Pacing Strategies: Religion and Spirituality pt.1

By Sabrina Dudley-Johnson

June 09, 2017

The chronic pain condition known as Fibromyalgia can be “characterized by high healthcare use, (excruciating pain, debilitating fatigue, gastric distress,) depression, anxiety, sleep problems and decreased quality of life.” [i]

Many people battling chronic health issues, especially pain, turn to various coping mechanisms; Spirituality and Religion being among these. [ii] This author gets a little perturbed when people smugly say “give it (my pain) over to God”. When I was first diagnosed and friends, relatives, even total strangers, would eagerly provide the unsolicited advice of “don’t claim it” and “give it over to God”, I would cringe and reply;

​​“I didn’t claim it, I marked it return to sender … but it came back. That Fibro package shows up on my doorstep every morning with an address label that reads, ‘I know you live here’”.

Through these encounters, I’ve realized that these well-meaning, albeit FM illiterate individuals were trying to help me see another available coping tool to place in my Fibromyalgia management tool kit; religion or spirituality. Various scientific and medical research studies have shown that Religion, and/or Spirituality, “just might be valid coping mechanisms for FM, and as such, just might affect one’s quality of life.” [iii]

But, there’s that nagging vision of the person ringing my doorbell and asking me, ‘have you accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior’. As I ponder the subject matter of this article, I keep asking myself, ‘how can listening to someone tell me that I’m going to hell if I don’t believe as they do, help my Fibromyalgia get better?’ I needed to understand how religion and spirituality worked compared to established coping strategies such as mindfulness, meditation, spooning, staying within one’s envelope, practicing 50/50, or even the strategies I personally established for myself and use, balancing the Fibro checkbook and the obeying the FM Traffic light (what color is your day) theories. The first thing I wanted to know is, what is religion and what is spirituality? Then I wanted to know, what’s the difference? So, I researched these questions.

continued

Footnotes

[i] Baetz, M, and R Bowen. “Chronic pain and fatigue: Associations with religion and spirituality.” Pain research & management vol. 13,5 (2008): 383-8. doi:10.1155/2008/263751

[ii] Moreira-Almeida, A. & Koenig, H.G. “Religiousness and spirituality in fibromyalgia and chronic pain patients.” Current Science Inc (2008) 12: 327. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11916-008-0055-9 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11916-008-0055-9