Migraine Mood Changes: Depression-Like Symptoms

I was standing in the bedroom alone with my eyes closed, taking deep breaths. I didn’t know Hart had entered the room until he asked, “What’s up?” “I’m nervous about you leaving,” I said, and the tears I’d been keeping at bay burst forth.

Even though I don’t have an anxiety disorder, I have subclinical levels of anxiety in two situations: sleeping when I’m home alone all night and when Hart travels long distances. The Fourth of July brought both of those. During a migraine attack. It led to one of a handful of full-blown panic attacks I’ve ever experienced. It was horrible, but made a lot of sense in retrospect. For the few weeks prior to that night, migraine attacks were going straight for my mood.

I first noticed it during a migraine attack on Father’s Day. I had to stop looking at Facebook posts because they made me miss my dad too much. This isn’t abnormal in the realm of grief, but I also cried when I realized that the attack would keep Hart and me from enjoying our day’s plans. Even that’s an understandable reaction to the situation. Becoming racked with guilt when the precarious stack I’d built in the freezer caused Hart to drop a container is not normal. Instability in the freezer is a common occurrence in our household and it’s usually my fault. The container didn’t break and Hart wasn’t upset, but I felt like an utter failure. These are all indications of depression, but my mood returned to normal with that particularly intense migraine attack cleared.

Migraine attacks bring major mood changes for me maybe a dozen times a year. The experience is unpleasant and unpredictable, but never enduring. Until this summer. During many, but not all, of my migraine attacks over a three-week period, I cried at song lyrics that wouldn’t normally make me cry and was quick to anger in low-stakes situations, like not being able to find the pen I wanted to use. These are telltale symptoms of clinical depression for me. So much so that my doctor wanted me to start another antidepressant.

I held off on the meds for a week because it just didn’t feel right. It didn’t follow the pattern for depression. Then again, it didn’t follow the pattern for migraine mood changes, either. Still, I watched and waited. By the time that week was up, mood disturbances were no longer regularly part of my migraine attacks.

Migraine symptoms are so weird. (I swear I say that at least once a month.) They’re both predictable and unpredictable. I expect to have associated mood changes occasionally, but this is the first time I can recall three weeks during which many attacks were accompanied by depression-like symptoms. I’m wondering if the uptick was caused by a short-term change in my brain similar to what my doctor described when I suddenly became sensitive to Wellbutrin’s side effects:

The brain you have after a migraine attacks is not the same brain as you had before it. Any medication that acts on the central nervous system, like antidepressants, could interact with this new brain in a different way than before, causing an increase in side effects. My dose hadn’t changed, my brain had.

The changes to your brain after an attack are not permanent, so please don’t let this scare you. It’s more like a storm with high winds came through and there’s still dirt and debris in the street. The street sweeper will get to it eventually, but it may take some time.

This explanation makes intuitive sense. The Father’s Day migraine attack that kicked all this off was particularly intense and odd. My thinking was way off. Despite being drug-free, I was thinking as if I’d smoked marijuana. That’s never happened in quite this same way before. Perhaps the celery that triggered the attack was genetically modified to have a psychedelic effect.

Whatever the explanation, the problem seems to have subsided for now. My mood has been stable for about a month. I’m grateful for the increased empathy that came from my tiny glimpse of insight into what panic attacks can be like. And I will be grateful if I never have to experience one again.

(In case you’re curious, the grief I’ve been wrestling with this summer has been entirely independent of migraine attacks and migraine mood changes.)