Most of the time, I control it. Except for after a crash…a “flare up”.

I’ve taken on too much, pushed it too far, maybe something or someone has tipped me over the edge of my stress limit.

Symptoms feel out of control; serious symptoms, downright seriously scary symptoms at times; ghastly “walking corpse” feeling, extra crushing chronic fatigue, everything’s misfiring, it’s gone awry, it feels dark; any or all of these…overdone it.

I’m scared, truly scared, shaken…surely this can’t be my fibromyalgia, when it’s THIS bad…THESE DEEP CUTTING THROUGH YOUR CORE KIND OF SYMPTOMS…what if it’s a brain tumour, a stroke, an aneurysm…cancer? Should I see my doctor? And then, what if I do and it is “just” fibro? I’ve started a round of tests and even more stress (which, if it’s fibromyalgia, will make the symptoms worse!) for nothing.

And if it is indeed fibromyalgia…have I overdone it…lost control…pushed too far…can I “get back”?

This is my fibromyalgia…at it’s worst…the “flare up” that everyone dreads…a really bad flare up.

So what do I do about it? Well, surprisingly maybe, not as much as you’d think.

So let me explain.

Yes, after over fifteen years of living with fibromyalgia and no matter how many times a “bad” flare up happens to me, I get jarringly worried at first…upset and unnerved as seriously scary symptoms set in (I’m not even sure if they ARE fibromyalgia so now I have to go THAT route of worrying if something else is wrong with me!)…worried I have pushed too far (and/or allowed others to push me too far)…not sure if I can “get back”.

It can be absolutely grueling…for weeks…even months…scary as hell…I pull out all stops…including every and all the mindset tricks I have built up in my repertoire by now to reduce the bigtime stress/worry that accompanies the flare up of symptoms (AND likely caused the flare and now threatens to make it even worse)…fake it ’til you make it (whereby I fake that I’m well to MYSELF to reduce my stress to take that out of the equation and therefore help reduce the symptoms) is a crucial one.

So I guess it’s strange then, that when people ask me how I get through flare ups, I’m always puzzled as to what to say, because, well, I get through them the same as everything else.

It’s just A LOT HARDER…A WHOLE LOT HARDER.

Okay, not exactly the same. First and foremost, I get more cautious…I try to calm down if the symptoms are alarming…and then I pay close attention and proceed cautiously.  I don’t want to miss some other serious ailment and fail to see my doctor if I need to. I look for the CAUSE, which, as I explained in my last post, if the symptoms are indeed caused by my fibromyalgia, the cause of the flare up is pretty much always increased stress or maybe an extended period of poor sleep (which I find is actually an increased stress too).

So I definitely take it a bit easier overall (and respect the flare) while I STEP UP MY FOCUS ON DOING THE NECESSARY THINGS TO GET BACK ON TRACK. I start with alleviating stress of any kind…I immediately work hard on losing the additional stress that I believe caused the flare…my health is more important than ANYTHING!..and the jarring flare symptoms always serve to give me an immediate and serious wake-up call, making it fairly easy to change my mind-set fast to lose whatever stress I was letting weigh me down to such an overloading extent. And I usually work on getting better sleep (some extra sleep here and there always helps everything!), like naps when I can fit them in and maybe I miss an early morning workout here or there to sleep in a little later.

But here’s the part that I was getting at earlier when I said that I didn’t do as much as you’d think and that I get through them the SAME as everything else.

So while I take it a bit easier in some ways here and there, at the same time, I just DOUBLE DOWN and BATTLE BACK HARDER THAN EVER…but…in the right ways. I keep living my life as usual, struggling to do all my same routines and commitments the best I can, while relentlessly doing the things that I know always help to combat my fibromyalgia…I keep moving through life to help to “minimize it”…I reduce stress by changing my thinking to help me to stay positive and “fake it ‘til I make it”…I work on getting good sleep…I continue to exercise and to eat healthy.

It’s the same formula or mix of things…it always applies…it’s always the path to wellness.

lt’s just so much HARDER to do it during a flare…but so much MORE IMPORTANT to do it!

And of course, it’s definitely a delicate balancing act, far more than the usual balancing act we perpetually live in with fibromyalgia…trying to keep up my normal pace of life in general, while, at the same time, listening to my body and cutting myself some slack here and there. How much to push through…because everything(!) takes extreme pushing to get through during a flare up (hell, it takes a whole lot of pushing to get through regular fibromyalgia life!) …and how much to take it easier…because, well, I’m already in a flare, “on the edge”…what if I go over the edge? What then?

I honestly don’t know, because so far, in over fifteen years, it hasn’t happened…I’ve always been able to “get back”.

And although it’s not been easy…AT ALL…I persist…throughout flares.

I’ve dragged myself through pretty much everything I normally do with fairly bad vertigo for weeks on end. And I can’t believe I did this(!), but I’ve crawled around my house doing chores when pain kept my back so hunched over that I couldn’t stand straight up. I keep pushing and dragging myself through workouts that would usually be much easier, four to five early mornings a week …in fact, I rarely ever miss a workout because I’m in pain and not feeling well from fibromyalgia, flare or no flare…once, during a severe urinary tract infection, (another thing I can’t believe I did!…and wouldn’t recommend! ) I even jumped off my treadmill to run to the washroom about every five minutes of a forty-five minute workout,  rather than miss the workout. I keep doing most everything the same. I’ve even continued with all the optional things, like my regular volunteer days at my three kids’ schools, helping on their field trips, and taking them (and their classmates and teammates!) to and attending all their activities, when they were growing up…all throughout flares.

Sure, I end up doing more than my usual impromptu naps (that’s when my family finds me lying around here and there, exhausted on the spot and trying to catch a few minutes to recharge‎, but then of course, I fall asleep) but then, after a bit, I push myself to get up and keep going on with my life. And, although I don’t take any ongoing medications for my fibromyalgia, these are the times when maybe I’ll take the odd ibuprofen or acetaminophen to help break a vicious cycle before it really gets hold of me.

But generally, I battle on, pretty much life as usual by all appearances (as in, it appears usual to an outsider…but it’s incredibly exceedingly rough!).

And the reason I do this and inflict this on myself by not changing much when I’ve crashed…when I’m in a flare up? Well, it’s another one of those things whereby I started for one reason…and I continue for another.

I started because I didn’t feel I had a choice. Fifteen years ago, when I first had fibromyalgia, I was raising a young family with my husband commuting out of town from early in the morning until after their bedtimes five days a week and I had no family or friends close enough or available to help me. So, flare or no flare, fibromyalgia or no fibromyalgia, I was always going to keep doing all the same things, continuing to raise my kids with all their normal routines, at whatever cost to my health. (I always say my health is more important than anything else…well, except for my kids.) That was my decision…I just kept plodding through.

So right or wrong, I persisted through. Granted maybe I didn’t need to keep up everything I did, but I wanted to because, when the flare was done, I didn’t want to be even further behind on my life. I couldn’t even keep up on everything I wanted and needed to get done while living with regular fibromyalgia.

And the reason I continue to do flare ups in this way? My kids are grown now. I could certainly take it much easier than I do, to get through flare ups now, if I wanted to. But I don’t want to.

Because now, in retrospect, when I look back over my fifteen years of experience with fibromyalgia, it seems to me that it was the best thing for my fibromyalgia that I felt I was forced to keep trying to live my life as close to usual as I could manage, throughout flares, even though it was absolutely grueling to get through each time.

If I had crawled in bed and stayed for weeks, like I for sure felt like doing, given I know now that when I sleep too much it actually makes my fibromyalgia aches and pains set in worse, it seems that would have just COMPOUNDED THE PROBLEM. If I had stopped working out, like I for sure felt like doing, given I know now that exercise is a crucial element for me in battling my fibromyalgia, that would have also just COMPOUNDED THE PROBLEM (in fact, I need my workouts to function to be able to get through the flare better and faster). If I would have stopped keeping on the move and keeping my gaze outward on my busy life, like I for sure felt like doing, I would have ended up feeling helpless and “down” and not positive at all and that would have just COMPOUNDED THE PROBLEM.

I would have stopped doing all the things that help me battle my fibromyalgia (at a time when I, in fact, need to do them more than ever!)…so much so that I wonder how (and if!) I could even pull out of a flare at all.

Certainly, it would take me much longer, and then I would be set back so much that I would be practically starting over in getting back into the routines that, as I don’t take any ongoing medications, I totally rely on to battle my fibromyalgia. As odd as this may sound, it is definitely easier to keep up my workouts through a flare than to stop them and lose my fitness level and then try to start up again.

And certainly, my flare ups would have been more severe, if I suddenly stopped doing the things that are my biggest (and only) line of defense against my fibromyalgia.

Yes, it was (and is) extremely tough to do. If I felt I could have possibly lied down somewhere and rested…for days…and weeks…sometimes months…I would have, in a heartbeat…BUT I’m so so glad I couldn’t, because by now, I know this is the way I will keep tackling flares.

It’s like when someone starts a new workout regimen and they’re stiff and sore all over from using the muscles in a new way, but if they don’t let up, and they keep it up regularly, they will get to the end result of being in shape and not being sore faster than if they had let up and then started over to try again. For me, it’s the same principle with flare ups…push right through them and keep up my usual routines and get to the end result of getting through them faster.

And when I tackle flares in this way, I am continuing ‎to work on my unwavering and determined overall battle with fibromyalgia that is leading me to gradually, but unmistakably, STEADILY IMPROVE over the years. And when each flare is over (because I have gradually built myself back up again), I have not lost ground with everything that I use to battle fibromyalgia on an ongoing basis.

So as my life changes and perhaps my life responsibilities and obligations lessen, and maybe I have more opportunity to do flare ups differently, I don’t plan on changing much. I may be able to slack off a little more, but I know for sure that I CAN, and I SHOULD, keep pushing and plodding through and keep living my life. I’ve even had the thought that I will still make regular commitments for this reason, so that I have to get out of bed and go places and do things and keep up routines.

As I’ve said before, “Right from the start I decided I’d rather do things with pain and exhaustion than not do them at all.” This goes for life during flare ups too. I was always hugely determined to not let fibromyalgia change my life ‎or my kids’ lives, no matter how difficult it was for me to do this…and I’ve found out, it turns out, the bonus is, that this seems good for my fibromyalgia too!

‎Yes, there was a time when I never would have thought that; I would have given my right arm for a month to just lie down somewhere and sleep, but after seeing how this works now for over fifteen years, I’m not so sure that would be wise anymore.

And in fact, I know this is going to sound hard to believe but, I’ve ended up not even spending one day in bed in the fifteen years I’ve had fibromyalgia…not one.

