12 things fibromyalgia patients need to stop doing
1. Stop putting your own needs on the back burner. – If you have any kind of chronic debilitating condition, you must first put your own needs.
2. Stop spending time with the wrong people. – If someone is adding stress to your life, that stress is making you sick. Eliminate stress by removing that person.
3. Stop holding a grudge. – Holding a grudge is unnecessary stress. This causes us to create negative thoughts about a person when we think about them and focus on negative thoughts when we must try to find ways to focus on more positive things.
4. Stop trying to be everything to everyone. – The ability to say “No” is very little valued. Often times, those of us with fibromyalgia probably can’t say “no,” feeling guilty when we can’t or won’t say “yes.” We cannot be everything to everyone, nor can we be everything to ourselves and we don’t need to be.
5. Stop lying to yourself. – You’re sick, admit it. You are not feeling well. Someone else asks and you respond with “I am fine”, but it is not the truth. It is not the truth when you say this to them and it is certainly not the truth when you say it to yourself.
6. Stop wasting time explaining to others. Most people don’t care enough about you to worry about your illness or disorder or why you can’t do what you can’t. Keep it simple, just say “no” and move on. Don’t try to explain why you can’t, because you’re probably not hearing anyway.
7. Stop trying to hold onto the past. While you can find ways to improve your symptoms, you are likely never 100% new. There will always be limits. Stop trying to achieve the life patterns you had before your illness and realize that it was then and that is now.
8. Stop berating yourself for old mistakes. – Guilt and guilt are our constant friends. Stop churning about the things you’ve done in the past (or the things you wish you had done, but didn’t).
9. Stop being jealous of others. – It is so easy to be jealous of what others have or what others can do. Little do we perceive that they also have limitations. Nobody sees the true life of another, their abilities or deficiencies, their limits.
10. Stop complaining and feeling sorry for yourself. – Really! It’s okay to play a pity party every now and then, but it should never last more than 5 minutes and you should never invite friends. Concentrate on the positives in life, there are many.
11. Stop ignoring the beauty of little moments. – How many times do we hear people say that we should “stop and smell the roses”. You really don’t enjoy those little things until you can’t do them anymore.
12. Stop trying to make things perfect. – They already are. Well, maybe they are not perfect, maybe they can even be better than now. But the point is that you need to focus on reality rather than perfection.
