3. Fibromyalgia

I really can't blame anyone for not totally understanding fibromyalgia. First of all, no one totally understands it, including doctors. And unless you know someone with fibromyalgia, probably you only know what the commercials on TV tell you about it... which means you probably just know that it's a condition involving pain. And humans, probably everywhere I suspect, tend to create mental stereotypes of people they don't really know much about. So if you're not around seasoned (read: old) people very much, you probably have some kind of vague stereotype about them ("oh, she's over 30, she's OLD"... we all know what that means... or do we?) Same thing with people in different socio-economic conditions or from different ethnic backgrounds. It's just easier to form stereotypes, and we don't have the time nor energy, let alone desire, to really learn about every single group of people. And even if we did, the more we learned about them the more we'd learn that each group is really diverse, so that there are infinite layers of groups within groups. And, unless you're a sociologist (or marketer or politician), the costs and benefits of making the effort to learn about even just some of the groups (and how do you decide which groups, anyway?), makes it seem very expedient to not even try but rather to form little stereotypes of groups, and then sort of forget about the whole thing until you find you need to pull up that little stereotype you consciously or sub-consciously developed at some point in the past.

So I'm just saying that it's quite understandable that you might not know much or anything at all about fibromyalgia. I'm not saying that's necessarily a good thing, but rather that it's understandable (and on a certain level it might not be a terribly bad thing either). And I won't exactly say that I'm here to rectify that lack in your understanding of fibromyalgia, or that I'm very pleased, on a personal level, that you don't know much about it. But I do understand that you can't really be expected to know about all such things.

But you should understand too that stereotypes and lack of knowledge can be frustrating (along with other such emotions) to people who are the brunt of the stereotype or lack of understanding. I know it can be frustrating to me.

There are several things about fibromyalgia that make it particularly frustrating (although people with other conditions might counter with their own issues). One is that fibromyalgia is considered an "invisible disability" (cp. http://www.invisibledisabilities.org/). According to that web site...

"The term Invisible Disabilities refers a person's symptoms such as extreme fatigue, dizziness, pain, weakness, cognitive impairments, etc. that are sometimes or always debilitating. These symptoms can occur due to chronic illness, chronic pain, injury, birth disorders, etc. and are not always obvious to the onlooker."

So people with these kinds of conditions are often thought of as lazy ("why aren't you working?") or get comments about how good they look ("you don't look sick!"). Of course, they're treated accordingly then. Among people with invisible disabilities these comments and attitudes are famous and you'll find lots on the Internet (for example) about how people with these conditions respond to such beliefs, comments and related actions.

There is rather a broad spectrum of experiences of fibromyalgia, but if you meet someone who has it, it would be nice if you could at least cut him/her some slack and try to be understanding and not too judgmental, especially based on just what you observe (i.e., he/she looks fine, so what's wrong?). Of course, this could be said regarding other invisible disabilities, too, such as lupus, chronic fatigue syndrome, diabetes, Crohn's disease, or depression, to name a few.

So what I am asking is for you to try to recognize if you have a pre-conceived idea about fibromyalgia or other such conditions and when you meet a person with such a health disorder, try to set aside your ideas and get past visual appearances.

I could say a lot more about this, but I can feel the stress of writing about this increasing my pain right now. Lately I've been focusing more on rather unemotional (or feel-good even) work on my recipe database, cooking and learning some gardening in my small kitchen garden. I had to give up my political interests because I got too stressed about it, and I have to also limit my stress from this blog too, which means I'd better leave off here until next time.

Thanks for taking the time to read this...

~Meg