“Deep, unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state”, George Eliot
I have used the above title terms as those which haunt me on a daily basis. There can be little doubt that those of us with fibromyalgia suffer both physical and mental anguish on a daily basis. Which comes first is difficult to say with certainty. Most of us are high functioning people who have been broad-sided by pain and fatigue which causes the suffering and secondarily (my view) we suffer from the psychological after effects of living with the peculiar symptoms which plague us. There are many who believe that those with fibromyalgia have psychological problems that cause the fibromyalgia. My view is the opposite : I believe we have very active lives and then we are bomb-barded by the pain and fatigue which causes emotional uncertainty. However, it is obvious to me that we have many similar personality characteristics and our life stories usually reveal that we are highly sensitive people, many of us with damaged childhood experiences. I am somewhat uneasy about using the term ‘suffering’ as it reminds me of my early Catholic upbringing about ‘suffering up our pain’ to gain indulgences for heaven bound. Suffering mentally or physically (and I don’t know how to separate one from the other) is not a happy uplifting experience, nor in my view, should it be viewed as something that will help us in a presumed afterlife. With fibromyalgia it involves daily challenges and struggles.
