Exploring why it may be worth considering cervical instability as a root cause of fibromyalgia with some real food for thought on how the wide-ranging symptoms of this one single, often hard to notice, factor can really start to add up.
Such as we are experts in anything, those of us with long term health issues also possess a rich hoard of hard-won experience and insight into what made us chronic in the first place. So, what can we take from all the years of navigating our way through the experience of chronic illness as a means to averting a delayed recovery from covid or other trigger virus, especially when we notice any similarities with what we have been through before? Can we now take the overview in order to notice and better understand the patterns, weak spots and trip-wires of chronicness before they become ingrained this time?
Exploring a known link between covid-19 and certain issues relating to the vagus nerve (amongst others); how does this relate to some of the more scattered seeming symptoms of long covid and what can be done about it in the hopes of making a speedy and full recovery?
I'm noticing an effect...where too much quiet or lack of human connection can trigger massively increased rigidity in my body, poor breathing habits, temperature disregulation and other dysautonomic effects and massively increased pain, especially small fibre neuropathy. So what do people have to say about this; how might it be connected with chronic pain conditions, autism, social isolation, old age and more?
Looking at what we already know about the effect of chronic unaddressed toxic stress and early life trauma-responses, specifically from the perspective of neurodivergence, and its possible link to chronic health issues.
I do believe that constantly drip-fed overstimulation traumatises those of us without appropriate filters and barriers to cope with sensory experiences that are not designed to accommodate neurodivergence and in such a way that compounds with time, affecting us in ways that other people can’t even begin to imagine as they’re simply not having the same experience as us. Quite literally, the only thing we have in common with the majority of people who are apparently dealing with the exact same situations as us is that we’re physically in the same space…because the way we experience that space is a whole other matter. We can try to explain (with variable degrees of success) but we can never take them there with us so they understand! Until we give this effect the most appropriate name, trauma, we don’t deal with it appropriately either…because we just keep on sucking it up and wondering why we struggle and burn out so often and in so many apparently unusual or creative ways. Yet in the case of any other trauma we would work much harder to notice when it was happening, to put a stop to it and heal from it…but how do you heal from something that is relentless and ongoing, which you have to expose yourself to in order to be part of anything in life that has something to do with being around other people or in the world as it has been made to be, which is highly overstimulating and often too much for our differently wired systems?
News flash: hypermobility is not all about joint subluxations and is not as rare as they say, especially for women, but is actually a spectrum condition, meaning your most bewildering symptoms might be on that spectrum. You need to cease feeling like such an imposter in order to start looking hypermobility right in the eye because only then can you start to tackle it as a possible source of chronic pain, dysautonomia, GI issues and a whole host of other health mysteries.
At times, chronic illness has appeared like a more "socially acceptable" screen for so-called ADHD deficits that I am embarrassed to own up to....because I know, deep down, that they are not all that I have to offer, its just that the domestic routine of life fails to bring out my better qualities and it takes more variety and positive stimulation from life for me to light up and shine my unique light. When I don’t feed my need for positive hyperactivity, it presents as internal hyperactivity, mainly “overthinking” and then, given time, it ultimately presents as more and more physical symptoms....
I’m beginning to sense that in synesthesia lies the key of so many aspects of my long running chronic pain. If I could only gain a better viewpoint of what actually happens to me when I sense things, I suspect I might be able to catch a glimpse (like some sideways-on reflection of myself reflected back at me in a shop window) of some of the causative aspects of pain where no other provocation for pain seems to exist. This feels like a worthwhile line of enquiry for anyone who is neurodivergent and weary of how unusual levels of pain never seems to abate, especially as I think it is possible to have one of the less talked-about versions of synesthesia and not even realise it since it is your version of normal.
Exploring some quite compelling links between sensory meltdown, shutdown and synesthesia and a possible causal relationship between them, explored from a personal-anecdotal and research point of view.
Living whole 