show up for many life events like my daughter’s high school and college graduations. As you can imagine, my marriage and friendships also suffered.

When I couldn’t make our planned Christmas festivities this past year, my husband’s college roommate referred me to Dr. Sarno’s teachings and I found the list of practitioners on the PPDA website.

I believe that finding Dr. Steinberg and learning her method for preventing the migraine mechanism was a god-send for me. I am now completely symptom free for 3 months…I was going to write sooner but didn’t want to “jinx” it. However, I now realize that I’m fully in control.

I thank god for giving me the opportunity to have learned “The Headache Preventive Lifestyle” (a holistic approach she has had great success with) and for bringing this nice lady into my life. Her knowledge on migraine headaches and psychology is remarkable (she’s a psychology professor at Columbia too)– and she also helped me with my anxiety and relationships (sister and husband). Thank you!

 

Follow this link: http://www.thankyoudrsarno.org/2023/06 (June, 2023 - Thank You, Dr. Sarno)

 

Hi TG -- I did follow that link and I still don't see her first name (which is Laurel) in the post. I'm even wearing my reading glasses! Am I doing something wrong?

 

I added her name - sorry for the typo! Check again!

 

Hi @JaneSandyJane,
It's so wonderful that you've cured your migraines with the help of Dr Steinberg. For those of us who are still valiantly struggling and can't afford to pay for treatment, it would be great if you could share what specific things you did that helped you the most to become pain free.

 

Hello! I'd be most happy to -- we used a variety of techniques all at the same time, which she says is the secret, and that include a huge "psycho-educational program" on migraine and TMS, lifestyle and mental health w/ book therapy to learn new 'scaffolding' for choosing my response to life problems. Formerly, I didn't really understand what it meant to have a choice in how I think about and respond to things.

We began with the Dr. Sarno journaling program (that's available on this website somewhere) to help me figure out what I bother myself about (my new language at work!). Then we moved through my topics taking into account my philosophies, family constellation/religious values and personal approach preferences to handling each individual subject that I troubled myself about in my life and then came up with thought/behavior alternatives and experiments. I thought that it was funny to call them experiments, but that now makes sense to me.

What else...we used the ABCDEs, we read a fun article called "Fuck Yes, or No!", some mantras and mindfulness exercises (the one with the feather) but most important, is that she diagnosed me with "OCD mostly without the C" and helped free me from those obsessive, negative thoughts. Her Ted Talk helped me to reinterpret anger and deal with my escalated anxiety (I asked JanA if she could post that as I'm not sure how, but it's available online for free).

Some big topics were arguing with my adult daughter, sister, troubled friendships with people who treated me badly but not terribly, anxiety about not being around anymore and not really liking myself before. Some of the thinking exercises included setting practical expectations, designing healthy relationships and associated practices, dealing with frustration intolerance, self-care rituals, protocols for handling anxiety, among many others. I laugh thinking of the 27 topics I threw at her. I'm not an easy one.

I learned that her treatment of migraine is very whole person focused and is somewhat different than the treatment she uses for other TMS symptoms, in that migraine also responds well to specific lifestyle changes (done at the same time), though I'm sure that all health-mental health problems respond to healthy routines, that we designed together.

I do have other life problems I deal with but when your pain is no longer "where your personality lives, in your face" as she said, I have a much healthier grip on stress and also a lot of new techniques that I've learned how to use with ease.

I can't believe how long I suffered and how extreme my symptoms were, which is why I keep coming back to this page as I'm constantly surprised about what my life had become, still making sense of it all: facial pain (like a pulling feeling but my face looked normal in the mirror), nausea, pounding headaches, sparkles and weird transient black spots in my vision that always were fleeting but disturbing, a leaky eye, an off feeling almost every day, and very rarely, dizziness. I was undergoing terrible quarterly infusions of a medication called vyepti that tore up my GI track. When I first mentioned how badly I felt on Vyepti to her she said, "Oh, yes -- that's a bunch of crap!" I laughed and that was correct. She about knows every medicine..or many it seems.

I don't take any medication now but spoke to another patient who is also symptom free who was able to reduce her medication by 80%, so the custom-tailored approach is obvious.

It's good to have already read the Dr. Sarno book The MindBody Prescription or at least his first book to get a big head start. From my feverish (possibly a little compulsive) reading here, a lot of patients are healed fully by reading these books! I hope that will be you, too.

I worked with a different TMS therapist briefly before working with her, a man, who never asked what the doctor said or if I even saw one but she took a great interest and spoke with my neurologist twice. I realize now that he was supposed to ask about that work and work with my care team, but didn't have an interest.

Everything came together and helped. Every journey is so different, I hope this helps somewhat. For me, it was very special.

I'm now back in graduate school even at my age. I think I have a number of great years ahead of me. I hope you do, too. I'm away visiting my sister w/ my grandson. Best wishes.

 

Wow Sandy! I couldn’t have said that better. Bad weather here and not a twinge in sight.

I think I may stop reading the pain stories for a while and only focus on the success stories but I will pray for healing for all. Enjoy your trip. Dana Siegel

 

Hi Sandy,

Many thanks for taking the time and trouble to describe the process you went through to become pain free. Although it was obviously a journey essentially tailored to you, there is a lot you have mentioned for me and others to consider using and incorporating into our own efforts to become pain and other symptoms free and it's interesting that your recovery involved using a lot of techniques all at the same time. (I have been doing TMS work for a long time as, unfortunately, I wasn't a 'book cure' and, although have made some profound progress, I haven't succeeded in becoming totally pain and other symptoms free, so I'm still 'experimenting'.) I hadn't, for instance, come across the floating feather meditation technique before, so I looked it up and will start using it. (For others who may be interested in trying it, I found a description of it here https://davidvago.bwh.harvard.edu/the-floating-feather-meditation-technique/.)

I also hadn't read the Mark Manson article about "Fuck Yes, or No!", so I also googled that and found this on his website https://markmanson.net/fuck-yes (again, I give the link for those reading this thread who might be also be interested in looking into to it) and I'm now starting to read this article about using his technique in connection with 'grey areas' https://www.meganhart.coach/post/this-is-how-to-know-what-your-fuck-yes-fuck-no-feel-like

I'd not heard of "ABCDEs" before either and found that it's the process used in rational emotive behavioural therapy -- (for those interested, the following article gives an example https://counsellingtutor.com/cbt-abcde-model/ (CBT and the ABCDE Model • Counselling Tutor)).

The above seems very interesting too -- what did Dr Steinberg exactly mean about the pain having been "where your personality lives, in your face"? (I should say that I'm a Brit, so please forgive me if it's a well known phrase in the US!)

Thanks again for your response; it's greatly appreciated. I'm in my mid 60s and have had disabling TMS pain and other symptoms for decades and would like to be able to do more with my life before I 'shuffle off this mortal coil'. Success stories like yours are an inspiration!