19-year-old girl
Hello, my name is Natalie and I’m 19 years old.
For as long as I can remember I’ve always had headaches in the forehead area. But with time they got worse and worse. Then a marathon started between visits to all sorts of doctors and stays in hospital. My body was investigated from top to toe. Always with the result that I was healthy and shouldn’t actually have been having this pain. Nothing was found out in the hospital, either. Several doctors suggested that I was imagining the whole thing or was just malingering. I began to doubt myself and my sanity. At the same time, I was absent from school more and more, and my classmates were putting increased pressure on me. I ended up in a real vicious cycle of school pressure, absence from school and horrible bullying. A friend mentioned the Datteln clinic to me and my parents. Here for the first time I had the feeling that people believed me and really understood me. Here there were other kids my age who had experienced similar things to me. Suddenly I wasn’t alone anymore. With targeted exercises I’ve managed to distract myself from my pain and to relax. One great learned exercise was the reciting of positive thoughts. For the first time I was able to control my pain with the power of my thoughts. A great feeling to know that you aren’t simply at the mercy of your pain.
I continued with the exercises at home. I forced myself to go to school, even when I would rather have just rolled up in bed with the pain. And in fact my pain began to change. Then unfortunately I was in two car accidents within a short time. My success with pain control was lost and I was in worse shape than before. I went to Datteln again and freshened up on what I had learned. And things got better again.
At home again I tried to put everything into use that I had learned. I changed some exercises in order to be able to integrate them better into my daily life. I wasn’t absent from school due to headaches anymore and also the bullying stopped.
This year I passed my Abitur and will soon be leaving for a year abroad. Five years ago I wouldn’t have thought I could manage that. But I did manage it, I don’t have headaches every day anymore and I can go to concerts and sit in the cinema without big problems. My head will always be my “weak spot”. If I have extreme stress or if I don’t feel well, for example, the pain returns very quickly. But at any rate I’m much better than before the therapy.