How Fibromyalgia Affects My Daily Life – Stress

It’s no secret to anyone who has had a chronic illness for a long time that stress aggravates your condition, especially when that chronic illness is pain centered like chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia or other chronic pain disorders.

Yesterday, I had a very vivid experience that illustrates this point.

Without boring you with the details, I’ll summarize the event. My daughter is finishing up her cosmetology education. She had one last project. When my daughter handed in that last project, Darlene failed it with spurious claims on not following directions. She followed the instructions to the letter and so I called up the head instructor Darlene, and she told me what she told my daughter. What the instructor told me and what my daughter told me about the guidelines of the project was almost word for word the same instructions, yet she had the nerve to fail her.

I tried to explain how wrong it was, using her own words against her, in failing my daughter. She was stubborn and wouldn’t budge. A while later the Vice President of academics called us and asked that we bring in the project as part of her investigation. We did. During the conversation, it became readily apparent that she was taking the side of the teacher. The facts were not disputed, but she took the side of her friend. Although, to her credit, she provided two compromises to resolve the issue.

My daughter choose an option and then I let myself dive into to her for the sake of justice. Since there would be no consequences for Darlene I decided I needed to make my case and educate this Vice President on the concept of consequences and justice. Granted, I did this from the standpoint of anger, but my points were valid. Finally, after I said what I wanted to say twice or more I stopped, thanked her for her time and found my daughter and left. Looking back on it, while I had valid points, I acted out of anger. I will write more on that in a later post as a way to manage stress.

This is where the story really begins.

This is where the story begins in dramatic fashion. Within four, maybe five minutes, we were still driving in the complex, I felt my lower back muscles move and twist and spasm. The pain wasn’t too bad because I had recently taken a pain pill and muscle relaxer. But when I started to feel those muscles move and squeeze I was amazed at how soon after that ordeal stress kicked into my body and physically manifested itself.

This story is just one more of a million ways about how fibromyalgia affects my daily life when stress is involved. This epiphany opens up room for me to consider in the future how to control my anger, that will be a topic for the future.

Troy Wagstaff ©

Filed under: Fibromyalgia - Fbro Awareness | Tagged: fibro awareness, How Fibromyalgia Affects My Daily Life - Stress, stress |