"Fibromyalgia Brain"

Had a delightful breakthrough moment this morning and felt like I needed to share. I've suffered from fibromyalgia for many many years now, but the aspects of it that have peaked my anxiety I have rarely discussed. Something happens to your brain and your ability to communicate quickly when you have fibromyalgia. I've never really been able to describe this to anyone, hence the problem. But I had a moment of clarity this morning and I felt it was worth copying and sharing here..

I shy away from live conversation as often as possible because I tend to get confused and sound really stupid when I talk. But as long as Theo is there to talk for me as I'm listening I'm good. I hope that makes sense? I often feel like it destroys my credibility when I start to stutter and mumble and not remember words.

It's the hardest thing to have studied persuasion and credibility and then lose the ability to grasp words and concepts quickly. I'm so hyper aware of credibility so the minute I feel myself start to sound stupid I think it makes it worse because I'm so aware of it.

Especially when folks don't understand fibromyalgia. Or even know I have it. Sometimes when these confused moments happen I will actually say, "I'm sorry, I have fibromyalgia and I get confused." But by that point they have already looked at me and judged me to be less than of prime intelligence. It's a natural thing to gauge the capabilities of a person that you're speaking to. It's a perfectly natural part of communication. So it's nobody's fault, its just natural.

Obviously parties and gathering makes me nervous too. I can only hope I can keep quiet and only speak up when I'm confident on a topic.

I'm usually good with the stories, recanting fun events or telling people how I feel about things. I don't know if this is because its more socially acceptable to take a moment to come up with the words to describe this feeling then it is a fact. When it comes to remembering anything even slightly technical I tend to blank. I struggle to remember numbers, definitions, complicated words.  So if I'm talking about my essential oils, for example, I can talk about the ones that have made me feel something but when it comes to remembering how many drops of this how many hours of this, or any of the sciencie part, I tend to slip... In my head I understand it because I've read it but I can't flip it around to recite it again.

My communication becomes really sloppy and the sentence ends up with multiple pauses for me to say something like, "I don't remember the technical term," and by the end of the day I'm not sure I have conveyed anything.

Phew! That is the very best explanation of fibromyalgia brain that I have ever given. 👏