10 Ways To Feel Fulfilled With Fibromyalgia

This article on 10 ways to feel Fulfilled with Fibro is the third in a three part series of posts starting with:

1. Three Ways To Live Life To The Fullest With Fibromyalgia
2. Fibromyalgia: 3 Ways To Manage Your Expectations
3. 10 Ways To Feel Fulfilled With Fibro

When you have fibromyalgia or other chronic pain illnesses your life takes a dramatic turn down a different path. If you have fibromyalgia, this path will be different for the rest of your life unless they come up with a cure or a wonderful way to manage the illness.

Sometimes your life can come to a complete stop, either because you haven’t found the right way to treat each symptom differently, or you’re caught by a monster called pain that won’t let you go.

I have had fibromyalgia for over thirty-two years. It has been accurately diagnosed for around seven or eight years. My fibro fog is kicking in and I can’t remember exactly how long it’s been diagnosed.

I have been through long periods of time where I have felt completely unfulfilled and useless. With the countless symptoms of fibro, I felt for quite a while that there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t work, all I did was lay in a recliner all day watching videos and TV. That is not fulfilling.

As I started to get correctly medicated I started to see things I could do that, gave me a sense of fulfillment. Once I started to feel a little more fulfilled than others things came to me that I could do to continue to feel fulfillment in life. The sense of fulfillment is strong medicine.

Those of you with a life altering chronic pain illnesses need to find activities that give you a sense of fulfillment. Here is a list of ten things that I can do that, give me a sense of fulfillment.

1. Learn about fibromyalgia so I know when people make outlandish claims about curing it, I know better. That gives me a sense of control.
2. Forgiving the illness freed up some energy to use toward being fulfilled.
3. Carefully and slowly start an exercise program, slow progress is better than no progress.
4. When I’m in the middle of a flare up or season change or on a downhill cycle, I know not to give up. I’ll always be in pain and sick, but I will eventually be less sick and have less pain. It seems to come in cycles. I guess this comment speaks more to hope than fulfillment.
5. Keep a journal. Write about how you feel, what you did that day. Fibro fog can be so bad that you can forget what you ate for breakfast that day. Keep track of activities and how they made you body feel. When keeping a personal journal, nothing is off limits to what you can write.
6. I blog, about Christian topics, but I mostly blog about fibro topics and my personal experiences with fibro in hopes of validating others with the illness. My fibro blog is called Fibro Champions Blog at CallahanWriter.com.
7. I have recently got into creative writing. I am currently writing a mystery novel with the main character having to deal with fibromyalgia as the story moves along.
8. Create inspirational memes that I post on my blog.
9. Create fibro memes that I post on my blog.
10. Now that I have a better camera with my phone I take pictures and often use those pictures in my meme hobby.

The point to all this is that I have discovered things I can do within the limitations of fibro. These ten items go out the window during an acute flare up, but they’re waiting for me when I feel good enough to open my laptop. They give me a sense of accomplishment which is, like I said earlier, good medicine.

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