The Emotional Side of Fibromyalgia: Living With the Feelings Too

You cancelled again. You had the outfit ready, and then this morning your body said no, and you sent “so sorry, not feeling great” for the third time this month.

Nobody can see it. You look fine. Someone told you to try yoga, and you smiled and wanted to scream.

Under the pain there is another layer. Grief for the woman who used to run up the stairs. Anger at a body that doesn’t keep its promises. Fear every time a good day ends. And guilt, so much guilt, about everyone you think you are letting down.

This article is about that layer. Not about what causes fibromyalgia, which is a question for your doctor, but about the feelings that come with living in it, day after day.

What is the emotional side of fibromyalgia?

Fibromyalgia is a long-term condition that causes pain all over the body, as the NHS describes it. Anyone who lives with it knows that the pain is only part of the story.

There is the tiredness that sleep doesn’t fix. The fog that makes you lose words mid-sentence. The plans you stop making because you can’t promise to keep them. The doctors’ appointments where you feel you have to prove you are not exaggerating.

Each of these brings feelings. Sadness. Frustration. Shame about cancelling. Envy of people who just get up and go. Fear about the future. Loneliness, because it is hard to explain a pain nobody can see.

Let’s be clear about one thing. These feelings are not the cause of your pain, and nobody should tell you it is “all in your head.” They are what any person would feel, living like this. The trouble is that most of us were never shown what to do with them.

Fibromyalgia and emotions: why do the feelings pile up?

Because you are already fighting so much, and fighting is tiring.

You fight the pain to get through the day. You fight the tiredness to make dinner. And then, on top, you fight the feelings: don’t cry, don’t complain, don’t be a burden, be grateful for the good days. That is a lot of fighting for one body.

In our book there is a picture we come back to often: “You can stand at the door of your own house with a baseball bat, shouting at a feeling to get out. Or you can put the bat down, open the door and say: come in, move through. Peace is not the absence of the feeling. Peace is putting the bat down.”

We can’t take away your pain, and we would never pretend to. But the bat is a separate weight. The clenching against frustration. The swallowed tears. The constant inner “this shouldn’t be happening.” That weight is something you can put down, for a minute at a time, even on a bad day.

Living with fibromyalgia emotionally: what about the guilt and the anger?

They are allowed. Both of them.

The guilt usually sounds like this: I’m letting everyone down, I’m lazy, I’m too much. If that voice is loud for you, we wrote about it in why do I feel guilty all the time. The short version: the voice is not you, and it doesn’t get to decide what you are worth.

The anger often has nowhere to go. At the body. At the person who said “but you look so well.” At the years you lost. Anger is a feeling like any other. In our book we say: “Feeling it is allowed. Throwing it at someone is not.” So you don’t have to swallow it, and you don’t have to throw it. You can feel it, in the body, where it lives.

And under both, very often, is grief. For the life you had planned. That grief deserves the same room as any other loss.

How do you feel your feelings when your body already hurts?

Gently, and for short times. This is important.

When you live with pain, “go into the body” can sound like the last thing you want. You have spent years trying to get away from it. So we don’t ask you to dig into the pain, or analyse it. We ask for one minute of not fighting whatever is there.

You don’t even need to decide what is the pain and what is a feeling. You don’t need to understand Wi-Fi to use it. A sensation is enough.

This practice is from our live sessions. It takes one minute. If your body is loud right now and you are tired of fighting it, you can do it where you are.

Practice1 min

One minute of changing nothing

1. Sit or lie where you are. Your bed is fine.
2. Close your eyes. Rest your hands, palms down.
3. Say inside: “I’m not changing anything this second.”
4. For one minute, change nothing. Not the pillow, not the breath, not the way you are holding yourself against the pain.
5. Whatever comes up, the ache, the irritation, the tiredness, the sadness under it, say inside: “I allow, I allow, I allow.”
6. After a minute, open your eyes slowly. Stay longer if you want to. Stop if you want to.

What you might notice. Some people notice how hard they were bracing, and something softens in the jaw or shoulders. Some feel a wave of sadness or tears. Some feel nothing the first time. All of it is fine. This doesn’t change the condition. What can change is how much you are fighting it.

There will be another flare, and another message that starts with “so sorry”. For that day our book has a chapter called “When it’s hard: the way through”, the same not-fighting laid out in a few short steps, written for the bad day itself.

What can help this week?

1. Cancel without the long apology. Send “I can’t make it today, I’m sorry,” and then feel the guilt in your body for a moment instead of explaining.
2. Ten seconds, several times a day. Close your eyes, find the strongest sensation in your body, the hip, the neck, the heavy arms, and leave it exactly as it is for ten seconds before you carry on.
3. Tell one person what a bad day is really like. Not to get advice. So that someone knows.
4. Watch your second reaction. When someone gives unwanted advice, notice what your body does before you answer. “There it is. Heat in the chest.” You don’t choose the first reaction. You can choose the second.
5. Bring your questions to your doctor. Write them down as they come, so they don’t have to circle in your head.

If you want to know more about how pain and feelings meet, read chronic pain and emotions. If feelings in general are a mystery to you, start with how to process emotions. The full method is on the Feeling Session page, and there is more about the body in our body section.

The outfit is still on the chair, waiting for a better day. The “so sorry” has been sent, and the guilt came right after it, the way it always does. Let it sit in your chest for one minute, unanswered, with no second apology to follow.