Do you have a healing story? Perhaps you’re not aware of it. If you talk to your doctors, friends, neighbors, or strangers about your experience with fibromyalgia and/or chronic illness, that’s what we’re discussing today. In this month of Fibromyalgia Awareness, it’s time to share.
Talking about your experiences allows you to form a story about what you believe. The term “story” may give you a negative nudge but read on to see why that’s not so. Understanding this distinction is something you absolutely must get.
Why Do I Have a Healing Story?
Stories are the meanings we create to make sense of our world. Everything we experience – what we see, hear, taste, touch, feel – goes through an interpretation process in our head.
We analyze and strategize
all that we observe.
Once we’ve done this process, we come up with beliefs that are rational to our way of thinking. Because this process is unique only to us – we create unique results.
For example, three people can witness the same crime and interpret what they observe in drastically different ways. This fundamental truth – that our own interpretations are different from others – helps us to understand our own story. It’s crucial that we do.
What is My Healing Story?
This is easy.
Think about the last time you discussed your health situation to a stranger or someone new. What did you say? What experiences and conclusions did you share?
Figuring out our own stories just takes a bit of awareness.
Write down what you typically say to someone unfamiliar with your health challenges. What parts of your whole health history do you share the most? Pay attention to the conclusions you draw. You may not think of them as such.
To you, they’re simply the facts of the case.
Here are a few illustrative examples:
- I had surgery in my mid-30s and have never been the same since. I tried physical therapy and every diet known to man. I keep gaining weight and nothing works. The pain is overwhelming and nothing I do makes a difference.
- Fibromyalgia crept up slowly for me. It just got worse and worse until I had to quit my job. I feel somewhat better when I get outdoors. I’ve always been an outdoors person. But, it doesn’t fix things entirely. I still live day to day wondering how bad it’ll be today.
- I had a period of time where I got one infection after another. I was on antibiotics more often than not. It happened to come at a time when things were awful at work and I felt like I had to fight to keep my job every day. There was so much office politics going on it was exhausting. I never really got over the fatigue of being sick so often and never quite recovered. I still get sick if someone so much as sneezes in my direction.
These story examples demonstrate patterns of belief. We ALL have them. They define experiences through their own personal filters. They define – for each person – what they believe to be true.
Is My Healing Story Good or Bad?
I gave this topic its own subheading because I want to make this point clear.
Our Fibromyalgia stories are neither good nor bad.
Discovering our stories is just the first step to becoming aware of what we believe. Defining it as either good or bad (judging) doesn’t help. In fact, it can block us from forward progress.
We’ll get more into this in another post, but it’s imperative that you simply view your stories as puzzle pieces in your own journey. They are just part of the whole picture.
Alone, they may not create a complete picture.
We’ll fill in details later.
Our #Fibromyalgia healing stories are neither good nor bad. Click To TweetWhat Does My Healing Story Tell Me?
At this point, we simply want to become aware of our stories. It’s important to take note of what we believe to be true. From here, we can choose to explore a bit further. Dig a little deeper.
Here’s an example of my healing story in 2002.
- I believed that walking with a cane was devastating, but just a phase. Soon I’d need my own scooter chair.
- I believed I’d be disabled for the rest of my life.
- I believed my doctors when they said there was nothing I could do.
These beliefs were neither right nor wrong. That’s exactly what I believed then. For now, we’re just taking an objective look at our current beliefs. Write them down. Share them below.
Again, there’s no right or wrong. We’re not looking to blame, shame, or in any way judge what we believe to be true.
Simply share. What’s your healing story? Let me know in the comments below.
Now that you’ve got the details of your Healing Story, what do they mean? Jump into the next post in this series – Fibromyalgia Awareness Healing Story Meaning.
