How to Recover from Fibromyalgia, ME/CFS or POTS

The two biggest mistakes that people make when looking to find out how to recover from Fibromyalgia, ME/CFS or POTS are:

1. Looking for a single magic silver bullet cure
2. Not going beyond treating the symptoms of the illness

How can this paradox be happening?

Understanding HOW and WHY people recover in different ways is absolutely key to plotting your personal journey to recovery.  That's why my focus has always been on education around the overall pathogenesis of the illness rather than remedies for specific symptoms!

Steps to move you forward with your recovery from Fibromyalgia, ME/CFS or POTS right now:

1.) Understand how the illness works

Let's face it, anything that is going to baffle health care practitioners for decades isn't something you can expect to get your head around in a few minutes.  

But realise that you don't have to know and understand everything to minute detail. Leave that to the health care professionals that are supporting you.  Instead seek to learn enough to be able to make sense of your experience.

2.) Understand how others have recovered

Once you understand the dynamics between secondary dysfunctions of this syndrome and the root mechanism that perpetuates Fibromyalgia, ME/CFS, POTS and related syndromes, recovery stories will never look the same.

Common themes soon start to appear, including how people:

• use a multi-lateral approach;
• change their environment;
• include brain-training or mind/body approaches as part of their recovery action plan.

Often, some of the lifestyle and mind/body elements of their recovery are overlooked by people until they know to look for them.  In fact, even if you have listened to recovery stories in the past, once you understand the dynamics of the illness, the same interviews might give you completely new insights!

3.) Plan your own recovery path

In my book CFS Unravelled and my online recovery program ANS REWIRE, I talk about a personal recovery action plan.

Whilst getting a range of fundamentals in place, including changes to diet, lifestyle, physical activity, sleep hygiene and including brain-training components, personalised treatments for specific triggers or dysfunctions are also key.

People often abandon all kinds of medical treatments because they have found them unhelpful for their recovery. However, once the fundamentals are in place for recovery, even treatments that didn't work in the past will often start to become helpful.

4.) See it through

It may shock you to see who recovers quickly from Fibromyalgia, ME/CFS, POTS, MCS and related syndromes and who struggles.

Whilst logic and theory of course have their place, I have found experience actually reveals patterns that are quite different to what I might have expected.

For example, you may be surprised to see that people who are the sickest, often do the best in terms of recovery.  Why should that be?

Recovery is about consistency and persistence.  It's about fine-tuning your approach to take you to the next level of wellness.  Unfortunately, once you become comfortable with your level of wellness, you run the risk of backing off your efforts.

One of the most common issues I see is that people do really well to recover and get to 70-80% wellness, and then they drop the ball.  You might think, oh, they simply couldn't get better - however, I often see that people reprioritise their life, get back to their duties and responsibilities and abandon the very strategies that helped them get to where they are.

My advice is simple - KEEP GOING UNTIL YOU ARE FULLY WELL!

5.) Check out some of the recovery focussed blog articles

Here are some blogs for you about recovery from ME/CFS, Fibromyalgia, POTS, MCS and related syndromes: