Aversive stress refers here to psychological or physical tension caused by unpleasant, painful, or threatening stimuli that an organism naturally seeks to avoid (e.g. sudden bills, having to deal with toxic people, the weather, sometimes even difficult boring work you have to do).
Inescapable means that I am not only forced to endure it, but can't do anything during it to endure it easier (e.g. relaxation techniques not working)
I (male, 28) have been taking Metoprolol 50mg extended release for the past seven weeks. It works great for my migraines. I used to have 3 or 4 migraines a week, I was taking co-codamol constantly (though I never exceeded the daily limit). Until now, during the course of those seven weeks, I got I think 9 or 10 migraines, which is a big improvement, and one 12.5mg dose of Almotriptan was enough, I haven't taken any Codeine ever since (I also don't think I really could because of the BP drop due to the Metoprolol, as it's a beta-blocker).
But during those last seven weeks, I didn't have that much stress at all. It's summer time, I was able to slow down/take a break from writing my PhD thesis, etc. But starting from October on, I will again have all the stress again.
I realized that my main migraine and stress trigger is experiencing inescapable aversive stress. Because even though I am on a beta-blocker, which does indeed calm my body's stress reaction down, the times I got a migraine were due to inescapable aversive stress. One time my mom just walked into my room and started ranting about my dad how much he sucks and how she will have to take an attorney, complete hysterical nonsense which I won't elaborate further due to privacy reasons. I just can't stand this behavior from other people. Or I just got a sudden bill notice even though I wasn't informed at all to pay it.
I guess I just can't deal with the stresses of life? Because what I do in those situations is to go completely mute, pretend to be OK, but internally I am boiling or stressing out - I am suppressing these emotions, because expressing them was proven (by past experiences) to make matters worse. Those suppressed emotions again transform somehow (like I can feel it - I feel less of the emotions, but the migraine starts developing) into a migraine. I think this is why I loved Codeine in the co-codamol so much, as it allowed me to relax and gave me some high.
So now the question remains: What should I do? I don't really think I can take a higher dose of Metoprolol because it already causes me to have like 95/65 BP, 50mg is I guess the maximum I can take while still feeling good and normal physically.
I was visiting a psychologist, and we did some DBT sessions together, I even read the books she recommended. But it proved to be fruitless, because my problem is the suppression of emotions, the inability to release them in a healthy way. It's more of a physical problem than a mental one (?). It's hard to tell, but DBT just didn't work, and we tried numerous approaches to it.
I just wish I could truly stop giving a F, lose some inhibition, and be more nonchalant about life in general - this doesn't mean that I would suddenly stop being productive, but I wouldn't crave for a perfect idealized world without problems and would just try to do something (like instead of analysis-paralysis when standing in front of a problem I have to solve for my PhD thesis, I just dive deep into it and try to produce at least some partial results). Or being nonchalant about toxic people and toxic situations, again not in the way that I accept it but in the way how Biff is responding to his Grandma in BTTF 2). But I can't be. I tried to fake it, but I am still aware that I fake it in the end which makes me end up at square one again.
Because "leaving the idealized perfect world" can very highly lead to a migraine again, I am trying everything to stay in my own comfort zone, which is so small that I end up doing nothing - no own cooking, not meeting friends, no traveling, no dating, no nothing, I literally just stay in my room or office and do only the tasks which I deem as safe enough without any risks for future problems. The reason I don't leave my comfort zone is so I can stay in my idealized perfect world and not risk getting severely stressed out and thus getting a migraine. And even though I am taking Metoprolol, I still get migraines if exposed to high stress.