In your family somebody has fibromyalgia and you don’t know: How can you help her or him?
I´m going to give you some tips to get better life quality for you and for him/her.
Probably in this moment you are saying: My life quality?, but if I´m not the sick.
It´s here where all begining.
Family and fibromyalgia
When somebody in your family is diagnosis with a chronic illness (like fibromyalgia), whichever it is. All family life is affected.
A chronic disease not only impacts who suffer it, everyone around them suffers a “wave effect”.
It´s like when you throws a stone into a lake and you saw circular waves around this point, that extend over a much larger area than the one where the stone fell.
So, although you aren´t fibromyalgia sick, I´m going to tell you some tips that will make your life less impacted by the “expansion waves” of fibromyalgia.
Tips that will make you can help improve your familiar’s life quality.
Tip #1 – Learn about fibromyalgia
The knowledge is power!!
At the same time, you can learn about fibromyalgia, and you would going to discover how you can help your relative.
Otherwise, if you do not know everything, uncertainty will reign in your life and it will be so difficult to achieve empathy to understand and help your loved one.
First, I´m going to tell you: What is fibromyalgia?
It’s a disease whose main symptom is the generalized pain. Imagine it!! That absolutely all your body hurts you!
All this will produce extreme fatigue and tiredness, even for activities that require very little effort.
Further, you have sleep bad quality, sometimes there is insomnia but almost always the sleep is not restorative, that is, it does not produce rest.
A vicious circle is appear worsed life quality of who suffer fibromyalgia. More pain, worse sleep, more fatigue and vice versa.
These are more frequent symptoms, but has been identifided more than 100 symptoms associated to fibromyalgia.
Read more on Living with fibromyalgia
Tip #2 – Make it feel that you believe him/her
Try to remtry to remember the last time you hit something and the pain lasted a couple of days; or that day you had low back pain, which gave you a hard time, trying to find a position where it would not bother or hurt you.
Now imagine, How is live every day of your life like this; with pain in all your body, very tiredness and sleeping poorly.
And with all that discomfort, you have to stand up every day to fulfill all your responsibilities and chores.
But this is not the worse. You know, what is the most painful?
Often times, despite your great efforts, your family members think you are lazy, that complaining for not reason.
They think and sometimes say to you, that all is your invention.
A lot of people with fibromyalgia wish scream aloud for, maybe before they think in their improvement, they ask believe me.
Imagine, just believe them!
Tip #3 – Show it your interest in his/her improvement
Fibromyalgia is an “invisible disease“, that is you don’t see it in nowhere.
It doesn´t appear in lab exam or diagnostic images, neither.
In their body, you don’t see not nothing damaged or injured.
All of this do life journey very difficult. Can be pass a lot of year before they find a doctor who believe them, suspect it and diagnosis them, fibromyalgia.
Meanwhile, their quality of life deteriorates; at the same time, their family ties are also injured.
What Your relative with fibromyalgia need of you, is a partner in this daily battle.
If you looking for information together then you could understand the fibromyalgia. Learn to live with fibromyalgia.
Thereby, you can do all the changes that are needed to get him/her improvement, together. You can looking for professional assistance to strengthen your family ties.
Together, always together.
Your relative with fibromyalgia need to know he/she is not alone, that you gonna be with him/her and for him/her, always.
Tip #4 – Be empathic along his/her process
Believe me, I understand you because I really know how difficult is “put yourself in someone else’s shoes”.
Live together with a fibromyalgic person, is no easy. You hear them complain all day and they say that everything hurts them, but you see them well.
I know, you get tired of listening complaints and regrets, and you see somebody cry all the time, without understand why he/she do that.
You don´t understand why was your life change. Without apparent reason, your fibromyalgic familiar was changed and that messed up your life.
That’s all truth. But, you relative need you, more than ever.
He/she is going through a situation that he does not understand either, his/her life turned upside down and now he cannot “with himself”, his body now seems his/her enemy, each day became a marathon challenge.
Your relative with fbromyalgia only wish that you understand him/her, that you don’t judged him/her, tha don’t punishment him/her.
Tip #5 – Make a fundamental part of their recovery
“Tame” fibromyalgia requires a joint effort. I’m going to tell you why.
Fibromyalgia is a chronic disease (that is, once it appears, it will always accompany you) and it has no cure (although along the way you will find many unscrupulous people who will want to sell you miracle cures).
Fibromyalgia treatment requires:
- Medicament
The medications that doctors use to treat fibromyalgia do little to help. However, they are in charge of producing a “fertile ground” for improvement. So discipline with them is important.
But the real improvement for your family member with fibromyalgia is in some changes in the lifestyle and that is where your presence and support is essential.
Some foods improve and others make fibromyalgia symptoms worse.
But believe me, it is impossible for you to eat with restrictions, while others calmly eat what you cannot eat.
Nobody diets alone. It is easier if everyone adopts the same type of diet.
Click here to cita médica de fibromialgia
- Mild but regular physical activity
Physical activity is fundamental. It has proven to be the best “remedy” for fibromyalgia.
But it must be a physical activity of mild intensity (yoga, gyrokinesis, Pilates, Tai Chi, etc.), but that is practiced regularly and disciplined.
And this is where your fibromyalgia family member needs you the most.
For him / her to start physical activity will be very difficult because he / she has a lot of pain and a lot of fear that the pain will get worse.
And so it will be at the beginning. So he will always have the intention of failing in the attempt.
Your support and encouragement will be essential to achieve the necessary frequency and discipline, so that the exercise has the desired effect.
But you do not need someone to do “cheers”, but someone to do physical activity with him / her, to serve as motivation during the action.
- Stress management
Surely you have already noticed how your family member with fibromyalgia worsens when he has an upset or when he is under pressure.
Stress is a strong trigger for fibromyalgia. Even in some people it was the generator of this.
Yes, learning to manage stress and emotions is super important.
Doing any of the forms of meditation will help you find a way to focus on yourself, beyond the pain.
So you can allow space and time to do it or better yet, share it with him / her; it will be good for you too.
All forms of art therapy (dancing, singing, listening to music, doing manual work) will help you find moments and spaces of pleasure.
And know? pleasure in all its forms releases natural painkillers into the body of the practitioner. So become the “bawd” of his passions.
Join to Living with fibromyalgia group
I’m sorry I did such a long text, but I think you and your fibromyalgia family member deserve it. Talking head-on about things helps you understand and manage them.
When someone in the family is diagnosed with fibromyalgia, from then on that will be a family with fibromyalgia and that is how we must manage it, we are all the ones who must make changes, be empathetic and work as a team to get ahead and recover our quality of life.
Now that you have taken the time to read all this information, I ask you a special favor:
Go find your loved one.
Give him a hug and tell him that he is counting on you, that you believe him.
That from now on he will no longer face this disease alone.
That they are a family and together they will do whatever it takes to “tame” fibromyalgia.
You do not know, the good that you will do.
From a distance, I send you a hug and I sincerely hope that this information will help you improve the quality of life for your entire family.
