“My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery-always buzzing, humming, soaring roaring diving, and then buried in mud”, Virginia Woolf To live a life in a state of high anxiety, boarding on panic, is common among those of us with fibromyalgia. We anticipate pain, fatigue, muddled thoughts, and a myriad of other …
Fibromyalgia and Brain Fog: Stop, Breathe & Think Read More »
“People still insist on things like holistic healing and things that have no real basis in evidence because they want it to be true-it’s as simple as that”, Stephen Fry If there is any alternate healing therapy that I have not tried over many years I don’t know what it can be. Chinese herbs, homeopathy, …
Fibromyalgia, Alternative Therapies and the Bio-Psycho-Social Read More »
“When anxious people anticipate something bad about to happen- such as being confronted with creepy pictures of snakes or spiders- their right frontal insulas go into overdrive”, Blakeslee and Blakeslee Many of us with fibromyalgia can remember childhood as the beginning of a life time of fear, and anxiety. Since there might have been a …
” To let go is to release the images and emotions, the grudges and fears, the clingings and disappointments of the past that bind our spirit”, Jack Kornfield In the newspaper today there is an editorial written by Jane Brody titled “More specialists explore treating pain without drugs” (The Globe and Mail, L5, September 15, …
” There are many other (besides testosterone) behaviour-eliciting hormones fundamental for human well- being, including estrogen and progesterone in females”, Carl Sagan The question arises about why fibromyalgia is more prevalent in highly sensitive women and men. The debate about nature/nurture has not yielded specific answers and for awhile I have thought of it as …
Is the cause of fibromyalgia both a nature/nurture conundrum? Read More »
“With hypnosis, we can help people modulate perceptions in ways that are therapeutically helpful”, David Spiegel For those of us with chronic pain and/or a myriad of other distressing physical and psychological conditions the practice of ‘changing our brains’ through relaxation and exercise regimes can be overwhelming. Mindfulness meditation is one way that we can …
“What’s in a name?”, Shakespeare The nomenclature of Fibromyalgia can be known as : “Central Sensitization”, “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder” , “Cycles of Over-Exertion-Relapse”, “Chronic Fatigue Disorder”, and now a new term: “Systemic Exertion Intolerance Disorder”- all with the same characteristics. What’s to be done so that we can explain ourselves to others while so …
“I base most of my fashion sense on what doesn’t itch”, Gilda Radner There isn’t anything more comforting to me than cloth that is soft and soothing. Mostly, it is cotton that gives me a feeling of being in a cocoon. Since the most popular blog on this busy website is about itching it has …
Fibromyalgia and Skin Problems: Clothing that Causes Itching Read More »
“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear-not absence of fear”, Mark Twain All of us with fibromyalgia suffer from repressed emotions, and are coping with over stimulation and sensory processing sensitivity. Never has it been so challenging as it has been in the past months with the chaos in the world that we hear of …
“The traumatic moment becomes encoded in an abnormal form of memory, which breaks spontaneously into consciousness, both as flashbacks during waking states and as traumatic nightmares during sleep”, Judith Lewis Herman Trapped in our psyche, past traumas wind themselves into the body and present as a multitude of physical symptoms. Pain, extreme crushing fatigue, intestinal difficulties, …
Fibromyalgia: The body holding on to past trauma Read More »