Lady Gaga is probably the famous person with fibromyalgia , who has given the disease the most visibility.
Since 2017, she has made it public, how this disease has affected her life.
These are excerpts from the interview with Oprah Winfrey on her “ 2020 vision tour talk ” program on January 4, 2020 at the BB&T Center in Ft. Lauderdale. Lady Gaga and fibromyalgia
Lady Gaga’s vision
Oprah: Did you create this kind of alternate person called Gaga?
Lady Gaga: It was a vision of who I wanted to be. That is what happens when you have a vision for yourself. You can be here (shows a distant point), you have your vision and then suddenly everything comes together.
Now after almost a decade of being in the industry, I really do recognize my position in front of the people who are watching me. I think to myself that the world is watching me, I have something important to say, I want to change people’s lives.
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Oprah: You said that now you’ve reached a point in your life where you don’t feel the need to create some identity to impact the public.
Lady Gaga: I think the most important thing I could do is be completely vulnerable and honest with you about my life, about what has happened to me, about the difficulties that I have witnessed and that I have also gone through; to share that with the world, in order to be able to help other people who are suffering.
Oscar’s awards
Oprah: One of the things that struck me when you were at the Oscars… was your speech… you said, “If you’re at home and you’re watching this now, all I have to say is this was hard work. I have worked hard for a long time. It’s not just about winning, it’s about not giving up. if you have a dream fight for it. There is a discipline for passion. It is not about how many times you are rejected, you fall or you hit. It’s about how many times you stand up, are brave, and keep going. ”
Someone has asked you “what do you see when you look at that Oscar? And you said you see a lot of pain Was it because of the hard work or the real physical and mental pain you had to go through to get it?
Lady Gaga: It’s no secret .. I fight mental health problems and also chronic pain. Some call it fibromyalgia or neuropathic pain.
What is fibromyalgia?
Oprah: What does fibromyalgia mean ?
Lady Gaga: Fibromyalgia is essentially a chronic pain condition that causes your body to ache through your brain. Someone watching this would say, “don’t say my fibromyalgia is in my head, because my whole body hurts .” In fact, sitting here today, I have pain all over my body. But, what’s interesting about this is that I discovered through neuropsychic research and my relationship with my doctors, that fibromyalgia can be treated through mental health therapy.
I was raped multiple times when I was 19 years old, I also developed PTSD as a result of the rape; also for not having processed that trauma. I never faced it. And then all of a sudden I started to experience this incredible and intense pain throughout my body that mimics the pain I felt after being raped.
It is that many people do not know what fibromyalgia is . We must all come together and figure this out.
There is a neuropsychic aspect, there is also an immunity aspect where there is a possibility that the immune system has something to do with fibromyalgia . There are similarities in my condition to autoimmune diseases, but fibromyalgia is not an autoimmune disease .
In front of you I promise that my commitment for this 2020 and the next decade or perhaps more will be: to meet with scientists, doctors, psychiatrists, mathematicians and teachers. We are going to analyze each problem, one by one, and we are going to solve this mental health crisis.
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Expressing pain
Oprah: You told me that you cut your arms and that you have scars from the cuts. Can you explain it to me, what does that mean?
Lady Gaga: I was also hitting against the wall. He used to do some horrible things to me when I was in pain … Sometimes I would cut myself because I didn’t want to feel pain and other times, I would cut myself because I wanted to show others that I was in a lot of pain and needed help. That is why what my mother and I always say with the “ Born this way foundation ” is “tell me, don’t show me”.
Oprah: What kept you on your feet?
Lady Gaga: Faith, Inspiration and Hope. I also have to say, and I know this is controversial in many ways, but the medicine really helped me. I think a lot of people are afraid of medicine to treat their brain and I really want to remove the stigma around this
Real radical acceptance
Oprah: Something that we’ve been talking about today, that you can’t move forward with anything in your life, until there is real radical acceptance.
Lady Gaga: I remember sitting down with my doctor and he said “you need to radically accept that you are going to feel pain every day .” And I said, “Are you kidding me? I thought this is how I am going to heal . Just accepting that I will feel bad all the time? What will I have pain in my whole body constantly? He said, “You have to accept it radically.”
And guess what, it took a little time, but I did. And do you know what else happened after that? Slowly the pain dissipated more and more and then suddenly I was able to continue.
I was on the couch, I was dejected, I couldn’t move. Doctors evaluated me to see if I could eat.
Radical acceptance was the key, also being open to taking medication and talking about my trauma.
Spiritual awakening
Oprah: What has been your greatest spiritual awakening?
Lady Gaga: I realized that I have chronic pain for a reason. But I don’t mean to say that God sent it to me. And I don’t believe in Karma either, that you are sick because you did something wrong. But I do believe that this happened for a reason … And I think it happened because God was telling me “I am going to show you the pain and then you will help other people who are in pain because you will understand them.”
Affraid to die
Oprah: Why didn’t you know yourself anymore? Was it because you have given so much of yourself to your Little Monsters, to your fans, to the world, to your work?
Lady Gaga: I just didn’t stop moving. I kept moving, working and dancing in the midst of insurmountable pain . I will say that it took years until I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia . I went to the doctor all the time to get X-rays and MRIs of my whole body; for someone to tell me if something was wrong, like when you suffered a herniated disc or something. They couldn’t find me anything and that was very frustrating.
I was on tour, dancing in excruciating pain .
Oprah: And what did you say to yourself?
Lady Gaga: I was afraid to die
Oprah: And you lived like this for how long?
Lady Gaga: I’d say I lived like this for almost five years. And I radically accept those five years, because they made me who I am
The loneliness of pain
Oprah: Let’s talk about loneliness for a few moments. I think everyone assumes that if you are famous, you are always surrounded by people who are doing things for you. But it is a lonely journey.
Lady Gaga: Yes, it is a lonely journey. When you have chronic pain it is much lonelier, because it is only you who suffers it and you cannot make someone else feel it. You feel completely alone.
How to stay healthy
Oprah: You use medicine, but you also do a lot of other things to stay spiritually healthy.
Lady Gaga: I use medicine , I meditate . I do transcendental meditation . And if sometimes I feel a lot of pain, I meditate and the pain goes away. I also exercise every day. But I also listen to my body, because if I have a lot of pain and a lot of stress, I may not exercise very hard or I may not exercise at all. I listen to my body and listen to what it tells me. I therapy talk, dialectical behavior therapy and many other things.
Oprah: So you are actively working on yourself all the time.
Lady Gaga: I actively work on myself all the time, I have to. If I don’t I will sit and feel pain all day .
Hopefully, more and more celebrities with fibromyalgia tell the world what it is like to live with fibromyalgia and help us to give visibility to this “ invisible disease ”.
Full video of the interview
