Archive for the ‘talk therapy’ Category

Fibromyalgia and Treatment

Saturday, June 13th, 2009

“What I am looking for is not out there; it is in me”, Helen Keller

The idea that fibromyalgia can be ‘cured’ through medications is erroneous. Drugs such as Neurontin or Lyrica can sometimes be effective to control the symptoms in some people with fibromyalgia some of the time. Is this really treatment or merely masking the symptoms?mind20and20the20brain

I will make this blog very short and suggest that the best way to treat fibromyalgia is  1) to remap the brain; 2)control the excess arousal of the nervous system; 3) unlearn what we have believed to be either a   biological/viral/bacterial cause of fibromyaliga; 4) stop the talk therapy that only brings up the same negative stories we have told ourselves over and over and continues to reactivate our nervous sytem; 5) stop looking for a ‘cure’ with medicines.

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Fibromyalgia, ‘goodism’, self-sacrifice,”giving yourself away”

Saturday, May 9th, 2009

untitled“Self development is a higher duty than self sacrifice”, Elizabeth Stanton

As I read more and more about brain mapping and how to change the pain mappings in my brain I am reminded about how intensely I wrote in my book regarding the highly sensitive person (HSP, according to Elaine Aron). This is the ‘empath’, the person who senses what other people are feeling and takes on the emotions of others as though they were her/his own( I don’t mean this in the usual sense of the ‘psychic’ person, or in any mystical way). I still stand by that description of the person with fibromyalgia. We are like a toxic sponge! Now, I believe that this type of person (mainly, but, of course not solely, women) has the personality characteristics of the self sacrificing, doing good for others (what  Dr. James Rochelle calls ‘goodism’) and ‘giving yourself away’ (a term Nick Matheson coined). When I think of Florence Nightingale on this May day, her birthday month, suffering from fibromyalgia, I think of her as a primary example of self sacrificing.

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