Out of his hole crawls the bear.....

A member of my family has been diagnosed with fibromyalgia. Does anyone here have any suggestions for alternative therapies (other than pain medications) that have proven to aleviate the symptoms?

Back into hiding...

A current approach involves the use of reuptake inhibitors to increase levels of serotonin and norepinephrine;you could get a similar effect with 5-HTP and l-phenylalanine,which are available from health food shops.

Dear Tony,

Fibromyalgia is a slightly contentious medical diagnosis referring to experienced muscular pain, believed largely to be of psychosomatic origin. That does not mean that the person is'nt genuinely experiencing pain of course.

The symptoms are variable and without you being specific, it is difficult to be specific in response.

Symptoms can however be treated like any other. The relationship between pain and hypnosis is obvious. Treating the cause might be a little more elusive, but again, using NLP and the like to treat any underlying depression, trauma etc is going to do no harm. Within that seeking to identify the secondary gains of the pain could also be useful, i.e. what does being in pain prevent the person from otherwise doing etc.

A few years ago I worked with a woman who had this diagnosis. She certainly had her underlying psychological issues, which I will not go into here. Her choice however was to not address past traumas formally. In terms of treating the symptoms, distracting her attention seemed to work well on a shortish term basis, as did physical mobilisation, although she resisted initially the notion that working through her perceived pain through exercise could yield dividends. That was the advice given by medics most consistently. One activity that seemed to work best for her was regular sessions in a hydrotherapy pool working with a physiotherapist.

Unfortunately she was also on a considerable amount of not very helpful or effective medication, and had a strong psychological and social attachment to being unwell. What had worked best for her it seemed for many years was being a heroin addict, but that is clearly a dead end route, and I am commenting, not recommending, obviously. I met her after she stopped using and the "fibromyalgia" diagnosis was what she was left with.

As far as I am aware, she never went back to heroin, which is I suppose a small measure of success, but then, any successes in working through the diagnosis and her pain were also in small measures. I wish I could be more helpful.

Now get back in your hole ! You can always pop out to respond if you like.

MH

She is taking a new medication called Savella, which is supposedly specifically for fibromyalgia. I also ordered this for her: Health Journeys - Product Detail
Sadly, I live in an area where there are no reputable hypnotherapists (other than I, of course. We all know I'm the best ). I'll just continue to throw in subliminal stuff when I'm having conversations with her.

One of the things I don't like about diagnoses is that they're nominalized. The patient is experiencing certain processes that make them feel a certain way, and someone comes along, bundles them all up, and says "This is a noun now; an object. And furthermore, it's YOUR object to carry around with you forever and ever. You now get to say 'I HAVE a disease. I HAVE ______.'"

And nouns have this frozen quality about them; they just are what they are, and the person suffering not only individual symptoms but also medical hypnosis, can be forgiven for not looking beyond that noun to see a whole lot of verbs, which have a quality of motion about them.

So break open the object of that diagnosis and see what's inside: a lot of feelings your relative is experiencing now. What can be done to make that experiencing better?

No reputable hypnotherapist? How far do you live from that one in Ohio that Phil Adams has had success with? Too far to travel? And meantime I'm guessing that a disreputable hypnotist could do a lot to improve her day-to-day experience. You know the one I mean...

Ms. McKenna,
I've already spoken to Rubin on this. He doesn't feel that it would be helpful to take her to see him. I'm not sure which unreputable hypnotist you are talking about.

I like what Malcom wrote. Lots of wisdom there. Lots to think about. It's almost like he knows her.

Hi Tony

Horrible condition I wish your family member well.There is a brilliant book which is called hypnotise yourself out of pain now by Bruce Elmer, talks about all aspects of pain and how to control it rather than pain being in control comes with a cd its a gem of a book.Also the author has had chronic pain.

Hi Tony,

Glad to see you popping out of your hole...periodically at least. I had never heard of Savella, but having looked it up it seems to be in line with what Andrew Cavill posted.

However, I have little confidence in drug company hype and fear that a prescription for the condition reinforces the sick role, which IMHO enhances entrenchment in the medical model and sabotages self help.

My personal opinion is that its efficacy will be limited, and I agree with Bridget's observation that the nominalisation of processes contributes to being stuck. The worst outcome would be that your relative is taking a specialised prescription that does not really "cure" the problem and so she cannot be helped. All very passive of course, especially if the solution were to lie within.....

How about utilizing counter examples ? When has your family member been so engaged in the here and now that her diagnosis has been forgotten ? Maybe there is a useful anchor in there somewhere ?

Perhaps you will allow me to speculate a little further and suggest that there may be concerns that your family member might rightously be angry about ? I do not mean becoming angry in a destructive, raging way, but angry in a way that has inherent cold purpose. Anger carries with it a more productive physiology after all. It helps you get things done and sort your boundaries out to prevent one getting hurt again.

If that is a step too far and completely out of order, I apologise in advance. It is however my intuitive response.

I look forward to your next excursion from the bunker.

MH

I agree with B. McKenna. I don't like medical diagnoses either!! Those names are just labels carry with themselves after seeing their doctors, and so many such a "diagnoses" become bad suggestions patients carry with them for a long time in their lives.