But hey, would I tell others to do it the same way as I have? I really don’t know, I’ve only done flares in this one way. I have nothing to compare to. But I can say that it feels like I am on the right track overall… I’m probably much better now at knowing where the fine line is between pushing and not pushing so as not to get to that flare up point in many cases in the first place…so my flares are fewer and farther between and much less severe. It was so long ago, maybe two or three years ago, that I can’t remember when the last real “crash” severe flare that I had was. Any since then any have been more of a nuisance and annoyance than anything else and I continue to get through them easier and faster.

Yes, this is all so personal, what is important to us, what we are willing to try, and to sacrifice, and to risk, to live our life in the way we want. There is much unknown about fibromyalgia, so our individual decisions as to how to combat it always carry risks, most of which are also unknown to us.

What I know is real is that I can look back and honestly say that, in the fifteen years I’ve had fibromyalgia, I’ve still lived my life as I wanted to, not too different than I would have if I didn’t have fibromyalgia.

It has not been easy, it has been excruciatingly difficult.

But it has been worth it.

It seems so simple…it SHOULD be simple…your body hurts, hmm, what do you do? A – Soak in a tub? B – Get a massage? Or C – Pop a pill? ‎Maybe…all of the above?

They all sound reasonable, but for me, none of the above is the answer.

I have fibromyalgia…I work on stress. 

You had lots of sleep but you still feel tired, hmm, what do you do?  A – Have a coffee? B – Have a nap? Or C – Have two coffees, then have a nap? They all might help…and sometimes I try them…but I have fibromyalgia…so mostly, I still…WORK ON STRESS. ‎

So let me explain.

It’s the very first thing I learned about my fibromyalgia, probably close to a year before I even got my diagnosis. I don’t think I’d even heard of fibromyalgia yet. And I certainly didn’t know then that I had already probably pinpointed the most important thing I may ever need to know about my fibromyalgia. It would take me years of muddling through trial and error living with fibromyalgia to realize this though.

For the entire year before my fibromyalgia ‘attack’-like symptoms came on, I was having very vague off and on symptoms. It was hard to put a finger on it, but something was oddly different and in a whole new way that I had never felt before…and it wasn’t good. My doctor did a full blood work up on me twice, but nothing.

But here’s the thing…when these uncomfortable vague “symptoms” came over me, I found I could lie down on my couch and completely relax and clear my head and just breathe deeply, I guess to instinctively, try to de-stress…and the symptoms went away.

I could de-stress and the symptoms went away.

Still to this day, it’s the first thing I do when I feel some throbbing or stabbing pain or some other unwanted symptom starting up…I take a deep breath or two and I relax‎…right on the spot…and I see if that makes even a bit of difference…if it does, I know it’s likely a fibromyalgia symptom and I need to check my stress level right away before the pain or symptom really gets a chance to take hold and stay awhile (or a long while).

Yes, at some point during my over fifteen years of trial and error living with fibromyalgia, I came to realize what an important piece of the fibromyalgia puzzle that stress is…and at some time I came to the point where as soon as any symptoms that I believe are fibromyalgia-related begin to start up, my first thought is always, (always!), “OKAY, WHAT’S STRESSING ME?”…and next, “How can I alleviate that stress to feel better physically again?”

Never do I think of what medication I can take for the symptoms, nor whether I should soak in a tub or maybe get a massage or anything else to “treat” that body part. This may sound odd, but I rarely try to physically attend to my body and/or the body part that is painful or aching or just not feeling normal or right in some way…I guess after all these years, I’ve come to know that it doesn’t seem to be about the “body part of the moment”.

It’s almost always about stress…the underlying CAUSE is, more often than not…STRESS.

Of course, I’m not saying others couldn’t or shouldn’t soak in a tub, get a massage or take medication to be more comfortable. Once in awhile I’ll take an ibuprofen or an acetominophen for a headache flare, or maybe put a bit of pain cream on my lower back, after I realize the (stress) cause and am working on it but I want a bit of relief here and there to get me through until I’ve alleviated the stress and the symptoms have subsided which can often take days, weeks or even months to play out in my body, depending on how stressed I was and how severe the symptoms were.

As I explained in an earlier post about how I came to not take any ongoing medications for my fibromyalgia in these last fifteen years, I guess I always instinctively worked on getting at the root of the problem, to try to ultimately get rid of the problem (fibromyalgia!). So, this is purely a personal thing, but knowing I am already working on the underlying cause, stress, while also being focused on my busy life…I usually just put up with the pain and/or exhaustion and/or discomfort of whatever the “symptoms of the moment” happen to be while I wait for the changes I’ve made in my stress level to play out in my body and reduce the symptoms.

In addition, seeing how the changes play out (on their own) provides a good indicator for me…when the symptoms are gone, I know I’m now no longer letting myself get stressed to the point that it is straining my health.

Yes, apparently all illnesses are affected by stress but in my experience fibromyalgia seems to be SUPER affected by stress.

And the stresses that it seems that most “regular” people’s bodies absorb without any obvious ill effects…well, ours get affected by them…big time! And it doesn’t have to be a major stress…even just low-level stress IS STRESS as far as fibromyalgia is concerned…even positive stress IS STRESS as far as fibromyalgia is concerned.

Half the time, I don’t even know I’m stressed at all until I get symptoms. Then, from experience, I now know the first thing to evaluate (if I’m not obviously low on good sleep…which IS actually also a stress on our body) is “Okay, what is stressing me!?!”. And then I realize, “Oh, I guess I HAVE been kind of on edge about some upcoming event or something.”  So I try to relax about it, and…wow, hard to believe, but…the symptoms disappear(!)…oh man, sometimes such minor stresses cause fibromyalgia symptoms!!

And I find that, since I’ve had fibromyalgia, EVERYTHING is just so much harder when I’m stressed. Any number of a myriad of uncomfortable and annoying to downright scary fibromyalgia symptoms will flare up. My workout that is normally easy to manageable for me to do, becomes gruelling to push through. A good night’s sleep becomes much less likely because of flaring pain‎. And I can feel the energy suddenly draining from my chronic fatigue body as it transforms into “the block”, seemingly immovable and being pulled down (with almost an accelerated gravitational pull) till it finds somewhere, anywhere(!) to just lie down and melt.

Yes, it seems kind of odd that I’ve written all these posts about my experiences with fibromyalgia and I haven’t written one specifically about fibromyalgia and stress until now, given that I believe it’s one of the two major influences on my fibromyalgia symptoms, the other one being lack of good sleep (which is in fact also a stress). But when I really think about it, I’ve been writing about it all along. So many of the things I’ve written about HAVE been directly or indirectly about ways to reduce or handle stress, because, well, in my experience it seems that STRESS IS THE PIVOTOL FACTOR THAT SO MUCH OF MY FIBROMYALGIA HINGES ON.

I’ve written about combatting fibromyalgia with a healthy lifestyle including working out and a healthy diet, which all help me to REDUCE STRESS. I’ve written about changing how I think, living in “deliberate denial” and “faking it ‘til I make it” to help me “minimize” fibromyalgia in my life by REDUCING STRESS. I’ve written about how knowing that I become what I say and the importance of being positive while being open to being inspired by others have all helped me fight off depression and REDUCE STRESS too. I’ve written about how hard I’ve worked on getting good sleep to seemingly help to manually reset my brain each day to REDUCE STRESS and feel better overall.

Wow, that’s a LOT of stuff I’ve written about to REDUCE STRESS…so, in a nutshell, how DO we reduce stress? It’s coming at us ‎from so many different angles and in so many ways. It’s so unpredictable…what life will throw at us and stress us…we just can’t control that, we can’t control lots of our life circumstances and the stresses that come with them.

So many stresses. Stresses of everyday life, stresses of being overloaded (especially WITH fibromyalgia), ‎major life events (apparently good and bad are equally stressful on us), world events, plus, unfortunately tragic life events that may happen to us or our loved ones.

Yes, they say there’s only two things certain in life, death and taxes. Well, I would submit a third…STRESS.

And personally, when there’s no specific stressful events happening in my life (good or bad), so much of my day-to-day stress comes from being so overloaded. Keeping up a busy life, wanting to do things for myself, trying to have time to do fun things with my family…all on a limited and unpredictable time line as to when I’ll be ‘good enough’ to do anything at all given my ever-changing, up and down, and needing-to-be-oh-so-carefully-managed-fibromyalgia-life. And then if I take on too much, it’s only ends up being self-defeating…(well, you know the drill)…symptoms and/or exhaustion flare up and I’m struggling to just get the bare minimum done once again!

And even when I know all the right things‎ to do and I am managing to do them, well, sometimes others impose obligations on me. Sometimes I’ve been hanging in there through a really tough, busy stressful time, but I’m managing to hang in there without setting off any major fibromyalgia flare (accomplishment!) and then someone wants me to fit something in and I just know that I would be overdoing it if I did it. I can tell that I’m at my “stress limit” of what I can take on…after over fifteen years, I know it well! So either I do it because others want, or…I choose my health and turn them down.

I’ve found that usually either pick leads to a total crash. Either I (over)do it to keep them happy and then crash, or…I turn them down and they dump on me (yes, even when I’ve explained my fibromyalgia situation) and the stress from that tips me over my limit and I still crash. It’s always a no win.

Anyways, my point is, one little thing (to someone else) can be the tipping point or the straw that broke the camel’s back for me and my fibromyalgia and stress capacity…and I get sent into days, weeks or even months of a flare up that I then have to work hard to “get back” from. (Again, I know you know!)

So can we limit it? Stress?

Well, we can certainly try to…try to limit our workload, our obligations, our contact with people and situations that we know cause us stress…IF we can. And there IS much we can do.  ‎But what about when we can’t? I mean, that would be great if we could always do that, but I certainly can’t…can anyone? Stressful life events happen to us…regardless of what we want, we can’t change that. And it’s often the people closest to us that ask of us to do those “tipping point” demands that cause us the overload of stress (of course…who else would it be?…it wouldn’t be a dilemma if it wasn’t someone we cared about). We can’t totally limit them…and we (really) don’t want to.

So what do we do?

Well, for myself, I want, as much as possible, a foolproof way to help insulate myself from as much stress as I can.

So, first and foremost I try NOT TO GET INVESTED IN THINGS I CAN’T CONTROL…that seems like a recipe for stress to me, to worry about things I can’t control…I work on the things I CAN control.

And I guess that’s why I look within. I look within to HOW I REACT to the stress that’s continually coming at me, especially even just the level of stress that trying to continue to live my life with the added burden that fibromyalgia brings.

That’s the one thing I CAN CONTROL…HOW I REACT.

So when my symptoms suddenly get worse or scary, it jolts me out of whatever often not really important thing (in the grand scale of life) was stressing me. It suddenly becomes “crystal” (as in crystal clear) to me that there’s nothing more important than my health, and I won’t let anything jeopardize it. And as soon as that realization becomes “crystal” to me again, the absolute top priority that my health is and that I won’t let anything stand in its way, I immediately CHANGE MY REACTION to whatever was going on…and the stress lifts…just like that…I actually feel lighter immediately…clearing the way for the symptoms to disappear.

