This is an article I wrote for my fibromyalgia blog. I hope you find it helpful.
Fibromyalgia has many symptoms. Not everyone has each symptom but certainly everyone with this syndrome has varying degrees of pain. Some days the pain is more intense than other days. The pain is not always in the same area or areas either. Something that hurts one day may not bother you as much the next day, but then something different aches instead. Someone once told me that fibromyalgia was called "travelling lumbago" many years ago.
Dealing with the pain is very difficult but you need to learn ways to manage it so it doesn't overwhelm you. Each person needs to try several different treatments to find the one or several that help because each person is unique. What works for one may not work for another.
Pain is your body's way of telling you that something is wrong. For example, if you twist your ankle, it hurts. This is your body's way of letting you know that you need to take care of the area to let it heal.
In fibromyalgia, your body appears to be overly sensitive to stimuli that do not bother "normal" people. The pain may be from damage to tissue, excessive fatigue, depression, stress, or other things, many of which we cannot pinpoint. That does not make the pain any less intense.
Thinking of pain as a signal to take positive action rather than as a continual ordeal you have to endure can help you learn ways to manage it.
Your mind plays an important role in how to respond to pain. If you feel helpless and depressed you decrease your physical activity, your social interaction, your zest for life. When these decrease you then feel more helpless and more depressed, leading to a vicious cycle of pain, decreased activity, lessened self-esteem, less social interaction, etc.
There are some things you can do to build a feeling of personal control and more positive feelings.
- Try to keep a positive attitude.
- Try to eat a balanced diet with limited sugar.
- Take part in regular exercise at least 3 days a week but preferably 5 days a week.
- Surround yourself with positive people rather than negative people who just make you feel worse.
- Try to increase humor by reading funny stories, reading jokes, recalling humorous circumstances in your past life, or any other means you can think of to make yourself laugh or at least smile. Perhaps a child did something funny, or perhaps you have a pet who does goofy things. Think about these things.
- Try to distract yourself from dwelling on the pain by doing something you enjoy. It might be reading a book, surfing the internet, watching a movie, listening to music, taking a walk outside, swimming, watching children play, going to a park, cooking, collecting teddy bears, talking to friends or family on the phone, or whatever else you find pleasurable.
These are some suggestions that I hope you find helpful. Try to add one or more to your routine and see if this provides any relief from pain.
Please feel free to leave comments on this article. I would love to hear how others with fibromyalgia or similar chronic pain deal with their bouts of pain.
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