Never Worked So Hard To NOT Be Something…Fibromyalgia and Depression

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?