The bottom line is always that nothing means anything without my health! If something’s standing in the way of my health, it’s got to go.

My health is like my permission to myself, to get out of any stress. Like a note from your Mom when you’re sick from school…”Please excuse ___ from stress as she is looking after her health.” Or my excuse to myself, to not have to worry…”Sorry I can’t have any stress, I’m watching my health.” Does that make sense?…it gives me the excuse to let myself off the hook from…stressing myself.

And to change my reaction, well, that’s easier than it seems, because I CHANGE WHAT I THINK first. I always realize that, more often than not, it’s not the actual circumstances or events going on in my life that are causing me the stress…the stress is coming from HOW I’M THINKING ABOUT THEM.

So in my usual stressed out “being overloaded” scenario, when I get jarred to the reality (with scary symptoms starting up) that I’m letting it stress me, and I take a good look at why, it’s always because I’m angry, frustrated or just “down” about being overloaded. And often, with my current life responsibilities, I haven’t been in a position to cut back on much. So (yes, I do this!) I just DECIDE I’m going to CHANGE MY THINKING to be happy(!) about being overloaded for the time being…I decide I will like(!) the hustle and bustle of a busy life and I will just change my attitude…and it’s done (and as the stress disappears, so too do the symptoms, sometimes right away, sometimes it takes a bit of time). My health is THAT important to me. Crystal.

But what about the huge never-ending stress that fibromyalgia itself brings? Well, I’ve definitely had to change my thinking to come up with ways to NOT be stressed about it as best I can…like to not be stressed about the sometimes downright scary life-affecting symptoms that crop up, because if they ARE caused by fibromyalgia, getting stressed will only make them worse and then I’m into THAT vicious cycle again.  So it’s times like that when I again change my thinking to “fake it ’til I make it” to lessen the stress so as not to worsen the symptoms and often this actually ends up making the symptoms totally disappear!

Yes, I admit, I just love to change what I think and suddenly my reality is changed too. It almost feels magical to me how it works. I can’t always control the stressful circumstances or event.

But I CAN control how I think about it and therefore how much power I give it to be able to stress me and therefore how I react as far as how much it actually stresses me.

Yes, that is definitely the key for me to dealing with stress…I may be able to reduce stress to some extent, but I surely can’t eliminate it, so I work on reducing (what it seems to me) its potentially very detrimental impact on myself and my fibromyalgia by altering my response to it.

So…crystal…magical…hmm…not the usual words when we’re talking fibromyalgia and stress. But, honestly, I feel THAT positive, even thinking about STRESS, which seems to me to be the main underlying factor affecting most, if not all(!), of my fibromyalgia symptoms…because I feel that I CAN do something about it.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I need to feel this…that I can do something that makes a difference!

And unmistakably, this IS something I can do…it’s something that we all can do…and what I know is real is that since I’ve realized this I seem to have more and more (and more!) control over my symptoms and subsequently my symptoms and flares are consistently getting less and less (and less!) over the years.

So. I have fibromyalgia. I work on stress.

I talk about trying to stay positive…I write about trying to stay positive…I do countless, countless(!) things to try to stay positive.  Yes, staying positive, that seems to be the name of the game for me with my fibromyalgia.

Or is it?

Because if I’m being honest, truly honest with myself…isn’t it, more often than not, really more about just trying to NOT be depressed?

I mean, I exercise and I eat healthy, I change what I think and I say what I want to become and so on and so on…by now I have a whole arsenal of things I do…and really, admittedly, the underlying reason I do all of these things is to try to, basically…NOT BE DEPRESSED!

In fact, I don’t know if I’ve ever worked so hard to NOT be something before!

So let me explain.

First of all, I don’t mean to sound glum about it. It’s just a fact I noticed, or rather suspected, about myself a long time ago. Now, I’m not any kind of an expert but somewhere back in my twenties, I began to sense I had a somewhat lower serotonin level, such that I needed to proactively do things to keep it up at a more desirable level to…well…just feel happier as I go about life. And I found that, for me, working out regularly seemed to do the trick. So I did that…for years. And it worked quite well…even helped me combat endometriosis I suspect, during those years.

But then during the next phase of my life, “the baby years” as I call them, I let up on my working out for a time and post partum depression “crashed” in one day and well, it just didn’t lift…oh, it mellowed somewhat in time…but it had set in for a longer run. And before I could lift myself back up, came fibromyalgia.

So, about fifteen years ago, with the onset of fibromyalgia (during this already “low” time) and the whole myriad of symptoms and chronic fatigue that goes with it, well that brought on a whole new dimension to working hard to keep my serotonin levels up! I mean, again I am definitely not an expert and have been just muddling through by trial and error living with this condition all these years, but it seems to me that fibromyalgia is trying to wage a direct war on my serotonin level!

Yes, I was focused on bringing up my serotonin level through lifestyle choices long before I had fibromyalgia, but it became especially crucial to do it WITH fibromyalgia…AND SO MUCH HARDER TO DO IT!

More crucial because…well, if you just do a quick rudimentary online search about serotonin, you’ll find that it seems that while the research is still ongoing (and debated) as to the exact nature of the relationships between serotonin and depression (and fibromyalgia), it seems to be generally thought that there are definitely relationships there. And while serotonin is known to have such a big impact on mood (depression and anxiety), it is also said to exert powerful influence over emotions, memory, pain sensation and tolerance, sleep habits and quality, appetite, digestion, and body-temperature regulation. (Hmm, do any (or all!) of these sound familiar?)

AND so much harder to do it because…well, having fibromyalgia, there’s just a whole lot more(!) threatening my ability to do the things that help increase my serotonin level.

For starters, with the utterly exhausting chronic fatigue and constant myriad of unpleasant and uncomfortable to downright scary and incapacitating symptoms coming and going, well let’s just say it’s extremely challenging to keep up a regular exercise regimen. So then, if I miss a work out, it can make it harder to get good sleep that night, so then I get so exhausted, it gets tougher to get anything done the next day much less work out, and then I’m behind on everything and still exhausted, so then I’m extra stressed and finding it hard to be positive…and so on…and so on… (you know the drill…)

Now see what I mean about fibromyalgia waging a direct war on serotonin levels? Some key things that are believed to help increase serotonin levels, exercise, being positive and reducing stress…well, they are made extremely difficult, if not ABSOLUTELY ASSAILED, by fibromyalgia!…EVERY DAY!!  ‎

So now that I really think about it, it seems to be a major crux of the fibromyalgia battle…keeping serotonin levels up to normal…trying NOT to be depressed…and it’s just such a vicious circle!! 

Because…let’s face it…life with fibromyalgia can be so depressing!

I’m sick…I’m tired…I hurt…every day…every month…every year…

AND I have to keep getting up and going out there and doing life like this…indefinitely.

Yes, depressing, very depressing, very very depressing…BUT…as depressing as this is…honestly, it lights a fire in me as I write this…as I face this. Because I get determined, very determined. BECAUSE I’M NOT GOING DOWN.

I’M NOT GOING DOWN. I’M NOT GOING DOWN. I’M NOT GOING DOWN.

It’s that simple, FIBROMYALGIA IS NOT TAKING ME DOWN! I won’t let it. When I’m faced with a problem I immediately start to look for WHAT’S POSSIBLE, not what I can’t do. And I always find that I CAN DO a lot! (How does that old saying go?…Where there’s a will, there’s a way!)

And so so much of what I can do always (for me) starts with what I think and quite often, changing what I think.

Oh yes, I exercise (for sure!) to bring my serotonin level up (I can’t emphasize enough how much I believe exercise is CRUCIAL to boosting my serotonin level…that’s why I always push myself so hard to keep working out no matter how bad or exhausted I feel). I had already gotten back to working out before my fibromyalgia diagnosis, but with it, I stepped up my work-outs to fit the battle I was now facing. Throughout my whole adult life, pretty much, working out has been my medication of choice. I haven’t needed to read the literature on it, nor look up the science behind it…I can just tell what it does for me.

As I’ve said before in a previous post, working out “normalizes” me…it totally grounds me…levels me out…and it’s immediate…and it’s lasting. I get on my treadmill feeling anywhere from normal to sometimes really down and sometime during those forty-five minutes, I seemingly magically transform…when I step off my treadmill, I can face the world and face it with a vengeance…I can conquer the world again and I EVEN want to!

And sure, I’ve eaten healthy for many years too, which my online search about serotonin tells me “is key” to avoiding a serotonin deficiency, so likely that’s been a helpful part too.

And I definitely continually work hard on getting good sleep…who doesn’t feel more positive when they are well rested?

But when it comes to what I think, well, that’s the part that I really find especially fun, that’s where I can pull all these nifty little tricks to change my thinking to see if they work to help me be more positive and reduce stress (both of which, in turn, apparently boost serotonin). So, as I’ve talked about in earlier posts, I change my thinking to “minimize it” and to live in “deliberate denial” and these definitely help me keep my perspective and feel more positive and less stressed.

I’ve also talked about “faking it ‘til I make it” and there’s a specific way I “fake it ‘til I make it” at times that is really helpful when I’ve suddenly realized that despite all my efforts to the contrary, a “lowness” has still crept up on me and I’ve felt particularly down for awhile. Usually I’ve just been too overloaded trying to keep up everything in my life (while fibromyalgia works against me EVERY step of the way) and the lack of control I feel from continually just reacting and chasing everything to try to keep up, and the resulting helplessness, have worn me down over time despite all my best efforts to keep positive.

So I can’t remember where I picked this up or if I just dreamed it up myself, but I just love it! When I suddenly “come to” and realize the “down” state I find myself in and decide I want to get out of it and get back to enjoying life, I’ve found this cool way to do that immediately! And yes, it involves, my favourite(!)…changing my thinking!!

So I think of a time in my life when I was happy and I just “live” there in my mind NOW. I “live” there now by remembering how that happiness felt and just simply transporting that feeling to now so I am feeling that happiness and energy again NOW as I go about my day to day business of life.

Do you understand what I mean? I guess I simply pretend I am in that time now and bring that mind-set to my life NOW…so, immediately, I am thinking and feeling that happy way again as I go about my daily grind…that happy energized mind-set is swirling around in my brain NOW. (Sort of like a “happiness transplant” I guess.) And suddenly, I’m back in the ballgame again, hustling around, feeling on top of things again. And then it snowballs. Just as the negative things always snowball into a vicious circle (with fibromyalgia), I find that so too do the positive things…snowball…but into a virtuous circle.

And suddenly everything is looking better again and I’m not simply “faking it” (happiness) anymore…I’m “making it”…and my spirits actually ARE lifted again.

