Fibromyalgia is a disease that is often misunderstood, even by doctors. Fibromyalgia refers to pain in the muscles, tendons and ligaments at various sights all over your body. Most pain that we experience comes from infection or inflammation where the swollen or damaged body tissue compresses a nerve or pain sensitive structure. However, in fibromyalgia there is no underlying physical or structural abnormality – there is no infection, inflammation, metabolic or hormonal abnormality that is causing the pain. Fibromyalgia is true pain with no physical abnormality present.
Common symptoms of fibromyalgia are:
• The major problem is pain in multiple areas all over the body, especially in the neck and back. The pain is typically not improved much by simple pain killers or anti-inflammatories. Physiotherapy often makes it worse. The person has a lowered threshold for pain in certain areas – when these areas are pressed with the finger with moderate pressure, it is uncomfortable in normal people, but a person with fibromyalgia will wince in pain.
• The second major problem is chronic fatigue i.e. always feeling tired, especially in the mornings. Although the person is able to perform normal activities such as getting dressed, feeding and grooming themselves, daily tasks like shopping, housework or gardening is often too exhausting. A person may even give up their job because the pain and fatigue is so disabling.
• Poor sleeping habits – does not get enough deep sleep.
• Poor concentration, forgetfulness, irritability, weepiness.
• Early morning stiffness.
• Depending on the person’s age, they may have signs of osteoarthritis, but of insufficient severity to explain such wide spread pain and disability.
• Swelling of the hands and fingers.
• Numbness and tingling of the fingers.
• Non throbbing headache (tension headache).
• Colicky abdominal pain, bloating or irritable bowel syndrome.
• Have to go to the toilet to urinate more frequently than normal.
• Pain during sexual intercourse or discomfort when touched.
To understand fibromyalgia, you need to first read through the following two chapters which have essential background information:
• “Separation from God’s Love” on page 46.
• “The Long Term Effects of Fear, Anxiety and Stress on the Body” on page 180– pay special attention to the discussion on 1 John 4 v 18 on page 191.
Fibromyalgia is ten times more common in women. According to medical studies, it typically occurs in women who are young and healthy, but who are stressed, anxious, tense, insecure, driven and perfectionists. Fibromyalgia develops in women who were not loved, nurtured, covered and protected as they should have been. It is associated with women who have been through stressful life events such as abuse (verbally, emotionally, physically or sexually) in childhood or in marriage, divorce, alcoholism in the family, assault or other traumatic experiences. The symptoms are exacerbated by environmental or emotional distress or by
a doctor who is insensitive to the problem by not taking the patient’s symptom’s seriously and disregarding the matter as “all in the head”. If you want fibromyalgia to flare up, just get a doctor or somebody to tell you that you are a hypochondriac who is just “putting it on.” This only leads to more hopelessness, despair, anxiety and stress.
The spiritual root behind fibromyalgia is fear, anxiety, stress, driveness and perfectionism
that comes from not being loved, nurtured, covered and protected by somebody
that should have loved you and didn’t (most often a father or husband).
These women feel responsible and carry the burden of life on their shoulders. God did not create you females to carry all these things within you. Women were created by God to be nurtured, loved, covered, cared for, protected and made to feel safe so that she can be a helpmate and mother without fear. When the Bible says that the woman is the weaker vessel, it is not a derogatory statement that says that she is inferior. It simply means that there is something stronger than her to protect her namely a loving male and the men haven’t always done a good job of that. God did not create the females to hold the burden of the planet. The women are not doing too well and their diseases are many because they have been asked to
do something that God did not intend them to do. He never intended the women to hold things together, He intended them to be held together by something stronger than her which is a loving husband/father who is the king and priest of his home. The same spiritual root that is behind fibromyalgia is also behind a severe allergy disorder called
Women were created by God to be nurtured, loved, covered, cared for, protected and made to feel safe so that she can be a helpmate and mother without fear.
