Migraines, which have been studied for over 2,000 years, and modern medicine is no nearer a solution than were the Romans.
Migraines are miserable. They ruin days, plans, work, family time – and for some people, they arrive out of nowhere. You take the tablets, lie in a dark room, hope it passes… and then a week or two later, back it comes. What’s going on?
Here’s the thing: for many people, the migraine itself isn’t the real problem. It’s the warning light. The body is saying, “I’m carrying too much here.” Modern medicine has been writing about migraine for over 2,000 years, yet we still don’t have a single, lasting solution — largely because most approaches treat the headache, not the hidden driver behind it.
That’s where hypnotherapy can help.
In my practice, I work with two main styles of hypnotherapy:
Suggestion / Clinical Hypnosis
Analytical Hypnotherapy / Pure Hypnoanalysis (IAH style)
They’re both useful — but they don’t do the same job.
This is the gentle, relaxing hypnotherapy most people have heard about. You’re guided into a calm, pleasant state (you stay awake and in control), and I give your mind positive suggestions. For example:
“Your body knows how to relax the blood vessels in your head.”
“You recover faster and stay calm.”
“You feel more in control around stress and tension.”
This kind of session is great for people whose migraines are made worse by stress, tension, overthinking, or fear of the next attack. It can reduce intensity, shorten recovery time, and give you a sense of control. But — and this is important — suggestion work is usually short-term. Lovely, helpful, but short-term. Ideal when you need relief now.
This is the deeper work.
Analytical hypnotherapy isn’t about masking the migraine. It’s about asking:
“Why does your mind need to create this symptom in the first place?”
According to the IAH model, many long-term emotional and physical symptoms are caused by bottled-up or repressed feelings — things we didn’t get to process at the time. The mind then finds another way to “speak,” and for some people that comes out as anxiety, IBS, blushing… or migraine headaches.
So instead of forcing the body to “shut up”, we let the real material come to the surface in a safe, private setting. Over 8–12 weekly sessions (about an hour each) we allow the natural healing process to happen — the same process that happens after a loss or a shock, only slower, gentler and guided. When those old feelings clear, the nervous system no longer needs to fire pain to get attention.
That’s the difference:
Suggestion = helps you cope
Analysis = brings it to an end
And yes — I keep to my promise: I never charge for more than 12 sessions.
If you can get over the grief of losing someone in a year or two, why do some people have migraines for 10 or 20 years? The IAH answer is simple: because the emotion behind it was hidden, not expressed. You can’t heal what the mind is still keeping out of sight. Analytical hypnotherapy gently brings it into the open, and once it’s out — it doesn’t have to come back.
This approach may suit you if:
Your migraines are linked to stress, people-pleasing or old emotional stuff
You’ve “tried everything” and it keeps returning
You get migraines after family rows, work pressure or feeling judged
You want a solution, not just pain management
You prefer working privately, online, from home
All sessions are online — so no travel, no bright waiting rooms, no sitting in traffic with a sore head. Clients in London, Chelsea, Croydon, Belgravia, Kensington, Holland Park, Marylebone, Mayfair, Hampstead, Notting Hill, Westminster, Knightsbridge, and across the UK can work with me exactly the same way.
Nobody can promise “you will never have another migraine again” — that wouldn’t be honest. But what we can do is remove the operating force behind it. When the cause is dealt with, attacks usually become fewer, lighter, or stop altogether. That’s a better outcome than chasing tablets or talking with a psychiatrist every month, for years.
Ready to find out which type of hypnotherapy is right for you — suggestion or analytical?
Book a free 30-minute, no-obligation online chat, and we’ll map out the best route for your kind of migraine.
Migraine London – professional, experienced, and focused on getting to the real cause.