Fibromyalgia Can Cause a Crisis in Our Development

I have long had a deep interest in human development across the lifespan, in fact I completed my master’s degree in Human Development and the Family at the University of Nebraska.

I studied optimal development from infancy and childhood, through adolescence into early, middle and later adulthood.

I was especially drawn towards Erik Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development across the stages of life. He theorized that each stage of life is associated with a specific psychological struggle or challenge.

You may be familiar with his developmental phases of progression from trust to autonomy, initiative, industry, identity, intimacy, generativity and integrity.

Each phase was seen as a potential root of later health or pathology.

When we are diagnosed with a chronic illness such as fibromyalgia, we may experience a severe and disrupting crisis in our development.

The majority of people diagnosed with fibromyalgia are middle aged women, who are often in the midst of building a career and family.

We may have an identity crisis and be forced to reconsider our hopes and dreams and goals after learning we have chronic illness.

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How we navigate this crisis in our development determines the quality of our life. We may experience a long period of disorientation, despair and confusion as we seek to find a way forward.

As described in Erikson’s stage of generativity vs. stagnation we want to feel we are contributing to the world by being active in our homelife and in our work and community.

Instead, we often find ourselves discouraged because our illness has sapped our vitality and we fear we may stagnate and never reach our goals.

Flourishing with fibromyalgia seems sadly out of reach. How do we learn to flourish under fire?

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What Does it Mean to Flourish?

The Merriam -Webster dictionary defines flourishing as to grow in a healthy or vigorous way; luxuriant growth as in a period of thriving.

Originally the word flourish came from the Latin florere, to flower, to increase in vigor, to bloom, grow abundantly, thrive, to be at the peak of one’s powers.

Maureen Gaffney, an Irish clinical psychologist, and author of the book Flourishing: How to Achieve a Deeper Sense of Well-being and Purpose in a Crisis writes [1]:

“Each of us too has the same instinctive urge to grow and thrive, to feel our life energy stretch and fill every corner of ourselves, to reach some high point of self-realization. When we manage to do that, we feel happy. We are able to love more fully, do good work and leave the world a better place than we found it. We are flourishing.”

“Learning how to actively build the positive and contain the negative has real and practical results. It can help us flourish while facing the ordinary challenges in life… It can help us deal with adversity–a relationship hitting a bad patch, a new project proving unexpectedly stressful, all the other hidden hurts and disappointments.”

“When real adversity strikes–if we become ill or disabled, lose our job or our business, suffer the break-up of a relationship, or tragedy strikes somebody we love–it provides a template not just for surviving, or recovering, but for flourishing under fire.”

“As long as we succeed in keeping the right ratio between positive and negative, we can turn the lead of adversity into gold. This capacity to transform a potentially deadly setback into an opportunity to grow, to reach a higher level of functioning than before the crisis, is what we now know as ‘post traumatic growth’ or ‘transformational coping’.”

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When I describe what flourishing means to me, I think about having the ability to do the things that are most important to me most of the time.

I think about being able to participate fully in the lives of my family and friends and being able to make a contribution to the fibromyalgia community through my work as a coach.

I find comfort and strength from the hidden gifts of fibromyalgia, learning to cope with frustration, developing fortitude and determination in the face of inevitable setbacks.

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What Does Flourishing Mean to You?

At the beginning of their coaching sessions I ask the women I work with to write a wellness vision. This is a compelling description of how their life would look and feel when they are managing their fibromyalgia well and living life as their best self.

My dear client, Joyce, from Spokane, Washington, focused on the image of a sunflower as she contemplated what flourishing means to her:

“The sunflower has leaves that are rippling in the breeze. There are pine trees and mountains in the background and the sunflower is flourishing in this relaxing setting. This is my happy place of restoration and thriving. I realize I need more calm, and relaxation in my life to thrive. My job, for now, is to heal.”

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Here is a simple but effective exercise to foster the experience of flourishing in your life sometimes called the Three Blessings or the What Went Well Exercise described by psychologist Martin Seligman in his book, Flourish [2]:

Every night for the next week set aside 10 minutes before you go to sleep. Write down 3 things that went well in your day and why they went well.

Completing an exercise like this helps us focus on and savor the positive events in our life. Seligman points out that we think too much about what goes wrong and not enough about what goes right in our lives. Too much focus on negative events sets us up for anxiety and depression. An exercise like what Went Well can help us increase our life satisfaction and decrease depression.

Cultivating self-compassion is another way to experience a greater sense of flourishing. My client Madeline, who I quoted earlier, is devoted to the practice of mindful self-compassion. She recently completed the exercise Finding Loving-Kindness Phrases exercise [3] by answering the following poignant questions:

What do I need?
To sleep:
May I be rested
May I be content
May I feel loved
May I rest in love.

What do I need to hear?

You are a smart, kind woman.
You are enough just as you are.
May I realize I am enough.

What do you want to know for sure?
May I know my own goodness

Now, it is your turn to answer the question, what do you need to flourish with fibromyalgia?