Counselor Eric's Advice
Provide Helpful Information on the Condition
Once the condition is disclosed, point your family members towards the best fibro resources to answer all of their questions. Fielding all of their questions yourself can be intimidating and draining to your physical and mental health.
Collect some pamphlets from the doctor’s office, gather some books at the library, and point them towards trusted sites online. This way, you have a level of control over the information and misinformation they are receiving.
Discourage them from searching social media or online forums for material that could be biased or overly negative.
Give Frequent Updates
Letting your family members know how you are feeling and how your symptoms are can do a lot to ease their fears and concerns. When there is a lack of information, your family members may begin to fill in the blanks with their own perspectives and expectations.
Chances are excellent these thoughts will be inaccurate. This will increase their levels of stress and yours as you have to ease their fears and worries.
In your attempts to provide symptom information, keep the details simple, clear and concrete. Saying, “I’m not feeling that well today” is too vague and sure to induce some stress. Saying, “My pain is a seven out of 10 today” is helpful because of its measurability.
Be sure to point out when symptoms are low. Some people in your situation will find it necessary to only check in with your family when symptoms are high and assistance is needed.
If you only check in when you are too ill to come to Sunday dinner or you need a ride to the store because the pain is too intense, your family will think that your symptoms are always poor. Instead, try to check in when symptoms are both good and bad.
Increase Positive Interactions
Spend time engaging in activities you find fun and desirable as well as doing events your family appreciates. This will require an artful act of choosing what activities to complete with what family members.
Consider whether certain members would do well in groups or to be left for one-on-one interactions. You might consider adding exercise or healthy eating to the list of activities since these will yield a direct benefit to your fibro symptoms.
Encourage Mental Health Treatment
Sometimes the stress of your family member is too much for you to take on the responsibility. This could create an unwanted cycle of your condition increasing their stress, their stress increasing your stress, and this added stress flaring your condition.
If your family member is having a strong reaction to your symptoms, it could be an indication they would benefit from mental health counseling. Many people undergo counseling as they adjust to a major life change, even if the change does not impact them directly.
A chronic condition like fibro is perceived as a loss that may require a period of grief and mourning for some family members. A counselor can serve as a guide leading your family member to a place of acceptance and lower stress.
Fibro is a condition that requires various treatments over a longer period of time to manage its influence. Sometimes even the best treatments lead to poor results, which causes the effects of the condition to spread outside of the sufferer and to the sufferer’s family.
Through preventative communication, positive interactions, and increased self-care of the family member, everyone’s stress can shrink. Change the cycle of stress to change your fibro.
