I Fake It ‘Til I Make It and It Works!…Mind-Set and Fibromyalgia II

“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.