Build your Joy not Manage your Pain
Doctors talk a lot about "Pain Management" but this misses the point of many if not most chronic conditions. There will always, always be pain. It is unavoidable.
What they don't talk about is how to make your life worth living. If your life is an endless tunnel of pain you "manage" until you simply lose the desire to try any longer it only ends one way; suicide.
Suicide in fibromyalgia patients is 10 times higher than the average population. This comes from this "pain management" mentality. I can't manage my pain. Not really. I can't tell what is going to sideswipe me or when. What I can manage is my joy. In the Spoonie community we call it building a ladder. #buildaladder Building a ladder out of that emotional pit pain makes in your life.
The theory is simple. Every day you work on building your own personal ladder. Each rung will be different for each person. It is in doing and achieving things that bring you joy, even if it is a small thing, a silly thing, a thing only you find amusing.
It sounds childish, and it is is. Childish in looking for wonder, beauty, and hope where you are. It is hard. Yet this focusing on hope and making your happiness important is life saving.
Doing things that make you just a tiny bit happier than you were before can make you look weird, I have taken to wearing on occasion a witch hat. Yet it cheers me up. I also love Pintrest and I keep and look for, and that is the key, positive quotes and beautiful photography every day. Other than GoT I have stopped watching a lot of the dramas and even watch the news in chunks because it lowers my mood. I also keep ooglie eyes (the self sticking kind) in my handbag and coat pocket. I love to walk and be in nature but with my back and hip pain it is difficult for me (though I do push myself sometimes because it is worth the pain for the joy) so I garden at my kitchen table. I have a wonderful collection of plants in my home. They really bring me joy. I talk to them everyday. Spray and spritz them with a cheerful "good morning my lovelies".
In my quest to build my ladder I have accepted that my conditions are painful and disabling but if I want joy I need my cane, and shopping in a supermarket I need a wheelchair. This gives me more access to joy. It opens up the world to me that had shrunk to the size of my room, or even the size of my bed. My "prison" is now a garden. My shopping is now an epic quest and a way to vandal eyes (see what I did there) things in a fun and harmless way. (The taxi phone poster still has the eyes I put on it about 3 years ago in my local Asda).
I can't manage my pain because it is subject to things out of my control, like a sudden shift in the weather.
I take pain medication with me, sometimes I take it before a do a thing I know is likely to kick my arse. I have a little chemical heat pack (re-usable) I carry in my purse (heat, ice and rest are my bff's). I allocate "it's going to be shit" days. To rest and recover. I don't know if I do any more than I did before I just know it wasn't living. That I got and still get sometimes into some dark places. Yet I know I can build a ladder out. That it is my life and I will be as weird as I want to be because makes me happy.
