There is a growing belief that long-lasting emotional traumatic experiences may have a direct bearing on Fibromyalgia Syndrome. It has even been said that a sizable percentage of fibromyalgia patients have gone through a lengthy period of emotional trauma.
Everyday Health writes that even though many experts link fibromyalgia symptoms to injury that affects the head and neck, traumatic triggers of fibromyalgia can be much more widespread. “Any type of trauma or stressful event, such as major surgical procedures, being deployed to war, certain types of infections, all trigger fibromyalgia, and most of those are not associated with any trauma to the spine,” clarifies rheumatologist Daniel Clauw, MD, a professor of medicine and director of the Chronic Pain & Fatigue Research Center in the anesthesiology department at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
Traumatic experiences can include things like divorce, a car accident, some long debilitating illness, child abuse, emotional trauma, certain viruses, a childhood separation or even living through a war.
Web MD wrote that while the cause of fibromyalgia remains unknown, the condition often occurs following physical trauma — such as an illness or injury — which may act as a trigger. In 1990, the American College of Rheumatology developed a standardized diagnostic evaluation for fibromyalgia, which includes a history of widespread pain for a minimum of three months and pressure-associated pain at 11 of 18 specific sites on the body.
The theory is that the traumatic events in themselves did not cause Fibromyalgia, but it could have triggered the attack. Mine was triggered after a spinal injection went a bit wrong and caused me to stop breathing. I was lucky that an orthopaedic surgeon asked me to write down all my pain and he immediately said he thought I had Fibromyalgia and referred me to a Rheumatologist to confirm his findings. Not many are as lucky as me and have been trying for a long period of time to find out what their pains were all about. That, in itself, can cause more Fibromyalgia symptoms.
They say that the trauma may have caused some deep-seated physiological flaw that had been latent in the patient. The Fibromyalgia then rears up and the symptoms appear. I had hypnosis for the flashbacks of the incident which worked amazing but did nothing for the pain from the Fibromyalgia.
The NHS writes that one of the main theories is that people with fibromyalgia have developed changes in the way the central nervous system processes the pain messages carried around the body and is often triggered by a stressful event, including physical stress or emotional stress.
This could be the result of changes to chemicals in the nervous system.
The central nervous system (brain, spinal cord and nerves) transmits information all over your body through a network of specialised cells. Changes in the way this system works may explain why fibromyalgia results in constant feelings of, and extreme sensitivity to, pain.
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