I just love it when I do this…to be able to just instantaneously change my mind-set to happiness simply because I choose to…well, there was a time when I wouldn’t have thought that possible…I think I might have even thought it laughable. But, without a doubt, it definitely does work for me, certainly it’s just one more way to get that “boost” in positiveness started which usually “snowballs”‎ into something else positive, which affects something else and so on and so on (and oh yeah, my symptoms improve too!). And in this long term arduous fibromyalgia battle I find myself in, I’ll take every “boost” I can get…laughable or not.

And while that definitely works to help pull me out of a “down cycle”, I’ve now found another thing that I’ve noticed seems to help me to not get into that state in the first place.

Many years ago, I noticed this very curious thing happening with my brain. I would be working late, trying to figure out some complicated problem. I would pack it in for the night and go home and go to bed. And I noticed this many times…I would wake up the next morning and I suddenly now knew the solution to the complex multistep problem I had been working on the night before.

At some point I began to wonder if my brain continued to work on the problem as I slept. (Now I’m not an expert but if you search online, there is all sorts of research pointing to the known and possible capabilities of our brains to process and consolidate information as we sleep.)

So, awhile back, I remembered this conclusion about my brain that I had surmised, and with this in mind, I got to thinking that if it’s potentially possible that my brain is working all night while I sleep, why don’t I try to get it working on positive, happy thoughts so that it is “learning” and consolidating and perhaps even (maybe just my wishful thinking) reprogramming on a more positive (happy) note? I had been feeling a little down overall and I also realized that I was waking up every morning feeling very down and having to pull myself “up” mentally, every morning, just to face the start of another day of “pushing through” life with fibromyalgia.

So when I went to bed that night, and just as my mind had been filled with thoughts of the complicated work problems years earlier, this time I filled my mind with happy thoughts. As I lay in bed, eyes closed, waiting to drift off to sleep, I thought of three good things that had happened that day, maybe something I’d accomplished, maybe a success one of my kids had that day or a laugh I’d shared with them, or maybe even a good joke I’d just heard on late night TV.

And you know what? It actually made a difference! The very first night I tried it!

When I awoke the next morning, I immediately realized I felt…what a relief…“neutral”, I’ll call it. No, I wasn’t swinging-from-the-rooftops-happy…but…more important and such a relief…yes, such a relief(!)…I wasn’t that really, really “down” that just zaps your energy before you can even think about what you have to get through that day. No, I felt…just…“neutral”…able to get up and get going and face the day right away with no mental pull-up required!

It worked that first night, and it still works…every time I do it! Sometimes I’ve gotten out of the habit and forgotten to do it for a time, until I realize I’m waking up feeling really really down again. Then I get back to it.

Not too long ago, I changed up the things I think about each night, so my latest version of this, is that I think of four specific happy and positive things each night. In this order, I think of something I’m grateful for, something good that happened that day, something funny that happened that day and something I will look forward to that is happening the next day. I especially like the last one…deciding to look forward to something that will be happening the next day…because they say anxiety is about the future and the act of looking forward to the future feels like it helps to counteract and neutralize that anxiety on some level, and just maybe that helps to wake up feeling a little better about starting a new day.

So this little experiment is still a work-in-progress. Sometimes I forget to do it, or I am so exhausted that I fall asleep before I can even get through thinking of one or two things let alone all four happy positive things (but that’s a good thing, having fibromyalgia and being able to fall asleep fast!…and that’s still positive happy things swirling in my brain). So I’ll keep at it, it seems like it can only be a good thing, planting happy things in my brain for it to dwell on all night as I sleep.

And I love crawling into bed knowing that this is my little “happy” time, when I get to forget about any stresses or problems or basically, everything else in the world and just think my own little happy thoughts for awhile…makes going to bed feel extra cozy and relaxing and escapist(!).

EVERY time I do it I see a big difference in how I feel the next morning…I’m wondering if I can get to the point that I’m waking up feeling really genuinely happy each morning. The optimist I am, I’ll keep aiming for that, but for now…waking up with my fibromyalgia-aches-and-pains-body every morning…wow…”neutral”…I’ll take that any day! It’s a great starting point for my morning that, before too long, I can usually boost into a positive attitude as I get further into each day.

I love trying these things as I come up with them, it’s even a positive boost for me to just try them and maybe that’s a big part of why they work for me. Remember?..apparently being positive boosts serotonin.

But once in awhile, despite all my best efforts, life combatting fibromyalgia STILL creeps up on me and I’m overloaded trying to get everything accomplished while fibromyalgia works against me every step of the way. I’m overloaded, and I feel a lack of control and helpless and stressed and “down”, because of it.

And then I remember…JUST BREATHE…I realize that’s really all I have to do today…literally(!)…and the next day will come. If I just keep breathing, life will go on one way or the other and the next day will come and I’ll still be here. In that moment, the stress just releases and washes off me because I realize I don’t really have to do everything…in fact, in reality, I usually don’t have to do much of it at all, if any. If I “just breathe” today, the next day will come.

And then there’s other times that I realize that I don’t have to be “up” all the time at all…I realize it’s okay to be “down” sometimes. And once again, the stress just washes away from me in one fell swoop, because always striving to boost serotonin levels and not be depressed…well, that in itself can become a load and therefore a stress. So sometimes I have to let myself be down and just relax about it and just have a relaxing low key “down” day. And taking the pressure off to be “up” and just accepting the “down”, I find, more often than not seems to actually lessen the “down” feeling…but if it doesn’t…well, that’s okay too.

And that brings me to another thing I’ve noticed…and for a person who has fought tooth and nail to manage her serotonin level and not be depressed through two nonconcurrent long term chronic illnesses and basically her entire adult life…it feels like this is big!

I’ve noticed that being happy is just a lot EASIER.

I heard this a long time ago, but back then I didn’t really internalize it and get it, but for some time now, whenever this thought comes to me, I totally get it. Being happier is simpler, not complicated, it doesn’t carry all the baggage and heaviness and stress of feeling down. It takes less energy because I’m not carrying a burden of trying to fight to feel “up”. It’s lighter. Just even remembering that thought…that being happy is easier…makes the anxiety and stress wash away and down off my body and I feel lighter, like a big load off. It’s like it’s permission to just let go of the bad stuff, it’s freeing. My mind is suddenly clear…lighter.

Am I just walking around positive all the time, got it all solved? Obviously not because I have to keep‎ coming up with all these little tricks to pull myself up again here and there (even though I find myself gradually but unmistakably improving over the years, life with fibromyalgia is never easy!).

But that post-partum depression that I talked about earlier…the depression that just didn’t lift and stretched into a long drawn out depression of many years, before and during fibromyalgia?…I’d say it was like an “everything is gray” kind of existence…well, I was able to lift that about twelve years ago, three years into my fifteen-year battle with fibromyalgia.

And yes, I know…each person has to get there themselves…what I know is real is that these are deeply personal and complex issues…depression…levels of depression…fibromyalgia itself…and all intricately intertwined it seems…far beyond my knowledge and capabilities to know anything but my own personal experience and what sense I can try to make of it.

No, there’s definitely not a one-size-fits-all for these kinds of things but I wanted to write about it because I have to think there are others striving to getting back to “living in technicolor” rather than the “everything is gray” kind of existence that it’s easy, actually (I suspect) more likely probable, to slip into while we push or drag ourselves through life with fibromyalgia. And if so, maybe one of my ideas or observations or even little tricks might inspire or light a spark for someone else as they do for me…because if there’s anyone else who is anything like me, I know I’ll take any spark I can get.

So while my life turned back into technicolour twelve years ago, I continue to remain vigilant and fight to keep it there. I continue to strive to boost my serotonin level, with or without fibromyalgia that will continue. So I’ll continue to work out and eat healthy and change what I think to come up with little tricks to be positive or lessen stress. (I shudder to think of where I’d be if I didn’t do all this stuff.)

And WITH fibromyalgia…well, that is ALWAYS a work-in-progress working hard TRYING NOT TO BE DEPRESSED.

But I guess, NOW, if I’m being honest, truly honest with myself…I’m now working for even more …I’m going for gold…I’m aiming for better than just not being depressed…yes, I’m looking to be positive and happy!

And why not aim high? What do I have to lose?

Can’t think of a thing.

Can you?

Fibromyalgia and diet…hmm…

Well, eating healthy…sure it’s good for us…who doesn’t know that?…but the more important question for those of us with fibromyalgia…does it make a difference to our fibromyalgia?

Yes, that’s the question…because if it’s not going to make a difference for sure, WHY EVEN BOTHER?  Why bother to (perhaps) give up or restrict a lot of those “bad” (decadent) foods we love(!!) so much if we don’t know for sure it will make a difference?

I mean, if nothing else has motivated us to eat healthy by now, why would the off chance that it may help our fibromyalgia motivate us? Especially when we already feel so crappy from fibromyalgia…food is one thing we can still enjoy…why deprive ourselves and give up one of our main comforts?

And how can we know for sure? Really, it can be such a subjective judgement, whether something is helping our fibromyalgia or not, can’t it?  So…let me get this straight…we should take it on faith?…decide to give up all those delicious “bad” foods that we love on the OFF CHANCE that it will help?

Well I’m so glad I never had to make that decision!  But if I did, after my trial and error living with fibromyalgia for over fifteen years now, I know what I’d pick…hands down!

So let me explain.

First of all, it’s always a no-brainer for me.  If there’s a chance in hell it can help AND it’s something that’s healthy (and even advised!) to do anyways…I’m doing it! No question!

AND I actually LIKE that I have a reason (fibromyalgia) to make me do something healthy; it helps give me the willpower to do something that I know I should be doing anyways. In fact, as I’ve said before when I talked about my “combat mode” mind-set, (not that I’d recommend it, but) I’ve ‎ended up so much healthier for having had endometriosis and fibromyalgia!

And the reason I never had to make the decision?…I was already doing it…I had been eating healthy for years already, when I first got fibromyalgia. If not even before then, I definitely started looking for ways to eat healthy back many years earlier in my life when I adopted my “combat mode” (as I liked to think of it) mind-set to help me fight endometriosis. With my “combat mode” mind-set, “I would try doing anything I could do to feel as healthy as possible in every other way”, and this certainly included looking for ways to eat healthier.

Sure I continue to tweak things; I seem to always find ways to improve…I like to feel I am making myself healthier each time I find something healthy to add to my diet and I even find it fun to try some things and see if I notice a difference in the specific thing they are supposed to improve (like a banana before bedtime each night because bananas are one of the foods that are supposed to help with sleep…and they seem to!).

But since I have never made a drastic change in the way I eat since I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, I have often been left wondering what role diet has actually played in my fight against fibromyalgia.  I’ve seen others with fibromyalgia say it’s made a big difference for them…it seems that some even swear by the fibromyalgia and diet link and say changing their diet has cured them.

