“It is possible to improve your life with fibromyalgia.“
Have you ever considered using a health coach? I hadn’t until the opportunity recently presented itself. I’ve since learned that health coaching can be a powerful catalyst that helps people to improve their fibromyalgia symptoms. It is particularly helpful for those who feel like they are lost or struggling and for people who do not have support network.
Life with fibromyalgia can feel overwhelming and it can be difficult to know if and how we can improve our symptoms. And it’s not just us that can feel that way, often our GPs feel this way too because they don’t really know how to help us.
There is so much involved in improving our life with fibromyalgia and it goes far beyond our physical symptoms– they are just one piece of the puzzle. Every aspect of our lives has the potential to impact on our health: our relationships, social life, sense of purpose, financial status, our environment… The list goes on.
Sometimes, deep down, we know what areas of our life are problematic. Other times we feel clueless. Not all of us are lucky enough to have people in our life that we can open up and talk to about these issues. Even if we do, speaking to a knowledgeable and understanding third party can bring a whole different perspective and challenge how we think in a positive way.
Health coaching takes an all-encompassing approach to help guide us towards optimal health, balance and happiness. A health coach is a wellness professional who is trained to provide us with support and encouragement and will help to equip us with the skills we need to progress forwards in our life.
A health coach doesn’t tell us what to do. They are not a therapist or psychologist and they won’t focus on the “why”. Instead they focus on the “how”. They are there to help us realise what we want for ourselves and then support us in getting there, one small step at a time. Health coaching can help us to change our mindset, become more self-aware and help us to let go of anything that many be keeping us stuck where we are.
This could be something such as guilt, doubt or fear of change. Through health coaching, you may reveal blocks that you didn’t even know you had, or you might finally be able to work past ones that have been plaguing you for a long time.
If you are feeling hopeless, like you want to have a life back or that you want to be in a better place than you are right now then I would highly recommend looking into having some health coaching sessions. You will probably be surprised at just how beneficial they can be.
Vital Plan have recently started offering health coaching and I was fortunate to be offered the chance to have some sessions myself. I’ll be honest and say I wasn’t sure if I would be a good fit for health coaching– only because I have made so much progress myself over the past year and feel like I now have a really good outlook on life. However, I was wrong. I have had two full sessions with Courtney now (who is a Vital Plan nurse practitioner, trained in health coaching) and they have been really beneficial to me. After each session I was left feeling more at peace and positive about my situation.
It was refreshing to speak to someone who had outside perspective on my situation and could give me a whole different outlook on the challenges I was facing. I found Courtney to be super supportive, helpful and she is very easy to talk to– I found it easy to open up to her. Courtney has helped to bring my awareness towards the skills and tools I already use to help myself (some of which I didn’t realise) so that I would be in a better position to employ these techniques in future. She has also helped me to develop new ones– visualisation being one example that I have found very useful– and challenged me on why I disliked others. For example, I wasn’t for guided meditation at all but now it is a positive part of my daily routine– something that wouldn’t have happened without Courtney’s encouragement.
I love how Vital Plan is approaching fibromyalgia and chronic illness in a completely different manner to traditional medicine. They have such a deep understanding of these conditions and it’s refreshing to know there is a company and team who totally “get it”. Vital Plan have a well-rounded approach that is working for many people. You can read my story and about the progress I have made myself here.
* I was kindly offered six coaching sessions from Vital Plan but was under no obligations to blog about it. All opinions are 100% my own.