The same spiritual root that is behind fibromyalgia is also behind a severe allergy disorder called Multiple Chemical Sensitivity and Environmental Illness (MCS/EI). This is where a person becomes allergic to almost everything. The disease is described in more detail on page 211. A person with MCS/EI also has fibromyalgia. 85 to 95% of people with MCS/EI are female. Nearly 100% of people with fibromyalgia are female. Why is that? Apart from being different sexually, the male and female body in terms of the muscles and nerves is basically the same. So why does fibromyalgia develop mainly in women? The reason is because women are more emotionally wired than men and they are more susceptible to the spiritual and emotional damage. In the section on strife in the chapter on fear, anxiety and stress which I initially referred you to, I wrote about how women are often on the losing end of marital fights. For the man, it is over as soon as it happens, while the woman does not recover for a long time. The women had steeper increases in the stress hormone levels than the men. The next day the blood hormone levels were back to normal in the men, but the women still had high levels.
God designed a woman with a strong need to be nurtured and loved, while he designed men with a strong need to be respected. That is why in 1 Peter 3 v 2 God instructed wives to respect their husbands while in Ephesians 5 v 25 God told husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for her. He did not say husbands respect your wives – He said husbands love your wives. It is the man’s job to reflect the father heart of God and His love to his family. Wives and daughters were created to be loved and nurtured. When that does not happen because the father is victimizing or verbally, emotionally, physically or sexually abusing his wife or daughters, fear and diseases such as fibromyalgia and MCS/EI come knocking at the door.
This is how fibromyalgia develops: You have fear, anxiety and stress in your emotions and in your thought life as a result of the conflict and lack of love and nurturing in a relationship. Remember the hypothalamus is the area in the brain that translates everything that is going on in your thought life into a physical reaction. It is the connection between the soul and the body. The hypothalamus also controls the sleep and waking patterns. The hypothalamus senses the emotional and spiritual conflict and responds by stimulating you to keep awake. As a result you don’t get a good sleep at night. You don’t get enough of that deep sleep. There are different phases or depths of sleep. There is shallow sleep, also called REM sleep (Rapid Eye Movement) which is where you dream. Then you get the deep sleep (non REM sleep). Each phase of sleep has different functions. While you sleep, your body is restoring and recharging itself for the next day. One of the functions of your deep sleep is repair and restoration of your muscles. Even if normal people do not get enough deep sleep, their muscles will begin to ache.
Secondly, there is abnormal processing of pain because your nerves are not functioning normally. This is partly due to the lack of sleep and partly due to the fear, anxiety and stress in your thought life. There is a reduced threshold and tolerance to pain at specific areas on your body. Normally there are control mechanisms in place that control the levels of pain and inhibit it from continuing. In Fibromyalgia, the thoughts of fear, anxiety and stress, via the hypothalamus lead to an imbalance between the nerves that transmit pain and the nerves that control or inhibit pain. As a result the nerves that transmit pain keep firing and this is what causes the pain all over your body. This is how you can have pain without any infection, inflammation or any other significant visible physical abnormality.
Poor sleep causes the nerves to malfunction and vice versa, the pain caused by the misfiring nerves result in poor sleep.
The only way to break this cycle and be healed from fibromyalgia is the deal with the spiritual issues causing it. Where an abusive or unloving earthly father is concerned, you may need ministry as I explained in the section on separation from God’s love. Otherwise the following chapters will help you:
• “Forgiveness – A Necessity For Healing” on page 481 – need to get your heart right with God concerning the conflict or breach in the relationships where your heart was broken and where the abuseor victimization put that fear in you. This involves forgiveness, releasing and letting go.
• “Dealing with Fear, Anxiety and Stress” – start from the heading “Dealing with the Deeper Fears” on page 529.
• “Who You Are In Christ” on page 498 – When you go through tragic circumstances where your heart is broken or you are abused, humiliated or victimized in a relationship, your self-esteem and sense of self worth is inevitably crushed. You need to take steps to rebuild your self-esteem. This starts with knowing who you are in Christ and learning to see yourself as God sees you.
I encourage you to speak these scriptures as a “faith confession” over yourself before you go to bed at night: “In peace I will both lie down and sleep, for You, Lord, alone make me dwell in safety and confident trust (Psalm 4 v 3). When I lie down I will not be afraid, yes, I will lie down and my sleep shall be sweet (Proverbs 3 v 24). The Lord gives [blessings] to His beloved in sleep (Psalm 127 v 2).”
When you receive the Father’s love and learn to love yourself for who you are in Christ, the hypothalamus will sense your fulfillment and respond by restoring the balance in the nerves that control pain. When you make peace with yourself and others, you will be able to have a good night’s sleep and your muscles and nerves will be repaired and restored and the symptoms of fibromyalgia will disappear.
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