For myself, I guess I’ve always felt…I don’t know if it (directly) helps, but it sure can’t hurt!

And I felt that way right up until about a week ago…when I read an article written by a doctor about pain management…and this doctor discussed “the role of a healthy diet and the importance of exercise” INSTEAD of medications in managing pain. (which, by the way, is exactly what I’ve been doing….for fifteen years now…stumbled upon so long ago)

So it got me thinking (again) of the role diet plays in my fibromyalgia…and I started to REALLY think about it…and I realized it’s probably not just coincidence that I eat healthy AND I was able to start managing my symptoms well from very early on.

Yes, I’m definitely sure other factors have played a crucial part…I also exercised right from the start, even before my diagnosis.  And I’ve worked hard over the years to “minimize it” and to learn to read the signals and react accordingly…and to change my thinking to sometimes live in “deliberate denial” and sometimes “fake it ‘til I make it”…to try to be positive and to try to become what I say. And I’ve worked on my sleep (haven’t we all!!), now more than ever.

Certainly, diet has especially played an even more important role since I‎ got IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome) a couple years ago. Once I got the IBS diagnosis and knew exactly what I was dealing with, I was able to manage the symptoms fairly quickly through my diet.  When quizzed by my doctor as to my diet, I was told I was largely already eating the right kind of diet, so all I needed to do was tweak it a bit eliminating a few of the known hallmark offenders for IBS…my beloved coffee(!) and alcohol too (for quite awhile, many months) among them.

The pain, cramping and symptoms were bizarre for awhile…IBS setting off fibromyalgia pain setting off IBS pain. But my (already healthy) diet enabled me to get right on top of that…quickly…and my IBS was largely controlled (fairly easily)…and still is.

And when I say I eat a healthy diet, I am just eating pretty normal “generally accepted” healthy foods, nothing extreme, no specific diet limitations, anything in moderation…even treats here and there (have to have those!..knowing I can splurge here and there keeps me on the “straight and narrow” the rest of the time).

So I read labels to avoid trans fats, limit sodium and sugar and maximize fibre, roughly to recommended levels (recommended healthy diet standards for everyone).  I try to eat a healthy well rounded diet including lots of fruits and vegetables, whole grains, fish, chicken and some red meat, among other things, with the odd thing added in for a specific purpose (like walnuts, because they are supposed to be an excellent “brain food”…and they seem to be!).

When I search the internet just now and look up “foods that fight pain and inflammation” for the first time, I find that (coincidentally) I already regularly eat many(!) of them (like blueberries, salmon and olive oil to name a few) just in the course of trying to eat a well-rounded healthy diet.

So I guess I’ve taken it for granted because I’ve been doing it for so long, but yes, now that I really think about it, eating healthy probably does most certainly play a role in how I’m managing to manage my fibromyalgia (well).

I know overall I FEEL better when I eat healthy, I always have…and I know that, because I see how “off” I feel when once in awhile, maybe on a vacation or a special holiday, I go off of my regular eating routine.  And I always find, feeling “off” in some way, more often than not, translates into a domino effect with fibromyalgia and sets off a vicious circle of other fibromyalgia issues. So yes, eating healthy IS one more factor in the mix of things that I find are helpful to do to keep my fibromyalgia symptoms at a minimum.

How much is the “placebo effect” someone might ask? (whereby it’s helping because I believe it will help) Point-blank, I’ll just say that I DON’T CARE. I mean, we know eating healthy is good for us, period.  So if it has the added benefit of helping my fibromyalgia symptoms, I don’t care why.  If it’s simply the placebo effect, then bring it on, I’m fine with that, and I’ll keep believing so that I keep being motivated to eat healthy so I get all the benefits in all other areas of my health as well!

Why not?…seems like a win, win to me.

I’d even be willing to bet the placebo effect IS part of the benefit of eating healthy for my fibromyalgia symptoms. (and a benefit to anyone, with or without chronic illness!) I know I feel positive and pro-active when I make a diet change to eat healthier.  I’m excited to see what change it will bring, whether I’m eating walnuts for more brain power to combat fibro fog or switching up coffee for green tea because of IBS or simply trying to take off a couple pounds to feel lighter and more energized. No matter how small a change it is, it’s a positive step that always swirls around in my mind throughout the day and lifts my spirits because I’m being pro-active…I’m DOING SOMETHING.

And feeling positive and lifting my spirits reduces stress which (like many illnesses) always seems to reduce my fibromyalgia symptoms too.  So I’m getting the actual well-known health benefits of eating healthier plus it seems possibly a little placebo boost bonus.

And really…for me…it always comes back to…it gives me a reason to do something I should be doing anyways.  Feeling better with fibromyalgia gives me the motivation to keep striving to eat healthy.

Yes, eating healthy is just ONE MORE WAY TO FEEL BETTER in my fight against fibromyalgia and any diet restrictions are a small price to pay for the improvements I see, in my fibromyalgia symptoms and my life in general.

Getting started is always the hardest part, but for me, I’ve been doing this for years (actually decades) already so I see the results, which makes it all the easier to keep doing it. By now I find it easy to visualize the future and know how great I will feel because I am eating healthy, and this helps keep me motivated and disciplined. I have a strong vision of what I’m aiming for…and it’s continued health and wellness.

So I think of how I’m going to feel…BOTH ways…the sense of accomplishment and success of feeling healthy and well…versus the sense of failure I know I’ll feel if I don’t do something that (basically) I know I should be doing. I CHOOSE SUCCESS…because by now…after fifteen years of fibromyalgia and ten years earlier with endometriosis…I want to feel good more than anything else…that’s it in a nutshell.

Yes, I WANT TO FEEL GOOD.

And what I know is real is that eating healthy makes me feel good.

So, YES to fibromyalgia and diet. No-one can take it away from me.  It doesn’t depend on anyone or anything else. I don’t have to wait for anyone to approve it.  It doesn’t cost me any more money, say to choose apples and carrots over cookies for a snack.

And it makes me feel some control…it’s one more thing I CAN DO to affect a difference in my fibromyalgia fight…and if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the fifteen years I’ve battled fibromyalgia…it’s to TAKE EVERY INCH I CAN GET…because over time I’m finding these inches are adding up…and I’m slowly, ever so slowly, gaining back ground I thought was lost forever…and now that I am…I absolutely plan to keep gaining!

And if I can…maybe you can too.

Sometimes I just get sick of living with limitations.

I know we’re supposed to have balance, listen to our bodies, heed the warnings that the fibromyalgia symptoms are sending and try to rest when we need to…I’ve lived all that and learned all that for fifteen years now…but, come on(!)…don’t I get to have a life too?!?

I listen to my body, I heed the warning signals it is sending, that’s the crux of what I’ve built my whole battle (of fighting fibromyalgia) on all these years…heeding the signals the symptoms are sending, and adjusting.

But, come on(!), don’t I get to have a life too?

Because it feels so limiting…always having to worry if I will be overdoing it and need time to rest and recuperate…will THIS be too much?…will THAT be too much?…is EVERYTHING too much!?!  Tip toeing around this illness…it can feel helpless…not much control…depressing…

So I’m glad I’ve learned I don’t have to totally live like that!

Oh, I pace myself for sure…and I do listen to my body and heed the signals it is sending me…I have to(!)…but I push it too.  AND I PUSH IT A LOT.  After fifteen years of trial and error living with fibromyalgia, I’ve found my fibromyalgia has some “give” to it and I take full advantage of it.

In fact, it seems to me that “pushing it” certainly has a place in fighting fibromyalgia too.

So let me explain.

When I first had fibromyalgia, I had some vague symptoms coming and going for close to a year before it suddenly came on like an attack with a multitude of troubling and scary symptoms. On the first day of those scary symptoms (over fourteen years ago now) I can still clearly remember lying on my bed, feeling deeply, deeply exhausted, with a distinct thought that has come back to me off and on over the years.

You know how you occasionally hear it reported that some celebrity who suffers from exhaustion goes to some facility to rest and relax and rehabilitate their body for about a month or two?…well I remember thinking, that’s exactly what it felt like I needed to do. It felt like such a deep and complete exhaustion had come over me that ONLY two or even three months of totally unplugging from everything in my life and just getting a time-out from life somewhere to simply sleep, deeply, would do the trick. (I know you know the feeling.)

Well, obviously just wishful thinking. Not an option.  I had a very young family to raise; we had bills to pay. (I didn’t even have much time to lie on my bed that day and think that!)  So, ever since, it’s been like I’ve been trying to get that much needed rest…gradually…dispersed over the years…whenever I can…amid a busy life…slowly…ever so slowly…bit…by bit.

So it seems to me if I totally listened to the signals my body was sending and obliged…well, I’d never get out of bed‎…I’d never do anything! (None of us with fibromyalgia would.)

Therefore it’s always seemed to me that if I’m going to go about living my life, I have to do a certain amount of NOT listening to my body and NOT doing what it seems to be signaling me to do.

And I guess that’s the real quandary those of us with fibromyalgia continually find ourselves in.  We need to listen to our bodies and pace ourselves accordingly so that we don’t overdo it and end up “crashing”, as I’ve always thought of it.  But we need to ignore our bodies to be able to function and carry out our responsibilities and have any sort of a life at all!

For myself, ignoring has been the more predominant path I’ve chosen, with my “minimizing it”, “deliberate denial” and “fake it ‘til I make it” mindset because, well, I’ve always wanted to go, go, go. So that has left me with a certain amount of “pushing” the limits because that has been the only way I can push myself through the sheer exhaustion (and the whole myriad of various symptoms and pain) and function in life the way I want to.

Initially though, way back in the early years, I mistakenly believed that fibromyalgia was degenerative and I was afraid to “push it”.  As my symptoms flared up I thought I was gradually deteriorating and could not regain that ground that was lost. I was totally distressed; every time my symptoms got worse, I thought they were permanently worse and I backed off living life more and more.  I felt helpless and distraught.

I was tip toeing around trying not to overdo anything at all, totally at the mercy of my fibromyalgia…until…I read an inspiring book about fibromyalgia that (thankfully!) clarified for me that fibromyalgia symptoms “waxed and waned” as they put it.

Well this was a total game changer for me! From then on I stopped being afraid of overdoing it so much.

I realized I CAN push it. (I can have a life!)

That was important for me to learn…just as important as learning to pace myself…which soon came next…because when I started pushing it…inevitably (you know the drill)…I overdid it of course and then learned about “crashes” (or flares I believe they are commonly known as).

For years I used to try to keep pushing myself and not stop at all each day because I knew if I stopped, exhaustion would take over and I wouldn’t get up again.  But then, after awhile of doing this, inevitably, I would “crash” and I would have to take it easy for days, more likely weeks or sometimes even months (like every January after the whole Christmas stint) to get rid of the seriously scary symptoms that my lack of pacing had caused to flare up.

