Tuesday, November 09, 2010
The role of attitude in coping with fibromyalgia.....
This article was posted on a fibromyalgia group on Facebook. It's from the National Fibromyalgia Association website:
Maintaining a Positive Attitude: Ten Strategies
I think it is important to reiterate that negative thoughts do NOT cause fibromyalgia, they just add to the stress of dealing with it. Also, I appreciate that the article did not promote the idea that if a person can just be positive all the time, they won't ever have a flare. I admit that I do have some down times, but I don't let them ruin my life.
Maintaining a Positive Attitude: Ten Strategies
I think it is important to reiterate that negative thoughts do NOT cause fibromyalgia, they just add to the stress of dealing with it. Also, I appreciate that the article did not promote the idea that if a person can just be positive all the time, they won't ever have a flare. I admit that I do have some down times, but I don't let them ruin my life.
Comments:
I really liked this one as well—it's more about how to live life fully despite illness. The ones that bother me are the ones that basically suggest you can talk your illness away by thinking positively.
I am very wary of those "cure yourself with happy thoughts" articles too. In 1998, when doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong with me, they told me it had to be purely psychological. So I convinced myself that all I had to do was tune out my symptoms and they would vanish. In fact, they grew worse because I overtaxed myself trying to pretend I was fine.
These days, I have made peace with the fact that I have an illness. This does not mean I've given up or am being negative. It's just a fact about me, like having brown eyes, that I cannot change, and since I have accepted it, it has become much easier to make realistic decisions about how to have a good life.
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These days, I have made peace with the fact that I have an illness. This does not mean I've given up or am being negative. It's just a fact about me, like having brown eyes, that I cannot change, and since I have accepted it, it has become much easier to make realistic decisions about how to have a good life.
