Fibromyalgia….. I’m sorry can you say that word again?

Fi-bro-my-al-gia!

Wow, that sounds serious, what is it?

This was my response when I first heard this word. It sounded fascinating, unusual, and I wanted to know more about what it was.

30 years living in Africa, I had never heard of fibromyalgia hence my curiosity to find out more about it.

It says symptoms may vary from person to person with pain all over the body. This isn’t hard to believe if a person who has multiple health conditions.

It’s written that Irritable Bowel Syndrome can be a symptom of Fibromyalgia. Is it possible that a diagnosed illness can be a symptom of another health condition? Or is Fibromyalgia just an “umbrella condition” for symptoms that don’t seem to have a cause, other than perhaps Stress? And stress is about how a person responds to situations in their life.

The reason I was investing so much of my time in Fibromyalgia was because I had qualified as an EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) Practitioner and I was getting amazing result with the various issues my clients had.

EFT is about clearing old negative emotions from past traumas, memories and beliefs that can create an imbalance within the body’s field of energy. That imbalance can then be expressed through unexplained health conditions and physical pain.

EFT helps a person to disconnect the negative emotions they have attached to unpleasant memories from the past, and to change their beliefs and perspective on how they deal with life, which often helps return the body back to homeostasis and alleviate health conditions and physical pain

Being part of several Chronic Pain and Fibromyalgia groups, I started to see a regular connection between the people in these groups and trauma. Could the pain be linked to the trauma/s they had experienced in their past.

It makes sense that if a person is constantly in a negative state of mind or being overwhelmed by pain, they will have an imbalance of certain chemicals in their brain because emotions are the result of a chemical reaction in the brain.

If constantly feeling negative creates an imbalance then that links back to how EFT can help bring the body and brain (which is an organ of the body) back into balance.

Now I really was determined to see if I could help this one group of people. Even if I could just help them alleviate their pain, that had to be a benefit to them.

I finally “got my toe in the door” when a lady in one of the groups said she wanted to know more about EFT as she had never heard of it. She had lived with pain and illness since she was a small child and now in her 50’s she had been bedridden for 5 years and had been diagnosed with extreme Fibromyalgia.

She needed a wheelchair to go from her bed to the bathroom

If she had the energy she would crawl downstairs for the main meal with her husband and 2 children on some days.

She had broken one and then the other ankle over a period of 2 years.

Had suffered from various forms of addictions

Was good at everything she had been capable of doing at one time, but had never felt that who she was or what she did was ever good enough.

She had given up hope of ever living a normal life again, and this is just the bones of the traumas and issues she has dealt with in her life.

I quickly realised that just dealing with the level of her pain wasn’t’ going to be enough, she had to start clearing the traumas and humiliation, the rejections and bullying, the belief that she wasn’t good enough and the pain that she had caused her parents.

So we started talking, and even though she was interested, she was also sceptical of EFT and that it could cure her. In fact she was quite open in saying that she thought it was a load of Bull S*it!

For a month we talked, and each time I would ask her if she was ready to start working with me and learn how to use EFT as a tool that could chipped away at the traumas from her past, so that her body could start to heal and that in turn would help to reduce the pains that were part of her life.

She kept saying she wasn’t ready, she needed to feel stronger. Eventually I told her she would never be ready, that was just resistance showing up and we were going to start the next day.

That was 6 weeks ago now.

She got out of bed after just 4 weeks. Yes she was still in pain, but she had hope and determination.

She was able to cook the evening meal for her family for the first time in 5 years.

Everyday she addresses a negative memory or trauma from her past and clears the associated negative emotions.

She is more aware of the type of thoughts she has and the mood she’s in.

She’s stopped worrying about others and uses her energy to heal and do what’s important that day

After nearly 7 weeks she said her pain was down to a 1.5 out of 10, 10 being extreme pain 0 being no pain

We still have another 5 weeks of working together and I’m excited to see how much more healing she will achieve.

Most importantly she knows that fibromyalgia is an accumulation of traumas and overwhelming negativity, which over time has affected her mental and physical health, and if she wants to get better, it’s her choice to make each and every day.