Fibromyalgia Podcast®

Rest is not a luxury. It’s required for healing your mind, body, and soul.

A month and a half into the new year, everything around us is about making this your best year ever. From classes to articles, social media posts, and podcast episodes, there’s so much messaging about becoming a new and better version of yourself.

While growth is a good thing, and the transition into a new year can be a great time to make the changes to move closer to the life you want, you might find that these messages aren’t resonating. What if you’re feeling exhausted or frustrated? What if you can’t figure out where on earth you’d scrounge up the energy to make these changes?

Today, Tami talks about the power of rest and embracing life’s winter seasons. In this episode, you’ll learn about the significance of rest and its impact on healing, exploring life's seasons and how they relate to personal growth, spring as a season of new growth, what it looks like to open yourself to new experiences, summer as the season of maturing, why we’re often more comfortable in the summer seasons of our lives, how these seasons relate to our fibromyalgia, fall as a season of harvest, acknowledging the process of letting go and accepting change, winter as a time to embrace rest as a necessary component for healing and growth, the power of winter rest, understanding what rest means, using the 80/20 rule for managing your energy, practical tips for embracing more rest in your life, the concept of deep relaxation, the benefits of embracing moments of a "blue mind state,” how to cultivate a “blue mind state,” aligning your actions to embrace the season you’re in, remembering the inevitability of spring’s arrival, things to consider leaving behind during your personal winter, ways to nurture that power of rest, the delicate balance between self-care as work and self-care as compassion and grace for individuals with fibromyalgia, and more.

While you're waiting for spring to come, lean into your winter season and accept it for what it is. It’s an essential part of life and carries a lesson for you. Get the rest you need and reach out for help to move forward into spring growth.

Note: This episode is not meant to be medical advice. Every person and every situation is unique. The information you learn in this episode should be shared and discussed with your own healthcare providers.

To learn more about the resources mentioned in this episode, visit the show notes.

For daily doses of hope, inspiration, and practical advice, join Tami on Facebook or Instagram.

Need a good book to read? Download Tami's books for free.

Ready to take back control of your life and health? Schedule a complimentary consultation with a Certified Fibromyalgia Coach®.

As a master Certified Fibromyalgia Coach®, author, and fibro podcaster, the questions I’m asked more than any others are:

How do I get better?

How do I improve my Fibromyalgia so I can get back to living the life I want to live?

While those sound like simple questions, they do not have simple answers. We all have similar symptoms, what helps you feel better may not be the thing that helps me feel better. We all have to find our own magic formula for what makes us feel best.

I know from personal experience just how overwhelming it can be to find that formula on your own. That’s why I created a training program in 2015 that would teach people just like you how to improve their own Fibromyalgia, and how to help others do the same.

In this first episode of a special series where I’ll be answering a lot of questions I get about our Certified Fibromyalgia Advisor® class and about becoming a Certified Fibromyalgia Coach®, I want to start super basic.

We’re going over what a Certified Fibromyalgia Coach® is, how that’s different from a Certified Fibromyalgia Advisor®, why you should consider the Advisor class if you’re a patient who just wants to feel better, who else the Advisor class is perfect for, what the certification aspect really means, the staggering statistics on how many participants see significant improvements in their symptoms by the end of the Advisor class.

Note: This episode is not meant to be medical advice. Every person and every situation is unique. The information you learn in this episode should be shared and discussed with your own healthcare providers.

To learn more about the Certified Fibromyalgia Advisor® class, visit the show notes.

For daily doses of hope, inspiration, and practical advice, join Tami on Facebook or Instagram.

Need a good book to read? Download Tami's books for free.

Ready to take back control of your life and health? Schedule a consultation with a Certified Fibromyalgia Coach®.

Over the last few months, many parents are unexpectedly learning how to "homeschool" as kids are unable to attend school in person during the COVID-19 pandemic. If having your kids out of the house for school was part of your fibromyalgia coping strategy, you might be struggling right about now!

In this episode, Tami interviews Julie Schiffman, a Fibromyalgia Coach-in-Training who has lived with fibromyalgia for over 20 years, all while raising three daughters. Listen in as Tami and Julie discuss the most important thing you can teach your kids, as well as tips to help you cope.

Key Points

• Fibromyalgia is not the end.
• What’s really important is teaching your kids character.
• Your fibromyalgia can really teach your kids how to not judge people and be respectful of people who are different than us.
• We are really teaching our kids how to be better human beings.
• You really need to let your kids learn to care for themselves. There will be a time they need to — so why not start now?
• One of the tools we often help our clients create is a Flare Survival Kit. This is a list of things that help you manage your fibromyalgia. You can stick this on your fridge and your family can help you.
• Most of us with fibromyalgia manage it ourselves and we don't think about how to include other people in that management.
• We try our best, but it’s okay to not be a hundred percent all the time. Just be who you are and embrace it

About Julie Schiffman

Julie Schiffman was first diagnosed with fibromyalgia over 20 years ago when her three daughters were very young. Over the years, she has learned so much about how to change her life to suit her illness. With the tools Julie's learned, she is no longer fearful for the future. Knowing how to take care of herself as a fibromyalgia patient is her key to having the confidence to live the best life possible.

