Your body is trying to tell you something but you keep ignoring it
Why does your body keep sending you flares when you’re just doing what everyone else is doing, maybe a little faster. It’s not like you’re feeling stressed, at the end of the day you’re just busy and a parent.
And it seems that everything comes right when you cannot afford to slow down, literally at the worst possible time. That’s when you get the migraines or autoimmune flare-ups.
Your body doesn’t care about your calendar. And the gap between what you feel emotionally and what your body is actually experiencing, it's bigger than you think.
Your body doesn't differentiate between good stress and bad stress
To your nervous system, a promotion, a move, a new baby, a big project you're actually excited about… it all feels like the same signal. You go into fight or flight mode, and if you're someone who's been running at that pace for a long time, it stops feeling like stress and starts feeling like normal.
And that’s basically what your body is trying to bring attention to, it’s literally just doing its job.
The self-talk you use during a flare-up is making it worse
"I can't handle this." "This is so unfair." "Why does this keep happening to me." Completely valid thoughts — and also, neurologically, fuel on the fire. When you're already in a flare, your nervous system is already activated.
The language you use in response either calms it down or amplifies it.
How you speak to yourself and the language you use matters. It’s not really about adding more noise to an already overwhelmed system.
Prevention and flare-up management are two completely different skill sets
What helps you stay well is not the same as what helps you survive a bad day, and trying to use one toolkit for both is why nothing seems to work.
Prevention is the slow, boring, consistent stuff: sleep, hunger cues, noticing when you're running too hot before things go sideways.
Flare-up management is the plan you make when you're well, so that when you're not, your brain has somewhere better to go than autopilot.
Being on autopilot is not serving you
When pain or illness hits, your brain defaults to whatever got you through it last time — even if last time involved three days of white-knuckling, being short with everyone you love, and forgetting to eat.
Survival counts as a win to your nervous system. It doesn't care if you were comfortable.
That's why having a written plan — what are my early warning signs, what are my triggers, what actually helps — matters so much.
When you're overriding a pattern, your plan matters.
The right care team changes what's possible
Being dismissed, being told it's viral, being handed a prescription and sent home — it does something to you over time. It teaches you not to trust yourself. And when you stop trusting yourself, you stop advocating for yourself, and the whole thing compounds.
Finding providers who actually listen, and who validate your experience and work with you rather than at you, it’s something every working parent should do.
Because you deserve a team that treats the whole picture, not just the symptom in front of them.
If you feel like you’re at the mercy of your body or the healthcare system, and want to go deeper…
This post was inspired by my conversation with Julia Bitter — registered nurse, holistic nurse coach, and one of the most grounding people I've had on the podcast. We talked about chronic pain, the bio-psychosocial model, pain reprocessing therapy, and why your body might actually be your greatest teacher. It's the kind of episode you'll want to send to every parent you know who's quietly dealing with something.