How’s your fibro brain? Do the words can’t and impossible flow through your mental pathways daily? Do you feel robbed of a positive future? The brain plays a crucial role in the process of healing from chronic illness. Discover how to repair these broken pathways today.
The Fibro Brain & Words that Hurt
The fibromyalgia brain needs love, care, and support. It needs nourishment both in the physical realm (great nutrition) and nourishment in the emotional realm.
What you feed your brain matters!
This post focuses on the feeding and care of your brain with the emotions you feel most. What words run through your mind most often? In addition to can’t and impossible, what about won’t, shouldn’t, unable, unlikely, unworthy, never, unfair, and difficult?
You see, fibromyalgia and chronic illness make our brains even more attractive to negativity. If you’d like more info on this weighty topic, check out this article.
Of all the emotions that flow through our bodies, the ones that flow through the most have the greatest impact on our health. Negative thoughts create a downward spiral of negative physical reactions. Positive thoughts create an upward spiral of positive physical reactions.
So, the obvious question is – how do we strengthen the pathways we wish to create and weaken the rest? I’m so glad you asked!
Get Back into Whack (the easy way)
It’s a good thing that you don’t have to guess how to Get Back into Whack. I’ve written a whole book on the subject.
Yay! It’s now available on Amazon!
The theme of this entire book is about how to harness the brain’s powerful healing factor, neuroplasticity.
To give you a sneak peek today, I’ll share ONE method to strengthen positive neural pathways. This can be accomplished through the use of changing our inner self-talk. By using words and statements (with repetition), we can change the inner landscape of our internal conversations.
The #Fibromyalgia #Brain and Healing Words Click To TweetThe Healing Power of Words
While there are dozens of ways to use our thoughts to strengthen our brain’s neural pathways, there are three that I commonly share. You’re probably familiar with the first, less so with the second, and possibly not at all with the third.
Here we go!
1) Affirmations
This brings to mind an old, cheesy Saturday Night Live skit you’re not alone. That’s what I used to think of when I first heard about using affirmations to change thought patterns.
They’ve come a long way since then.
Affirmations are the most common method to change how we think for a very good reason. They’re easy to implement. You simply come up with statements that reflect your desires and repeat them often. If you struggle with that and can only come up with what you don’t want in life, go ahead and write them down. Then flip them. What do you wish were true instead?
Write your affirmations on notecards or your computer. Create flashcards or visionboards with them (along with positive and visually-stimulating images). Use affirmation apps such as Think Up and Smiling Mind.
Repeat your affirmations as often as you can. You’ll know you’re on the right track when these thoughts pop into your head even when you’re not consciously thinking of them.
2) Mantras
You may not be as familiar with mantras as you are with affirmations. In the context that I use them, the difference between an affirmation and a mantra is that an affirmation is a logical conscious-mind activity. It’s a word or statement about something that’s desired. When it’s something that also elicits a deep emotional connection, then it becomes a mantra.
My favorite form of mantras comes from the teachings of Dana Wilde of The Mind Aware. Through repetition and a lifetime of study, she demonstrates fun ways to “rant” or talk about a specific subject. This positive method really stirs up our “feel good” emotions. She gets going on a subject and by the time she’s done, listeners feel energized, aligned, and ready to take action.
I, too, love practicing these stream of consciousness rants. I do them for myself (often along with Tapping) with my clients. It’s as easy as creating a dialogue (talking) about something desired and then keep talking. You’ll know you’re done when you’ve exhausted what you want to say about the subject.
3) Afformations®
Here’s how Noah St. John, the founder, and creator of Afformations® describes them. “Afformations® (not ‘affirmations’) are empowering questions that immediately change your subconscious thought patterns from negative to positive.”
Afformations® blend some of my favorite topics (the nonconscious mind, positivity, and curiosity) into one useful method. This method creates useful questions designed to make you think in a different way. These questions (rather than statements) can be repeated often and used in a similar way to affirmations.
Daily Healing Prescription (Not a Fix-All)
Have you tried the above-mentioned techniques before? It’s likely that you’ve at least experimented with a few affirmations or statements to help you to feel better about your life’s circumstances.
When life is a struggle – as it certainly can be with chronic illness – it may seem trite or even silly to employ the techniques mentioned above.
And, I want to be clear.
There’s no quick-fix method and there’s no fix-all solution.
Switching your inner self-talk to words and phrases that are more positive in nature can certainly help. In fact, it helps in powerful ways that you’re probably not yet aware of.
That’s the beauty of this work.
Words can be affirming, loving, supportive, inspirational, empowering, joy-filled, comforting – and as a result, healing and hopeful.
Just as with exercise, it takes repetition and consistency to see results. If you’d like more info on any of these subjects, feel free to reply to this email, or contact me on my website. I’m happy to help.
