“Minimize It”…Well-Being With Fibromyalgia

If you read My Story, you may remember me saying, “For most of the time, I have not wanted to think too much about it, as that has been a very key element of my fibromyalgia experience….for the most part I have “minimized” it in my mind, so as not to give fibromyalgia that much power over me.”

I work hard to control fibromyalgia rather than have fibromyalgia controlling me. My well-being depends on it.  I felt early on that this kind of thing can take over your life if you let it.

I believed I didn’t have to let it.  ‎

So let me explain.

Back in the summer of 2003 when my fibromyalgia symptoms stepped it up like some sort of attack, when I was freefalling in the distress and panic of not knowing what was wrong with me, I was also in the middle of an extremely busy life (aren’t we all!) that wasn’t going to be put “on hold” for me to get it together.

I was raising three small children under ten years old, my husband was commuting out of town to his job, gone from 6:00 in the morning till 8:00 at night five days a week and I had no parents or siblings in town to ask for even the occasional help. AND(!) on top of all that, we had just broken ground on building a house and I was managing the construction site for the next year until we moved in.

I had to find SOME way to keep functioning in life…right away… I didn’t even wait for a diagnosis.

As I wrote in my previous blog post, Combat Mode Reborn, once I got into what I thought of as “combat mode”, things started to turn around and I was focused on being as healthy as I could be in every other way…but this was only part of it. The flipside of that (and equally as important…actually maybe more important) was to NOT FOCUS on the fibromyalgia. (I know…easier said than done!)

“Minimizing it” (“it” being fibromyalgia) was how I soon came to think of it.

For me, thinking of “minimizing it” became a way to help keep fibromyalgia in a limited role in my life, it helped to reduce its power over me and maintain my sense of well-being. The idea of “minimizing it” is to limit fibromyalgia to just being as small a part of your life as it can…and limit it to being ONLY one part of your life (not overruling everything).

Limit it. Compartmentalize it. “Minimize it.”

For me, a big part of “minimizing it” and limiting fibromyalgia to being just one part of my life is THINKING of it that way…as just one (small) part of my life. In my mind, I don’t “buy in” to the idea of being sick. I work hard on being healthy and I focus on all the ways that I am healthy. My doctor tells me “you’re a health lady” and he’s right…I hit all the standard markers for being healthy and fit.

“Minimize it”…isn’t that the goal of everyone who struggles to function in their day-to-day life while enduring all the various fibromyalgia symptoms? Most definitely!

AND there are many ways to minimize fibromyalgia’s role in your life…really, I guess everything we do to treat it is aimed at that. I’ll write about more ways I’ve “minimized it” in my next blog post Minimize It More (and maybe more posts after that).

I guess I’m saying that the act of keeping my mind-set geared to keep fibromyalgia in its proper place in my life immensely helped me live with it and not let it overrun my whole life and to maintain a sense of well-being and positiveness. Of the many things I do to combat fibromyalgia… just thinking in this way has been one of the most invaluable .

What I know is real is that my “minimize it” mind-set has helped me to keep feeling positive, to keep persisting at my goals, to keep doing all the things I have to do to raise a family, work on my business career and pursue a healthy lifestyle, and even better, it’s helped me to keep doing all the things I still WANT to be doing in life.