I’m happy to say these “crashes” are fewer and farther between these days. I pace myself better. ‎I pace myself for the long run. Oh, I still like to push the limits for sure, and I sometimes still overdo it but generally now I am better at knowing when to back off.  I try little rests here and there; I tell someone to wake me after twenty minutes or set my alarm on my cell phone for an hour and a half once in awhile when I need and have time for a longer nap . And then I really push myself to get up, because I’ve learned that once I do, I am refueled by these short rests and can get going again once I make the initial push to get up.

And I certainly pace my activities overall; I try not to overbook or to book too much in advance because (you know the drill)…who knows how I’ll feel when that day gets here?…and if I overdo it, well then, that could be the final nail in the coffin and I’m spiralling into a vicious circle “crash” that could last for months. (I know you know!)

Yes, for sure that’s a huge challenge, maybe THE huge challenge with fibromyalgia, trying to make the call…when to challenge it and fight how I feel…and when to rest…when to ignore the symptoms and push back…and when to heed the symptoms and take it easy. It can certainly feel like walking a tightrope wire.

And it seems to me that I can fight too long and I can rest too long. Yes, overdoing it leads to crashes or flares but it’s also been my experience that there is a point of diminishing returns when it comes to lying around resting.  I’ve found that lying around too long just leads to more sluggishness, lethargy and fatigue for me.

But here’s the part I find reassuring.  I’ve found that if I don’t let any misstep in my pacing (or sometimes, lack of) go on too long, I’ve been able to bounce back (well… sometimes more like crawl back!).

YES, I’VE BEEN ABLE TO BOUNCE BACK.

I’m emphasizing that because for me, that’s been very key.

That knowledge that there’s a little “play”, a little room to manoeuvre, has allowed me to push the limits…to not be afraid of what will happen…to not feel at the mercy of fibromyalgia…to not feel so totally helpless…to not feel like I have no control…TO FEEL LIKE I CAN STILL LIVE MY LIFE!

I guess what I’m trying to say is I haven’t had to just lie down and let fibromyalgia roll over me.  I haven’t had to feel so totally limited. Yes, I have to pace myself‎, by all means, yes, pace myself is the “name of the game” with fighting fibromyalgia, but I don’t think I have to be afraid to live…that can lead to a feeling of always having limitations…it gets so self defeating…it gets downright depressing.

I’m tired of tip toeing ‎around…and thankfully I’ve learned I don’t have to. I push the limits.

In fact, it feels to me that continuing to gently push the limits…by keeping up a busy pace, by working out, by not getting excessive sleep…is what’s building up my resistance to gradually make permanent improvements…and I AM seeing gradual REAL and PERMANENT improvements over the years…without a doubt.

So I don’t feel so limited anymore…because as it turns out…I CAN have a life!  What I know is real is that I’m pacing myself but I’m pushing myself too…and it’s working! It feels good to think I’m not totally at the mercy of my body and my fibromyalgia…it feels positive. I have some choice too.

And as I listen to my body and pace myself…I’ve  learned that choosing to “push” and challenge the limits here and there has meant that certainly my spirit and enthusiasm‎ doesn’t have to pace itself.

Yes, the pacing is for my body only…my spirit and enthusiasm for life is absolutely soaring…for the possibilities of my life with fibromyalgia…for the possibilities of others’ lives with fibromyalgia…for possibilities, period!

I CAN’T WAIT.

I couldn’t wait for doctors…I can’t wait for science. No disrespect intended to anyone…but I simply can’t wait.  I can’t just wait…for someone else (to help me)…and I don’t think I need to! I’ve got a life to live. ‎I’ve lived fifteen years ‎with fibromyalgia already. The years have been, and are going to continue to pass by…one way or another. Where would I be now if I had waited for doctors…or science…or anyone else…to help me?

Still waiting? Maybe.

I couldn’t wait (to start combating fibromyalgia) way back in 2003 when doctors were still trying to determine a diagnosis for me…and I still can’t wait.  And, in all honesty, I’m probably more determined than ever, not to wait for anyone else to figure out fibromyalgia, because over the years I’ve been slowly discovering that I can make a difference…I…ME…MYSELF!

In fact, I’m not even sure any more that I need anyone else to figure it out.

So let me explain.

It’s not that I wouldn’t welcome the help…if someone, some doctor or maybe some researcher…suddenly came up with a sure fire fibromyalgia cure.  I’m definitely an eternal optimist and I’m always hopeful that anything’s possible.  It’s just that, if I’m truly honest with myself, I realize I’m not expecting it and I never have expected it.

For whatever reason, right from the start I was able to accept that I had a new life-affecting condition to deal with for the long run and I fairly quickly resurrected my “combat mode” (from my endometriosis days) as I liked to think of it, and I started working on fighting my fibromyalgia myself…and in fact, I did this even before I was diagnosed…even then I had already sensed the enduring nature of my new condition and the immediate need to get finding a way to live my best life with it.  I couldn’t wait.

And now that I think about it…I guess, even more than not expecting any help… I’m not counting on it.

Yes, I learned a long time ago that I needed to “quarterback” my own health.  In my early twenties, when I insisted (against a doctor’s advice) that further investigation be done into pelvic pain I was experiencing (seems hilarious now but I was incredulous when a doctor told me that I would just have to live with the pain), an orange sized cyst that needed to be removed was found.  When the pain persisted, so did I, and although the doctor who removed the cyst felt all my troubles were over, another doctor looked deeper, at my request, and found I had severe chronic endometriosis that needed to be treated.

And endometriosis…well, that was a continuously debilitating ordeal all in itself…that lasted all through my entire twenties…and that I definitely needed to “quarterback” myself.  It didn’t take me long to figure out that if I was still going to function at the level that my demanding career required that I was going to have to come up with a plan for myself on my own. Hence, as I talked about in an earlier post, my self-described “combat mode” was born and soon I was doing anything I could do to feel as healthy as possible in every other way; I was working on the things I COULD control…and it helped…immensely.

Now, let me be clear, I don’t have an aversion to doctors…I’ve had some great doctors along the way who have been extremely helpful.  It’s just that I’ve also found it helpful…no, I guess, IMPERATIVE… to take responsibility for my own health.

And combating fibromyalgia has been no different…in fact…it seems to me that learning to quarterback my own health through my earlier health issues was an excellent training ground for dealing with fibromyalgia…because my experience has been that fibromyalgia requires even more of that than anything I’d ever experienced before.

Yes, fibromyalgia has been the mother(!) of all quarterbacking my own health for me.

 I mean, fourteen years ago when I was diagnosed, I was given a diagnosis and a pamphlet and sent on my way…that was it.

So…I went into “combat mode”, I “minimized it”, I “changed what I think”…I tried to be positive, I “faked it ‘til I make it”, I lived in “deliberate denial”…I exercised, I worked on my sleep, I worked on my brain too…the list goes on and on…for years and years.  As I’ve said before, I work hard to control fibromyalgia so fibromyalgia is not controlling me.

But don’t get me wrong… I like the feeling and knowledge that I CAN work on it myself…and the sense of POWER that comes with it…I CAN make a difference…just me…and I don’t need anyone else to do this…so it can’t be taken away from me.

AND…I’m not waiting for anyone else to tell me what to do.

(Oh yeah…I don’t like to wait.)

While at the beginning (when I started my “combat mode”) I was just trying to see if I could make SOME difference in how I felt… at some point, I’ve come to think that I am the ONLY one who actually CAN make a difference.  All of these factors that I’ve found that affect my fibromyalgia are totally under my control…I can affect a difference in all of them and it seems to me that I’m the only one who can.

And now, after all these years, I’ve begun to wonder if maybe I even have to CURE MYSELF…AND IF, IN FACT, I CAN.

Is it possible to be cured of fibromyalgia? I’m inspired when I hear others say they have been cured…that means it’s possible….and I’m like anyone else…so why not me?

Am I actually curing myself?  Of course I don’t know…how could I?  There have been times over the years when I felt pretty good for quite a few months; I was hopeful fibromyalgia might be a thing of the past for me, only for it to come crashing back again causing me heartfelt disappointment, much harder to face than the usual fibromyalgia frustrations.  So at some point I resolved to not count on being cured, it was too disappointing to set myself up to have my hopes shot down.

But now, after all these years, when I take a step back and assess, I can clearly see, that even with all the ups and downs…I have to say…not only am I SURVIVING…and even THRIVING… I am steadily, gradually and unmistakably IMPROVING…without a doubt.

So…cautiously optimistic…is what I would call myself now.

Is it just a lucky coincidence that as I work on improving all these lifestyle choices that are good for my body and brain, my fibromyalgia is slowly and steadily improving as well? Maybe, but even so, I’m fairly certain I feel better along the way for my efforts. And even if I’m never cured, isn’t that my goal, to feel the best I can along the way? (yes!)

In any event, it seems to me, whether I’m living my best life with fibromyalgia, or actually moving towards being cured, I have to do it myself. I can’t wait…I can’t afford to.

What I know is real is that I’ve been ploughing through, figuring out how to fight fibromyalgia for fourteen years now, on my own…and it’s working for me!  Confronted with very little help, I was forced to find my own way and now that I’ve found it, I’m continuing full steam ahead.

I simply can’t wait…and I won’t wait…not for doctors to find an effective treatment…not for science to finally figure it out…not for anything.  I have a life to live!

And so far, I’m actually getting to live my life.

And if I can, maybe you can too.

Wow, when I think back to many of my previous posts, I realize that over the past fifteen years that I’ve had fibromyalgia, I’ll think whatever it takes to keep my mind-set and fibromyalgia in perspective in my life.

I’ll think in terms of “minimizing it”, of being in “combat mode”, of living in “deliberate denial”, of “faking it ’til I make it” and really, just “changing my thinking” to whatever I need to!  Yes, there’s no denying, that what I think is huge for me in getting through life with fibromyalgia…in fact, it’s more than huge…it’s key.

But there’s another rather curious thing I’ve noticed…I’ve noticed not only that I AM WHAT I THINK ….but I BECOME WHAT I SAY.

Yes…I become what I say.

So let me explain.

Well, actually… the best way I can explain it is…well, just try this sometime (and I hope you’ll see what I mean).  The next time, whether it’s in the course of some normal everyday casual conversation or if it’s a heartfelt inquiry from someone who knows of your fibromyalgia struggles, that someone asks you, “How are you?”…just answer, “I’m great!”  Just say it…whether it’s true or not…whether you feel great or not…whether you feel great or you truly feel like (in true fibromyalgia mode) a walking corpse with a combination of a bad flu and a bad hangover just trying to get through a day, with no sleep to boot.

And say it like you mean it…pretend you do mean it…pretend this to yourself.

