Dear Marilyn: These are the most amazing comments/story I have ever heard and I am cheering unbelievably. This reinforces my view of changing the brain, establishing new brain pathways and all the rest. I am so thrilled to hear all this. I hope you will continue to keep in touch. This is so encouraging. Thank you so much for all this information!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Regards, Barbara

Barbara,
I recently began seeing a dr. In the Integrative Medicine dept. of a well known teaching hospital in Kansas City where I live. She had blood work done (I’m a pin cushion from all the bloodwork done over the years!), but ran some different tests than other drs. She changed my compounded hormones, put me on an elimination diet of gluten, dairy and eggs, and highly recommended I have an EEG and qEEG done, otherwise called brain mapping. The test and treatment are expensive, but I finally decided to go for it. They hooked me up to around 18 or so electrodes, then recorded my brain waves for 15 minutes with eyes open, then 15 with eyes closed. The qEEG has to be sent off to Switzerland, then off to a dr at Brain Science International for a treatment plan. I was given a copy of the full report, 99% of which I do not understand, including the conclusions. But I’ll give it a try here. My background alpha is significantly slower than normal. There was irregular slower alpha content seen frontally which suggests a disturbance of function in the area involved in attentional and affective regulation and motor inhibition. The rt temporal alpha suggests decreased cortical function in areas involved in spatial & prosodic comprehension, as well as non verbal memory. The frontal midline slower rhythmic content overlies the anterior cingulate, associated with over focus seen in chronic pain cases. I can remember as a child my mother telling me I dwelled on the negative, which eventually did lead to panic attacks in junior high and again in my 20′s….all fear based. The fear of dying too young. I would bargain with God to just let me live til I was 30 and I’d do this or this. Well I’m almost 59 now. So much of what I’ve read on this newly found site makes so much sense to me. Anyway, back to the brain mapping. I have been for two treatments. What they are doing is to slow down the brain functions that are too fast and revving up those that are too slow. I’m hooked up to some electrodes and I am to watch pictures (so far of nature) on a computer screen while music is playing. However the music stops and starts with what my brain is doing. The goal is to get the music playing consistently. The technician is watching what my brain is doing on the computer screen and taking notes and making adjustments. I don’t know how many treatments I will need. Everyone is different. But from what I’ve read on your site I think I am finally on the right track. I was that kid you have described in several blogs. Then in 2007, I had surgery on my cervical spine and the chronic pain and fatigue began. I am now on disability. One thing I do wonder about. When I was 3 I had my adenoids and tonsils out and coded on the operating table. Could this be the event that changed my brain or was I just born this way?

Thanks Tim. If you go to my October 10/08 blog you will see that I feature his book cover. He has indeed been helpful for me. You are right that ‘ruminating on every childhood slight’ is not useful. I find it has helped me though to understand how hyper-arousal in my own ‘psyche’ evolved from when I was a child. But, not so as to keep retelling it or reliving it, rather to help others identify their own ultra-sensitive “personality” so that triggers can be recognized and hopefully brains remapped. I don’t think this is due primarily to nature but instead mostly to nurture. Even as I write this however, I believe that while in utero we can be affected by the state of mind of our mothers. So much to think about and so much to learn. Only the tip of the iceberg so far! Regards, Barbara

Dear Barbara

I would heartily recommend a book called ‘The Divided Mind’ by John E. Sarno. It presents some extremely interesting ideas about fibromyalgia, and how to cure. Dr Sarno uses knowledge of the processes used by the brain to induce physical symptoms (to mask the unsurfacing of unconscious emotions into the conscious realm) to help to alleviate the symptoms. It is not about ‘ruminating on every childhood slight’. He also raises some interesting facts around epidemiology – I shall leave it with him to explain why so many people now have diagnoses of fibromyalgia…..

Good luck to you all finding relief from FMS.

Best wishes
Tim

Hello from the East Coast, Carolyn!
This linkage of our two main perspectives is really worthwhile exploring! What does this say about women in our society? You are right, what is the value of rehashing all our painful stories, in lieu of remaking into a different one that is more hopeful? All we do when we recall past hurts and pain is reactivate the nervous system and experience the negativity all over again!
Your own site is wonderful.
Thanks for writing in.
Barbara

Hello from the West Coast, Barbara!

This is absolutely fascinating. Oncologists sometimes talk about the ‘cancer-prone personality’ – which includes several of the same people-pleasing, self-sacrificing tendencies that you describe so eloquently here.As a heart attack survivor, I’m wondering if we could substitute the words ‘heart disease’ for ‘fibromyalgia’ here. Ruminating is particularly common in female heart patients and can also contribute to the descent into depression – common in up to 65% of heart patients, yet appropriately treated in fewer than 10%. I’m especially intrigued by the concept that sitting around talking and focusing on our symptoms may actually be in fact increasing them – a profound idea! Indeed I know several of my fellow heart attack survivors who seem to like nothing better than to tell their ‘ain’t it awful, poor me, my doctor’s an idiot’ stories over and over and over again. According to this perspective, they’re making things much worse!?!

Gosh, what does this say about psychoanalysis where patients spend literally years doing all that ruminating on every childhood slight?

Well done – very interesting post!

cheers,
Carolyn Thomas
http://www.myheartsisters.org

Self talk is part of the on-going process that can keep us either ruminating about negative things or uplift us. But self talk that keeps telling the same story over and over continues to be embellished! I am reminded of the parlour game where one person whispers a story to another and that one to another and so on. In the end the story is completely distorted! So it is with self talk. If the memories that we have which are unpleasant and negative keep imposing upon us and we aren’t constantly aware of the bodily sensations we have when they re-occur, obviously the physical pain of fibromyalgia will continue. What a remarkable thing is that little wee brain of ours! I want to send it good messages but have been stuck in pain for so long it takes a great deal of discipline and much to un-learn…

Michael Gazzaniga: The Ethical Brain

“Our autobiographical memories are remembered anew each dat, in a way that best fits our current concept of self. In the words of Daniel Dennett, ‘Memory in its fundamental sense is the ability to store useful information and to retrieve it in precisely those circumstances and that form which allow it to be useful’ to us in the present moment. Thus our concept of self is an ever-changing one that will most accurately represent our current feelings and beliefs about ourselves. It will not accurately represent the way we felt about ourselves in the days, weeks, and years past. But this is probably a healthy thing. We do grow wiser as we grow older, so it is only fitting that we forget those days when we were not so wise – or at least remember them only insofar as they are useful now. Memory is not so much a mechanism for remembering the past as a means to prepare us for the future. Some of my best memories are false ones.”

I love that last line!