Chronic tension headaches are normally not anything terrible, though they may indicate that you are in serious need of some kind of massage. However, telling yourself this when your head is throbbing slightly and the pain makes you want to gag is less than easy. Your rationality means nothing to your anxious brain.

Last night I had difficulty falling asleep and ended up experiencing aura. This is, according to my mum, a genetic case of ocular migraine. Aura is scary and worrying and as an emetophobic anything preceding a migraine is not welcome at all. Sure enough a headache started - tight band of pressure as is familiar to me, plus pain in the back of my head. Paracetamol eventually eased me into sleep at around 5:30am. Upon waking, the headache remained. Ugh.

I have some experience of nausea with migraines - when I was younger I would have a kind of 'aura' (I would see the same sequence in front of my eyes and be left with a horrific headache on numerous occasions over a period of a few days. Once this made me sick immediately after the aura. Other times I would just have the headache. When I was fifteen I had a bad headache at school for a couple of hours until I was sick. Around the same time I had a period of tension headaches every day.

It's hard to describe the fear that grips an emetophobe when nausea looms. I don't really know what I think will happen if I'm sick, but I know that it's the worst thing in the world. Headaches make me so paranoid because I don't remember feeling particularly nauseous when I had my last migraine - I was very suddenly ill. I think the spontaneity of nausea and vomiting makes my phobia worse - it could come at any time. Whenever my head twinges, whenever I feel dizzy, whenever my stomach makes a noise or I get a weird taste in my mouth - my brain goes into overdrive. What does that mean? Why is my body doing that? Does that mean I'll be sick? Oh god oh god oh god.

It's really fun. I'm actually in Falmouth at the moment and I'm so grateful that rain showers stopped my family going out today. I'm trying to imagine sitting on the beach with a headache like this - ugh. I'm just praying that maybe I'll wake up tomorrow without feeling like someone's taken a hammer to my head.

Hope you're all well (wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy) and hopefully I'll have some pictures from my holiday up when I get home next week.

Catherine 

xxx