And if you’re concerned you’d be lying (because really, what are the chances that at that particular instant that someone asks you this, you would happen to be having one of the rare moments that anyone with fibromyalgia has, that they actually feel great?…come on!)…be patient…because if your experience is anything like mine…you WILL be feeling great…really soon. Or at least…you’ll be A LOT closer to it.

Now I can’t quite remember when I caught on to this neat little trick, but I absolutely love doing it.  Because every time I say “I’m great!”…like I mean it…and I TRY to mean it…and I LET myself mean it…it elevates my mood…immediately!!…and I DO start feeling great!!

I become what I say!

I’m not exactly sure why it always works. Maybe I just simply convinced myself when I said “I’m great”. Or maybe it’s because subconsciously I don’t want to have lied, so I become what I say, so that it wasn’t a lie.

But I do know that, conversely, if I say that I feel crappy, then I feel obliged to keep feeling crappy. It’s like I put that on myself, so now I have to wear it.

Yes, for whatever reason, I guess it’s that I feel obliged‎ to live up to what I say…either way. And, I have to say, it’s really pretty easy to…because what I say about how I feel seems to dictate how I will actually feel…probably because I LET it…I am OPEN to it…and I WANT to be “great”.

Now, someone could say that’s fake, maybe even not truthful, but I don’t really think that when someone usually asks that nicety, they honestly want to hear all the details of my health problems or even my life! In maybe ninety percent of the cases, it’s just a typical everyday greeting. So I’m not bringing myself down, just for someone’s typical cordial greeting. I’m using that as an opportunity to lift myself up!

And yes, I know…that many people probably would just answer “great”, the typical social answer to the typical social question. ”How are you?”…”Great.”  (This IS a pretty normal everyday happening that I’m going on about…what’s the big deal?) But as I’ve explained, I’ve realized there’s another reason to say “great” other than obliging with the typical seemingly socially required response.

And I think this especially resonates with me because when someone asks me how I am, as a person with fibromyalgia, well, a whole host of whatever my current crappy fibromyalgia symptoms happen to be, immediately comes to mind.  So when I typically cover up, as it seems we (with fibromyalgia) so often do, and say “I’m great”, I use this opportunity to run my own fun little experiment and I let myself really believe it…and EVERY TIME…I can’t believe it’s so unbelievably easy(!)…I seem to rise to the occasion and it becomes true! Right away!! I DO feel great now.

I mean, I can even feel myself immediately straighten up and stand taller and my step gets lighter and the muscles in my face relax and lose their tenseness …because…“I’M GREAT!” now.

Once, when someone truly meant it, as in, they knew of my fibromyalgia and asked a direct heartfelt question of me…”How was I, REALLY?  How was I doing, REALLY?”…and we were out for dinner and drinks, and she was waiting…prepared to listen with great empathy for as long as it took for me to bare my fibromyalgia soul…well, this presented a real dilemma for me.

It was many years ago but I can still clearly remember it. I just looked at my sister, helplessly, for what seemed like a very long minute, stuck for an answer. I was in a real dilemma…how do I answer her? On the one hand…I admit it would have been satisfying to tell someone all that I suffered through and get their empathy and concern. And I did want to be honest with her.

BUT…on the other hand…that totally flew in the face of my “deliberate denial” mind-set that has been a cornerstone for how I’ve lived with fibromyalgia for so long. As I explained more fully in an earlier post, with my “deliberate denial” mind-set, I generally PRETEND I’m not sick, to myself and to others, and this helps me to stay more positive and less stressed by my symptoms which helps my fibromyalgia overall immensely.

It was nice she was concerned enough to ask but it wasn’t really going to make much difference to her either way…she’d go home and back to her life all the same. But it WAS going to make a huge difference to me because it was going to determine how I thought of myself, and I knew by then that how I thought of myself was a key element in my fight against fibromyalgia.

For so long, my mind-set has been that I’m not sick, and I’ve been fighting tooth and nail to improve my fibromyalgia to match that mind-set…does that make sense?…I mean, I keep my mind-set ahead of my body and my body is “growing into” my “non-sick” mind-set.  So I needed to keep that positive non-sick mind-set steadfast and strong, to keep working my body towards meeting it.  I didn’t want to break through my “deliberate denial” mind-set and allow myself to face the reality of what I lived with day in and day out, and bring myself crashing down…I mean, to think of what I live with, day in, day out, that’s downright depressing!

And if I recounted (to her) all the ways I was “sick” from fibromyalgia, and “put” that on myself, I knew then I’d have to “wear it” for the rest of the night…then I would feel like I was “sick sister”, for the rest of the night and every time I saw her for some time afterwards…I knew I would become what I say.

And I would become what I say…either way.

I chose to be great that night…and I WAS great…and I know that’s what she’d want me to choose if she understood what my choices mean to me.

It was a dilemma then, but after all these years of seeing how this works, by now, the choice is so easy for me.  I CHOOSE TO BE GREAT…every time…all the time. So simple…so easy…and so powerful.

Yes, so powerful…to be able to just choose. Much of the time, fibromyalgia tries to make me feel like I can’t choose how I will be.  It tries to make me feel like I am at its unrelenting mercy and a victim of its every whim…and that I just have to helplessly react and constantly adjust my life to its random and ever-changing barrage of symptoms and utter exhaustion…like I have no control.

But what I know is real now is that I CAN choose to be great.  I have that power. I have that control.  I only have to say it…and believe it…and I BECOME WHAT I SAY.

And I’m BECOMING…better.  Ever so slowly, over the years, unmistakably…better.

Now, someone else might question whether this really works…they might say they’re skeptical…but not me…why would I?…that’s not what I choose to become.

Everything is what we think, and we can change what we think and change our reality.

Everything is what we think, and we can change what we think and change our reality.

EVERYTHING IS WHAT WE THINK, AND WE CAN CHANGE WHAT WE THINK AND CHANGE OUR REALITY!

No matter how many times and how many ways this realization crops up in my life…EVERY TIME…yes, EVERY TIME(!)…I am utterly in complete awe of the profound magnitude this very, very simple concept…CHANGE WHAT WE THINK…has on our individual reality.  It is one of the easiest things we can do, it takes only an instant and it requires nothing from anyone else…and when we do it, our whole individual reality changes!

I’m simply in awe.

So let me explain.

I guess I’ve been talking about changing what we think, in so many posts already…when I “minimize it” (fibromyalgia)…when I live in “deliberate denial” (of fibromyalgia)…when I “fake it ‘til I make it” (for fibromyalgia)…when I really think about it…it all comes down to the basic underlying concept of changing what I think…that’s it…that’s all.

So simple…and so powerful…and for me…so CRITICAL for living with fibromyalgia.

I change what I think, all the time…and it changes the reality that I face in living with fibromyalgia…and it makes my reality better…a lot better.

Think about the chronic fatigue, such a huge and overwhelming part of the fibromyalgia struggle.  For many of the fifteen years I’ve lived with fibromyalgia, especially the early years, this tiredness wasn’t alleviated by any amount of sleep and rest…not any amount I was able to get anyways. If I could have slept all the time…maybe it would have been…I don’t know…but that was never going to be possible for me…and I’m guessing, it’s not possible for anyone else (and who wants their life to be like that anyways?…we have places to go, people to see, things to do!…lives to live!).

So I needed something more (than getting more sleep) to combat the chronic fatigue. I needed to break the vicious cycle I perpetually lived in…my chronic fatigue made me have to struggle through EVERYTHING (as in, figuratively, crawling through each day) and this was so very stressful to try to function this way…and then, of course, the resultant stress, in turn, aggravated my chronic fatigue, as is the case with so many health issues. It is such a hard, hard cycle to break (but you know that). And no amount of sleep seemed to help the chronic fatigue side so I figured I needed to change the stress side.

I figured I needed to get positive to lessen the stress. (But I WASN’T positive when I was so tired and so overloaded because I couldn’t get everything done that I needed to get done when I was so lie-down exhausted all the time!  In fact I was miserable, being on this exhaustion treadmill-of-a-life.  And being miserable was stressful…so, you guessed it…more exhaustion.)

So in my mind, there was (and still is) only one way out…I had to CHANGE WHAT I THINK first.

I had to just switch my thinking to suddenly NOW think that I wasn’t miserable…that I was, in fact, happy…to lessen the stress…and then that would lessen the chronic fatigue (exactly, “fake it ‘til I make it”, as I talked about in my last post)…and I have to say, as hard as it may be to believe, it works!  And still, to this day, I do this whenever I need to.  Whenever I realize I need to CHANGE WHAT I THINK…I give myself a shake…maybe I look at the bigger picture of life…I find some (any) different way to look at it that will lead me to a different way to think about it…a more positive way…a less stressful way…and there(!)…that’s where I want to be.

And we can just CHANGE WHAT WE THINK. Years ago, this would have seemed very hard for me; I used to think we felt what we felt and we couldn’t change that.

But somewhere along the way I learned to choose how I would feel, because I would choose what I would think first. 

Now sometimes it seems to me that I’m trying to “get happy” about everything then, to help alleviate my fibromyalgia symptoms, but when I really think about it, it’s not so much that happiness is the key (although happiness is very nice!)…I think it’s more that I can’t be stressed…stress is the big offender…and I find happiness lessens stress for me.  So I do try to “get happy” and therefore lessen stress and I can honestly say it unmistakably always makes my symptoms improve…a lot.

So by now, I do this regularly…CHANGE WHAT I THINK…to change how I feel…to be happy…to lessen stress…to lessen my symptoms.

There’s the time I told my husband (half-jokingly) that I would have to be happy about him (potentially) being seriously ill when some routine medical tests revealed a potential very serious issue. We were already super stressed, just trying to keep our heads above water, going through a time in life when difficult circumstances just kept coming at us, when this got lumped on us too. ‎So far I had been managing to not “crash” (as I thought of it) with my fibromyalgia, which was already pretty amazing, considering. I knew I just couldn’t take on one more stressful thing, so I have to say, I did find a way to twist my thinking to not be upset and try to think positive (kind of tricking myself really, I guess) about it!

I still can’t believe how I managed to sail through that, without getting stressed at all, really!  And it didn’t end up being anything serious, so, when it was all over, I pretty much easily came through what could have been a seriously distraught time, without worsening or “crashing” my fibromyalgia symptoms at all.

I wish I could say I was always able to do that, but I sure try to remember times like this as a reminder of what’s possible, for the next time. For me it’s a good lesson here to remember. ‎As a wise woman I know (okay, it’s my mom)‎ has said to me many times in my lifetime, “worry about it when it happens”.  And that may say it all, in these situations.