Julie helps moms struggling with guilt, desperation, and isolation, minimize their fibromyalgia symptoms while learning new ways of parenting.

Links & Resources

• FibromyalgiaPodcast.com is the digital companion to this audio magazine, where you can find full show notes, links to the studies referenced in this episode, submit your questions for Tami Stackelhouse, and schedule a free consultation with a Fibromyalgia Coach.
• Get a free copy of Tami’s book, Take Back Your Life: Find Hope and Freedom From Fibromyalgia Symptoms and Pain at FibromyalgiaPodcast.com/books.
• Ravyn's Doll: How To Explain Fibromyalgia To Your Child, by Melissa Swanson (Affiliate link)
• Ravyn's Doll Coloring Book, by Melissa Swanson (Affiliate link)
• Why Does Mommy Hurt? by Elizabeth M. Christy (Affiliate link)

The 2020 Fibromyalgia Awareness Day episode is a special collection of tips pulled from a virtual event Tami hosted for her clients, coaches, and her coaches’ clients.

Tami asked coaches and clients alike to share their best fibromyalgia management tips, the thing that helped them the most on their fibromyalgia journey, and what it was like to work with a Fibromyalgia Coach. Listen in to hear our best tips to help you feel better.

Key Points

• If watching the news stresses you out, have someone else in your house be the designated news watcher.
• Working with a coach on your goals provides needed accountability.
• If you don’t have a functional medicine doctor or a naturopath on your team, it can be really, really hard to make progress.
• You’re not in a sprint, you’re in a marathon... Don’t worry about time pressures that are put on you by society.
• Being willing to spend the money, time, effort, and brainpower to try some new things can really be a huge benefit to helping you get better.
• Educating yourself is critical. You have to advocate for yourself; you are the only person that knows what it’s like to live in your body. Most importantly, doctors are not being taught how to treat fibromyalgia.

Links & Resources

Note: This episode’s show notes contain affiliate links. If you click through and make a purchase, we will likely receive a small commission. Read about what we do and don’t promote here.

• Get free copies of Tami’s books here
• Tami’s Facebook page
• Fibromyalgia Podcast Facebook page
• Figuring Out Fibromyalgia by Ginevra Liptan, MD (no longer in print)
• The Fibro Manua l by Ginevra Liptan, MD (Affiliate link)
• Freedom From Fibromyalgia by Nancy Selfridge MD and Franklynn Peterson (Affiliate link)
• The Patient’s Guide to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia by Bruce F. Campbell (Affiliate l ink )

Other Episodes Mentioned

• Episode 3, How Fibromyalgia Became My Friend
• Episode 23, Counseling, Coaching, and Post Traumatic Growth with Dr. Robin Pfaff
• Episode 25, The Impact of Juvenile Fibromyalgia on Families with Jara Halfen
• Episode 29, Fall In Love With Your Fibromyalgia Body with Janet Farnsworth
• Episode 35, My Favorite Energy Management Tool

We've all had those times where we're going along, we're doing fine, and all of a sudden, we've done too much. We've all been there! It seems like the line between "okay" and "too much" is so fine, you can't tell when you're going to crossover. In this episode, Tami shares her favorite energy management tool that will put you back in the driver's seat and in control of your own energy levels.

Key Points

• Using a pedometer or activity tracker can help you manage your energy.
• If we want to get better, we need to budget some of our energy towards our healing.
• If you don’t feel good at your current average number of steps, you may need to figure out ways to decrease your steps.
• Don’t look at the number of steps on your activity tracker as the minimum to meet each day. Instead, it’s the maximum amount you can spend for the day.
• Pay attention to how many steps each activity costs you. Once you have an idea of what things cost, you can start making choices on how you want to spend your energy.
• Activity trackers give you an objective way to estimate how much energy you’ve spent and have left. This puts you back in the driver’s seat and gives you control.
• Tracking your steps gives you a way to go back and look at your history when you have moments where you think, "Oh great. I’m in a flare. What the heck did I do this time?"
• In order to get better, you have to know how much energy you’re really spending each day, what makes you feel good, and what is too much.
• Most of Tami’s fibromyalgia clients average 1,000-5,000 steps a day at the beginning.
• If you feel good and have energy at the end of the day, that means your body has energy left to heal. It doesn’t mean you should have done more.

Links & Resources

• FibromyalgiaPodcast.com is the digital companion to this audio magazine, where you can find full show notes, links to the studies referenced in this episode, submit your questions for Tami Stackelhouse, and schedule a free consultation with a Fibromyalgia Coach.
• Tami's first book, Take Back Your Life, contains more information on managing your energy using a pedometer. Get free copies of Tami’s books here.
• Find a Coach to help you discover new ways to improve your energy

Other Episodes Mentioned

• Episode 27: Goal-Setting & Habits with Fibromyalgia
• Episode 28: Exercise in a Fibromyalgia Body with Megan Densmore
• Episode 32: Your World Revolves Around Your Healing, Not Your Illness