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In
this sense, and with clinical demonstrations to support it, I emphasize
on the effectiveness of the psychosomatic approach for the treatment
of fibromyalgia.
I think it would be useful if I pointed out some general issues
that we have to consider in great depth to get a significant improvement
or even the cure of this suffering..
I have named one of the basic conflicts that usually appear as “the
Other or me” conflict. This refers to a feeling that arouses
in daily situations, which could be described as the feeling of
“I have to choose”: to choose between satisfying other
people (the Others) at the expense of one’s own desire, which
produces an anger that is not manifested and many times does not
even become conscious, or the satisfaction of what is considered
an egotistic desire at the expense of the Other, which brings an
unbearable feeling of guilt.
So this could be thought as a permanent fluctuation between
a feeling of ANGER or GUILT. |
| When
one is able to substitute the “or” by “and”
(the Other and me), i.e., to do a certain kind of transaction that
allows one to reach some harmony with the world, when it becomes
possible to reduce the costs of each life situation, there’s
an alleviation of those disturbing feelings and their consequent
effects. |
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tendency of placing oneself in the victim’s role (and considering
the others as victimizers) is a recurrent idea in these patients.
I often say: “You live as if you were inside a court
room in which all roles are already determined: the guilty
person, the judge, the victim, the defense lawyer, etc., so it is
of fundamental importance to work out a way to “look”
and “think” things over, in an attempt to become each
time more aware of the feeling of living in a permanent trial.
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relation to this, we can find in all patients a severe and constant
judgement on all actions, thoughts and feelings. This judgement
is directed both to the person itself as well as to the others.
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| There
is a need to think of oneself as “good” and to show
that one is so -following a model that defines people as good
or bad- and to think of oneself as “generous and
self-sacrificing” as opposed to “bad and egotistic”.
This need leads to a disturbance in the management of aggressiveness
in such a way that we could define the person with FIBROMYALGIA
as “somebody who lives inside a torture chamber” to
“save” the others from his own aggression, which is
felt as extremely destructive. This becomes more evident when “the
others” are precisely beloved people. In other words, in these
patients, the normal ambivalence present in each
human being becomes an impossible-to-resolve conflict.
This is one of the reasons why taking part in a group -and discovering
that those feelings and thoughts that were considered “abnormal”
are shared with others- gives some respite. |
| To
illustrate part of my statements, I think it would be useful if
I mention an e-mail I got from a Brazilian young man with whom I
usually communicate by this means. He once wrote to me asking for
advice and also sent me some images and passages from the film The
Passion of the Christ. This action (his choosing of this film and
his sending it to me) only makes sense if we think that this was
an unconscious way of showing me a sort of picture
of himself, of his suffering, his pain, his sacrifice
to save his world, as a result of what I have just
explained. |
I
could keep on writing about FIBROMYALGIA, but I think that so far,
with these elements, it is possible to establish a work path for
those who suffer from it and for the professional they consult.
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My
clinical experience on this subject allows me to state that it is
possible to claim that FIBROMYALGIA is not an incurable
illness and is not of an unknown origin. With this,
I hope I am encouraging further work on this subject in order to
find the necessary relief for those who suffer from it. |
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May, 2004. |
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