Okay, but even when “it” happens, I have figured out ways not to worry about it(!)…because worry (stress) is for sure the enemy of fibromyalgia.  So I still CHANGE WHAT I THINK. Like, say something upsetting happens…I do this thing whereby I “fast forward” my thoughts ahead to the future, maybe about a year’s time when this upsetting thing won’t really matter anymore, it will just be a thing of the past that happened to me…I imagine how I will feel indifferent then (and maybe even be laughing about it!)…and then (here’s the cool part) I instantly “rewind” that indifferent mind-set/feelings back to the present!!  Believe it or not…it really works! I CHANGE WHAT I THINK by basically, thinking ahead to the future and then fast forwarding my mind-set to then.

Yes, I CHANGE MY THINKING…I’m continually amazed how this works! Another little thing I do often…is I take something I’m not looking forward to, something I have to get through but I don’t want to do and maybe that one thing is dragging my whole day down…and then I just CHANGE MY THINKING and I decide I’m looking forward to it…once I decide I should do this, I just switch it (my thinking). It’s that easy. I latch onto whatever I can that helps me to change my thinking to positive.  Now I’m looking forward to it, maybe I think of all the little things about it and how they could be positive, and suddenly the thing that was dragging my day down is now a good thing, so my day is much better now…no reason it isn’t a great day now! It’s kind of tricking myself for sure…but it works!

CHANGING OUR THINKING…changes the way we feel…lifts our mood…reduces stress…reduces fibromyalgia symptoms too.

And life is so much nicer this way…AND it’s really fun to try…it’s really fun to see if just a simple easy thing like CHANGING MY THINKING can make a difference.  Each time is a fun little mini experiment…after all, what do I have to lose?…for the most part I’m just thinking more positive…and seeing what happens!  I can’t think of a downside to thinking more positive…but, as I talked about in my previous post about being positive, from my experience of over fifteen years of living with fibromyalgia, there seems to be A LOT of upside.

So this really is one of my favourite things to talk about…because I’m so totally amazed at it myself…it never gets old for me…because what I know is real is that we CAN change our individual reality (and our happiness), just by CHANGING WHAT WE THINK. We can just suddenly (in an instant) take a load off (wow, life feels easier suddenly)…and get all the psychological and physiological benefits that go with it.

We don’t need anything else or anyone else for it to happen…we don’t need to have money…I can’t think of any roadblocks. It doesn’t depend on anything else but our self and our own power to think…and from what I can tell…this is a huge, huge power.

And oh yes…definitely don’t take my word for it…try it for yourself…just for the fun of it…and see what happens…

`

“FAKE IT ‘TIL YOU MAKE IT”…sure, I thought it was a cool catchphrase…until I had to live it…until I had to actually do it, day in and day out…now it’s become more of a tricky mind-set I’ve had to master, just to try to keep my head above water functioning in my everyday life with fibromyalgia.

Yes, that common catchphrase “fake it ‘til you make it” sure has had a place in my fight against fibromyalgia all these years. I’ve found I have to fake that I’m well (to myself) to help actually get well…yes, really. I find I’m kind of forced to…because the opposite, not feeling well, is not good (as in, very bad!) for fibromyalgia…so I try hard to think that I’m well, no matter what… EVEN IF I HAVE TO FAKE IT.

Does that make sense? It seems to me that it’s the opposite order of what is usually the norm for “regular” people. Usually, people are sick, so they feel bad physically and therefore often mentally too…then they get better…so then they feel better physically and therefore mentally too.

But with fibromyalgia, because my symptoms seem so affected by, and at times caused by stress…what happens to me is that I’ll be sick, so I’ll feel bad physically and therefore mentally (that’s the same)…however…here’s where the tricky mind-set difference comes into play…I find I have to try to feel better mentally FIRST…and that will help me get better, physically. Get it?

OFTEN I HAVE TO FEEL BETTER TO GET BETTER!!!

Yes…exactly…fake it ‘til I make it (or rather, fake it so I CAN make it!).

So let me explain.

In a way, I suppose my “deliberate denial” mind-set that I talked about in my last post is ‎one colossal, grand scale way of “faking it ‘til you make it”. I guess my last entire almost fifteen years of trial and error living with fibromyalgia has been one big “fake it ‘til you make it”, really. “Deliberate denial” is my self-described chosen mind-set that I adopted early in my fight against fibromyalgia whereby I guess the plainest way to say it is, I’ve pretty much just pretended that I’m not sick…to myself and to others…and it has helped…a lot.

So, (I’ve been) faking it…all these years…’til I make it…

But there are also all the battles (I guess, flares) within my big picture war against fibromyalgia where, over the years, I came to find that “fake it ‘til you make it” is a key strategy for me for getting back on track when I’m having a real flare-up of symptoms. Yes, it’s precisely in these situations that I find the “fake it ‘til you make it” mind-set particularly useful.

So what happens is that, every once in awhile, I’ll get a flare-up of symptoms (you know the drill), sometimes they are old familiar symptoms and sometimes they are just random new symptoms of which I have no idea if they are even fibromyalgia related or another new illness or problem (again…you know the drill). Wherever they fall on the spectrum of symptoms, whether they are annoying but not too alarming or just downright really scary because they seem like they could be caused by something much more ominous, there’s always a level of anxiety and stress that comes with them…either from the physicality of the symptoms, or the frustration of being sick and having to function in life still, or the frustration of having to get through yet another flare AGAIN (when can I catch a break?) or worse yet, the anxiety of wondering if maybe this is not “just fibromyalgia” and something far more ominous is looming, causing these particular symptoms…and most likely, it’s all of the above!

With fibromyalgia, being highly aggravated by stress itself, the flare up could actually be caused by stress in the first place…like maybe physical stress from consistent lack of quality sleep or maybe mental or emotional stress as a result of current stressful life events…or maybe just a lot of other everyday commitments and life stresses building up to an overdoing it level, that which “regular” peoples’ bodies seem to absorb without putting them in immediate physical distress, but ours don’t anymore.

In any event, I found…I would get the flare-up of symptoms…so I would get stressed (what’s going on with me?)…of course then the symptoms would worsen…so then I’d get more stressed as anxiety gnawed at me (well, is this “just” fibromyalgia?…or is it something completely different that I should be seeing my doctor about?…this feels so bad and so different, it MUST be pretty serious)…and…you know it…the symptoms would only get worse again. Such a vicious circle! (fibromyalgia can REALLY be vicious circle upon vicious circle!)

And it’s often new symptoms whenever it happens, so it sucks you right in again, over and over. And one of these flare-ups could kick start a vicious circle lasting weeks and even months before I could get back “on top of things” again (versus feeling “under” things, as I think of it, during a flare-up).

Then somewhere along the way, I hit upon “faking it ‘til I make it”…AND IT WORKED(!)…and it still works.

I realized I have to fake it…I tell myself that it’s no big deal, I’m fine. I have to pretend everything is great, physically and emotionally to get the symptoms to subside. Basically I have to ignore the symptoms for awhile and not stress about them, to help them to go away (if they are indeed fibromyalgia, which I need to find out); I tell myself I’ll just forget about them for weeks and then reassess the situation. And it often does take weeks for the changes to play out in my body, I find fibromyalgia improvements can come about fairly slowly at times.

So I fake it…I pretend everything’s great…well, this CHANGE IN MY THINKING helps take the stress off right away(!)…I can relax and not worry about it for awhile.

Of course I assess all the other things in the mix of things I know affect my fibromyalgia too…good sleep, exercise and positive mind-set, to name a few key things…and I get working on any of those that need tweaking too. As I talked about in an earlier post, it seems to me (with fibromyalgia) that these things all work to “manually reset” my brain  each day, so I have to consider all of them when something’s out of whack and symptoms flare up.

But the “faking it” and therefore taking the stress out of the equation first, is a huge factor in helping to alleviate the symptoms, whether the stress is part of the original cause or brought on by the symptoms or, as is quite often the case, both. For me, it’s really the starting point to begin to get the symptoms under control. And as I talked about in my previous post about how I live in “deliberate denial” overall, I suspect not thinking about the symptoms probably plays a role in helping lessen them too…not to mention the sense of control I start to reclaim from knowing I am doing something about this flare with my “fake it ’til I make it” plan and not just helplessly having it overtake my life while I exist at its mercy.

Now even though I’ve been “faking it ‘til I make it” for years now…sure, every time I get these flare-ups, I can still get sucked in a little at times (and sometimes, a lot)…I worry about what’s going on, especially if it’s some new random and scary symptom.

But then I fairly quickly remember “fake it ‘til I make it” and that changes my thinking immediately so I can relax and stop stressing over the symptoms (and anything else that was stressing me, since I quickly give myself a reality check to remind myself that nothing is that important for me to be getting myself sick over it and at times it sure doesn’t take much at all to do that with fibromyalgia since there seems to be so many interdependent factors affecting it).

So…“faking it” reduces stress…and reducing stress reduces symptoms…because fibromyalgia, like so many illnesses, is fairly aggravated by stress. And once stress is taken out of the equation and I work on whatever else needs tweaking, I can then see what my symptoms boil down to; I eliminate whatever symptoms are fibromyalgia related and see what is left.

And inevitably, I believe in every case so far over the almost fifteen years I’ve had fibromyalgia, after riding it out with this “faking it ‘til I make it” mind-set for a little while, often weeks, sometimes more, the symptoms have gradually lessened until I have completely gotten rid of the symptoms of that flare.

 Now, this is not to say that I completely ignore all symptoms to the extent that I don’t see a doctor. As all of us with fibromyalgia know, that’s a judgement call that is always involved in these flare episodes. While I find the “faking it ‘til I make it” mind-set kick starts me to get working on the flare fairly quickly, I’m still very aware of always watching for anything that I think may need medical attention and the minute I feel like that situation may exist, I get in to get it checked out by my doctor.

But I have to say, “faking it ‘til I make it” requires real strength of mind at times…and I know I keep coming back to this mind-set stuff…really, I’ve been harping on it these last few posts and I’m probably not finished yet…but it’s because it seems to me that it’s our strength of mind that is going to help to keep us thinking and doing what we need to, to live a good quality of life with fibromyalgia (and maybe even beat it!).

Our strength of mind helps keep us inspired, it helps keep us positive and thinking in whatever other ways (like maybe, fake it ’til you make it?) we each find helpful…it helps us stay motivated to exercise and to keep working on getting good sleep. And then vice versa, these things in turn work on helping our strength of mind. I guess that’s why fibromyalgia can be such a vicious circle of a downward spiral when these things get out of sync.

But by contrast, what I know is real is that, if we can manage to get doing even a bit of these things (maybe with a little help by changing our thinking at times?), just maybe we can instead turn it around to a virtuous circle whereby these things all build on each other to keep us GRADUALLY and STEADILY IMPROVING.

I know this, for real, because it is happening to me.

And I can’t be the only one this is possible for…I have to think it can happen for others too…maybe you.