I Live In Deliberate Denial and It Helps!…Mind-Set and Fibromyalgia

You know, it seems like a real contradiction, now that I think about it. I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia almost fourteen years ago and while I clearly remember accepting that I had some new life-changing condition fairly quickly, maybe even right from the start…I ended up tackling it right from the start by NOT buying into the idea that I was sick at all!

No, I wasn’t buying into the idea of being sick on a day-to-day basis.

Or rather, I guess I fell into, kind of PRETENDING I wasn’t sick…to myself…and to others. I came to think of my new chosen mind-set as “deliberate denial”…and I have to say…it has really helped me to fight fibromyalgia over the years.

So let me explain.

In an earlier post I talked about how I’ve always tried to not focus on my fibromyalgia or as I came to think of it, to “minimize it”. The idea is to limit (or “minimize”) fibromyalgia to just being as small a part of your life as it can be…and limit it to being ONLY one part of your life (not overruling everything). And as I said in another earlier post, “Minimize It More”, a really helpful part of “minimizing it” for me was not telling many people at all that I had fibromyalgia. Most people I know (even some family members until recently) don’t know I have fibromyalgia.

So between trying not to focus on my fibromyalgia to limit it to being as small a part of my life as possible and not telling many others that I had fibromyalgia, enabling me to interact with others as if I didn’t have it, I soon came to like to think of the way I was living as being in a state of “deliberate denial”.

I was pretending I didn’t have fibromyalgia…on purpose.

Oh I was never really in denial…I certainly knew I had a tough illness to battle now…that was always clear from the start…and like I said before…for some reason I accepted that fairly quickly…even before I had an actual diagnosis….maybe because I had battled chronic illness before. And realistically, with fibromyalgia, obviously we can’t totally ignore the crushing chronic exhaustion, the ongoing pain and the myriad of other symptoms confronting us on a day to day basis.

But in any event, what started out as “minimize it”, soon morphed into my self-described “deliberate denial” and that worked for me! (and still does)

I felt power and control over my life because I was succeeding in limiting fibromyalgia’s reach into my life. I wasn’t allowing it to be the overriding thing that it threatened to be…I guess, largely by just ignoring it as much as I could. Again, I just wasn’t buying into the idea of being sick, not in MY mind, anyways. I think it worked for me like some version of “out of sight, out of mind”…maybe more like “out of mind, out of life”, at least that’s what I was aiming for…and I have to say…it definitely helped me take a big step in that direction.

So in my chosen state of “deliberate denial”, I tried not to think of my fibromyalgia at all. It became easy to slip into my “deliberate denial” mind-set in some respects…hardly anyone else knew and those that did, took their cue from me and didn’t talk about it for the most part, if at all.

Even at home, my husband and three kids for sure know I have fibromyalgia, but over the last almost fifteen years, I rarely tell any of them of the day to day symptoms and difficulties I am experiencing and enduring, no matter how bad I feel. I just don’t…that’s the way I live it. (Sure, they notice it at times…it’s hard not to notice, say, when they come across one of my impromptu naps on the floor somewhere…when I’ve been crouched down maybe sorting through some newspapers or something and I feel so exhausted that I lie down right on the spot on the floor intending to quickly get a little relief for just a minute…but of course…I fall asleep almost immediately…oh well…by now my kids tease me about those and we all laugh about it.)

But mainly, I’m just in the habit of trying to ignore it myself; so I don’t talk about it with others. I’m trying to NOT focus on it…in fact, I try to focus on everything but it. My gaze is outward on life around me and not inward on my fibromyalgia. My gaze is on things I CAN control and not on the lack of control and resulting feelings of helplessness that fibromyalgia threatens to insert into my life.

Thinking this way feels so much more positive which ALSO in turn seems to help my fibromyalgia overall. As I said in my last blog post, “at some point the correlation between being positive and fewer symptoms just became a given for me and I was always striving for ways to keep positive”.

And there’s another thing I like about living in “deliberate denial” and how it limits not only my attention on my fibromyalgia but others attention too. It’s that, for the most part, I haven’t wanted sympathy from anyone because, and maybe this is a personal thing, usually getting sympathy from others makes me feel weak and sick and helpless, just the opposite of the steady, strong and able way I need to feel to combat fibromyalgia.

And ever noticed when you are bothered by something, maybe a headache, but then you get busy and stop focusing on it and a little later you think of it again and you realize, it’s gone? Well, I know that happens with “regular” people but I’ve found that happens to some degree with my fibromyalgia symptoms too, so I have to think my “deliberate denial” mind-set has helped lessen my symptoms over the years in that respect as well.

So, for me, mind-set seems to me to be just as important as all the other things in the mix of what I’ve found works for my fibromyalgia, good sleep, exercise and focusing on a healthy lifestyle to name a few, …in fact, now that I think about it, MIND-SET COULD BE THE MOST IMPORTANT because mind-set is incredibly helpful to help to keep motivated to do all these other things…like exercise and the things that help us get good sleep to name a couple‎.

Yes, what I know is real is that my stubborn will to maintain my “deliberate denial” mind-set has really helped me to keep fibromyalgia in perspective in my life. It became my norm such a long time ago, along with other ways of thinking that I’ll talk about in future blog posts. As we all do, I’ve had to do what I need to do to function with this condition and if changing my thinking to live with a denial mind-set helps me, I’ll keep doing just that and whatever else I need to do to survive and even thrive.

Because I AM surviving…and thriving…and even steadily, gradually and unmistakably improving.

For all of us with fibromyalgia, really, it seems to me that it’s all about doing or thinking whatever it takes to get up and get doing the things we have to do in life and hopefully, before our energy runs out each day…getting to some things we like to do.

I don’t think that’s too much to hope for…for me…or for you.