Fibromyalgia is one of those conditions where the diagnosis brings no relief because what follows the diagnosis is, “We don’t know what causes it.” and, “There’s no real cure.“
Fibromyalgia is referred to as a syndrome which means it is a collection of symptoms rather than a single disease. That is significant because common treatment for Fibromyalgia can require a variety of medications and modalities to try and control the symptoms.
These symptoms include
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- widespread pain in your muscles and joints
- fatigue
- difficulty sleeping
- headaches
- irritable bowel syndrome (IBS)
- muscle stiffness
and can also include
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- body temperature issues – feeling too hot or too cold
- agitation in your legs
- tingling, numbness, prickling, or burning sensations in your hands and feet
- tinnitus
- painful menstruation
- anxiety
- depression
Trying to control symptoms can be like treating the leaves of the tree without dealing with the root.
From my experience, the root cause of Fibromyalgia is different for each person. Everything from a difficult childbirth, to a car accident, to witnessing domestic violence, to the after-effects of surgery. All can register as trauma in your system.
Trauma, whether physical or emotional, affects each of us differently. What is traumatic for one person’s system may not be for another and vice versa. It just depends on how your system deals with whatever difficult situation it finds itself in.
Car accidents, falls, surgeries, strains, etc. all leave their mark. Your body is designed to repair itself but if it can’t, because the trauma is too overwhelming, it can leave patterns of restriction and these can lead to the symptoms associated with Fibromyalgia.
Following the Pain
Starting with the pain and working backward, the way you feel pain is through your nerves. There can be a number of reasons why your nerves send you pain, one of them is pressure on the nerves themselves.
If nerves are squeezed they hurt. You can see this for yourself if you press the middle of your eyebrow. You might need to poke around to find the spot but when you do you’ll know because it hurts and it keeps hurting even after you stop pressing. What you are pressing on is a nerve – the ophthalmic branch of your trigeminal nerve to be exact.
There are billions of nerves in your body connecting to every structure, large or small, and making up a vast network that is many miles long. Some branches of that network behave like fairy lights on a Christmas tree. If one bulb stops working all the bulbs stop working.
The network of nerves in your body work like that too just the other way around, if one nerve is triggered then all the nerves are triggered, So a restriction in the wrong place can cause widespread pain.
Displaced location
From a craniosacral perspective, what is causing the pain can be located far from where the pain is occurring. For example, slipping on the stairs and landing hard on your coccyx, can manifest years later as chronic pain in the shoulders and neck. A restriction in one part of the body affects the whole body. We call it the reciprocal nature of the craniosacral system.
Past Traumas
Fibromyalgia is often caused by restriction patterns that were formed years beforehand. These restriction patterns can slowly contract the surrounding tissue over the years eventually putting pressure on nerves and causing pain.
Gentle approach.
With fibromyalgia, there is a lot to consider and assess. It starts with finding the root cause and then helping the restriction pattern causing the problem to release. Craniosacral therapy is a very gentle approach so it is particularly good with people who are in a lot of pain like people with fibromyalgia.
If you are interested in having treatment with me for Fibromyalgia email me to arrange an appointment.