American Woman Sleeps With A Headache And Wakes Up With English Accent: Meet Michelle Myers

Michelle Myers is not crazy. She is not faking it. This American woman does have a serious problem, but it’s difficult for the mother of seven to convince people.

Many Americans find the British accent hot, but it’s only made life more difficult for Michelle Myers. One night, she was suffering from a headache and went to sleep. The next morning, she woke up with an English accent. The Buckeye, Arizona, woman claims to have never left the United States.

This was not the first time Michelle Myers woke up with a foreign accent. The first time, she woke up with an Irish accent. Then, she also woke up with an Australian accent. However, it did not last more than a week for the other two accents. She woke up with a British accent a couple of years back and it hasn’t gone away. The problem is people don’t take her condition seriously.

“We just really want to be taken seriously.”

Michelle, who is a former beauty queen from Texas, has a condition called Foreign Accent Syndrome. According to The University of Texas at Dallas, Foreign Accent Syndrome is a speech disorder caused by brain damage that happens during a brain injury or a stroke. The damage may also be caused by multiple sclerosis or even conversion disorder, a condition in which neurological symptoms can’t be explained through medical means.

People with Foreign Accent Syndrome may change their accent from Spanish to Hungarian, British English to French, Japanese to Korean and, as in Michelle’s case, American English to British English.

The 45-year-old Arizona woman says people want to make sure it’s not her psychological problem to have a British accent. The condition is so rare that people are hardly aware of it. But, the condition is often associated with a deeper physical problem. Her bones used to hurt when she was a child, she said.

Michelle has told ABC affiliate KNXV that her medical records state she has Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. According to the U.S. National Library of Medicine, people with EDS might have soft and fragile skin. They tend to get scarred and bruised easily.

Michelle is leading a sad life because of the condition, as she feels like a different person altogether. She does not call her kids’ names the way she used to. However, she still spends a lot of time with them.