As a new media editor, burning the midnight oil chasing trending topics and jumping from one back-to-back voice meeting to another is my daily grind – and how migraines clung to me for three solid years. The worst part of this condition isn’t the physical agony, but the psychological isolation: when you tell your colleagues “my head’s splitting”, you’ll mostly get responses like “Who doesn’t pull all-nighters? Just tough it out.” When you vent to people around you, you’ll only receive a few bland words of comfort. After all, unlike obvious physical ailments, migraines aren’t visible, making it hard for others to take them truly seriously. As time went by, I learned to hide my pain: when the ache became unbearable during overtime, I’d sneak to the pantry and huddle there for five minutes; I’d tear off the packaging of painkillers and stash them at the very bottom of my drawer, afraid of being labeled “overly dramatic” or “unable to handle pressure”.

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The real turning point came from a work mistake. During a major sales promotion period, a migraine attack made me miss a critical piece of trending news, and my supervisor called me in for a talk. As I walked out of the office, my temples were still throbbing violently, but I knew clearly: if I kept pushing myself through the pain like this, not only would my body break down, but my work performance would also take a hit. I had to find a way to make everyone understand my situation without sounding like I was complaining deliberately.

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Back at my desk, instead of sneaking off to ease the pain as I usually did, I opened the team’s shared document. I didn’t ramble on about how miserable I was; I just wrote objectively about how migraines affected my work, along with a few collaboration methods that could reduce my discomfort and prevent mistakes. At the end, I added a line: “I’ve tried this for a while, and it works well – colleagues who need it can also take a reference.” After typing those words, I didn’t overthink it, closed the document, and went back to rushing my draft, seeing this as nothing more than a necessary work communication.

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To my surprise, when I opened the document early the next morning, a long string of replies had piled up below it. Colleagues from the design team volunteered to help optimize the layout to make the content clearer; my supervisor directly commented, “Implement across the department,” and asked HR to follow up on purchasing protective supplies like blackout panels and noise-canceling headphones; even the liveliest intern in the team left a message saying she’d bring migraine-relief peppermints from home to share. What was more unexpected was that this simple note later became a template for colleagues from another department.

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Today, this little note has become a wellness work staple for our team. Colleagues will actively avoid scheduling meetings during my sensitive hours. When we’re working overtime, someone will remind me, “It’s time for your five-minute break.” We even exchange tips for relieving fatigue together.

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It might sound a bit unfeeling to say this, but not every workplace is as humane as Amy's Women Empowerment. Even so, there are always more solutions than problems. The workplace may not be the best place to seek emotional solace, but with an objective, practical solution, you can still make the people around you understand and cooperate with you. I want to share this experience with all working professionals and students: sometimes, swapping “I’m in so much pain” for “Here’s how we can cooperate” is the key to getting more people to understand you. This isn’t about one person relying on another, nor is it about one person taking care of the other – it’s just about lending each other a hand, so we can all move forward more easily.