Some months ago, a traumatologist doctor friend of mine and i started a CHRONIC PAIN CLINICAL UNIT. I sugested my friend to change the name or at least adding the word RELIEF somewhere in between since i don't like torturing people (just kidding).

People who visit our facilities, have been diagnosed Fybromialgia, Miosfascial or some kind of chronic pain, a pain wich has persisted for more than 6 months, and the most common phrase we've heard from these persons is "My last doctor told me this pain is something I HAVE to live with the rest of my life, so i need to be under medication ". Cool suggestion eh??!!! Some doctors give hypnotic suggestions without realizing they're doing it!. I think some times that is done for the sake of the farmacological labs business!!.. You know... serotonin uptake inhibitors.

Uptake inhibitors function is INHIBIT instead of PRODUCING MORE of a neurotransmitter. Why not to teach the patient how to feel good in such a way their serotonin levels raise?? That's quite easy!

Another important thing we've found in our patients is a high emotional component asociated to pain perception, even more when their former doctors don't have a "convincing" explanation about where such a pain comes from. So some patients develop a DOUBT STRATEGY about their ability to overcome such a "disease" or "dis-ease". Some others develop a very good strategy for feeling depressed or anxious or hopeless, and guess what?? all of these states have a muscle-eskeletal pattern associate to them!!, so it became a vicious circle of pain-emotion -pain

So, what to do?.. well.. it depends on every person. There are some medical procedures or protocols for treating pain, but regarding the emotional component, it depends on each individual case, even though i've had found a strong disbelief about being able to get rid of such a pain or at least minimize pain perception in the worst case scenario in most patients.

An alternative aproach to dealing with pain i would recommend is doing TAI CHI or CHI KUNG.... The rythmic breathing pattern, deep and slow breathing accompained with slow movements activate your parasympathetic branch of your nervous system, wich produce a nice relaxing state that among other things help you to improve your posture (relieving pain that comes from bad posture), helping your muscle fascia and of course it helps you entering a different state of mind.

But remember, even though Tai Chi is such a low impact activity, ask first you doctor (the one who does not say "that disease is something you have to live with") before taking any alternative approach.

Hope this information may be helpful.

Be well.

Franly Agostini
Venezuela.

Karen,
Thanks for the advice. Ordered from Amazon.

Who is this Franly guy and why aren't there more people like him in the world? I mean, with people like Gabe and him I should probably learn to speak Spanish and move south. There seem to be some truly remarkable people in the Latin American world.

Hi Tony
Fibromyalgia clearly has physical and mental components.
Seeing your in the states, I would like to mention that I was taught by a doctor in Florida a process called Patterns of Physical Transformation. With these skills I myself have had surprising results with this condition, each person having some similar patterns and some individual patterns both mentally and physically.
Either way they are unconscious patterns which can definitley be improved and managed in profound ways from my experience.

And I know Dr. Perry could definitly improve functioning with this 'condition' and anyone can learn how to too!
Check it out. Your body is more capable than you think!

Don,
I agree with you that there are both physical and mental components. Sadly, I am not a gifted enough NLPer to be of any help. I have sent an email to the people you recommend. I look forward to being able to help my ailing relative.

Hi Tony,

Also I'd suggest having a read of 'Magic in Practice' by Garner Thompson (hope that's the correct spelling, memory at work here and I can't quite see the picture!)

Anyway, although written for GPs, there are lots of ideas for how anyone can to talk positively and give post-hypnotic suggestions to a 'patient'. Richard Bandler is quoted as saying all NLP practitioners should read it and I'm inclined to agree, even if I don't really like 'shoulds' :-)

My partner has fibro. All the best to your relative - I know it's a very tiring and painful condition.

I also know not all GPs are up to speed - she was once told to go and get a life!

Hi, I am a Physiotherapist as well as NLP Trainer and Feldenkrais practitioner. I work with a number of folk with the label "fibromyalgia", and also many other what I consider to be brown out on the way to burn out issues. This site may be of help to show that the medical profession do acknowledge that there is an emotional link. While its not a research or trial that I have carried out, I can find that folk with this manner of problem can often be helped with all manner of NLP processes.
Take care

I would like to add to what Franly said, there is a Dr Tom Gilhooley in Glasgow who's lecture at Camexpo I heard last year. As a hypnotherapist I went in case clients came for pain relief for this. He pointed out that FibroMyalgia (he has a clinic for sufferers)is often made worse by Candida Albicans affecting the whole body after repeated antibiotics upset the balance in the gut. This allows Candida to migrate through the gut wall to other organs, causing many fairly low grade symptoms leading to generally feeling below par almost all the time, includes fatigue, headaches, joint aches etc. Makes Fibro worse too as many of same symptoms. Very simple initial test (blood test later to back up) is spitting saliva into tumbler of still water, if it floats great, if it sinks in trails like a portugese man of war you need a fungacide for 6 weeks or so and cut right down on sugars in the meantime as it's candida's favourite. I do not have FibroMyalgia but did have the Candida caused by many antibiotics for sinus infections, which the Candida helps cause, chicken and egg methinks! hope this info helps, for me it was like coming alive again.

I'd also advise (in an entirely unofficial way) anyone suffering from fibro to go completely off any form of artificial sweeteners for a few weeks and notice what changes.