I intentionally chose a pretty thorny problem because I think a lot of the blockage around it is just a lack of self-efficacy. I left it sort of loosely defined, but the general thrust was ‘lessen the impact fibromyalgia has on my everyday functioning’:
Fibromyalgia
Start seeing a rheumatologist
Go to medical school and become the leading expert researcher on this topic
Break up with my boyfriend so that I have more control over my sleep schedule
Join a stress management group like my therapist told me to
Hire Sarah Constantin to do a MetaMed thing for me
Pretend it’s not happening so it goes away (Sarno method)
Join a sports team
Solve mind uploading so physical illness ceases to exist
Replace all my limbs with prosthetics
Smoke a lot of weed
Lobotomy
Run 2 miles every day so I get dem endorphin highs
Take strong sleeping pills that promote deep sleep
Hire someone to plan and cook all my meals so that I get the right balance of nutrients and none of the allergens
Hire a live-in masseuse
Try CBT specifically for chronic pain
Do 30 minutes of yoga twice every day
Live alone and adopt a cat so I have no social stressors but also don’t get so lonely that it’s harmful to my health
Full body compression suit (more dakka for compression socks and arm braces!)
Sleep (and work?) in a float tank
Spend a whole frickin ton of effort and money on an ergonomic desk setup that I’d actually use
Invent suspensors (like in Dune) to support part of my body weight and thus put less strain on my joints and muscles
Take tricyclic antidepressants (which also mitigate chronic pain)
Hire someone to give me piggy back rides everywhere
Become a politician so that I have to be on all the time and don’t have time to pay attention my symptoms (seems like it worked for JFK)
Meditate a bunch
Invent a salve that get rids of pain
Find a form of caffeine or some other stimulant that doesn’t put me to sleep, then take that every single day to make me be awake
Join daily house exercise
Eat pig thyroid
Human touch is supposed to be healing, so just cuddle with people all day every day
Move somewhere where it’s always sunny and I can just bask in the sun all day and get that sweet sweet vitamin D
Just try eating every plant I see and see if that ends up being a cure for fibromyalgia
Marry a billionaire because it’s probably fixable if you just throw enough money at it
Go on the all meat diet
Go keto
Find something I enjoy doing so much that I just forget about everything else; preferably some cool artistic thing, like painting
Ask everyone around me to stop giving me any sympathy or cutting me slack when I have symptoms (maybe instead just yelling at me to try harder, like a sports coach) so that if the Hansonian signaling theory of chronic pain is right my brain will learn to stop pulling that shit
Implant electrodes in whichever gland that is that’s implicated (the hypothalamus?)
Retrain my pain sensors by delivering really strong electric shocks to my skin every once in a while, so that the daily level of pain stops registering
Replace all my bones with titanium and get soft tissue transplants from someone who doesn’t have loose tendons
Live in a forest, because being nature is good for mental and physical health
Have someone I trust become dictator of the world so that I don’t have to worry about political instability
Move back home to help raise my friend’s baby, because babies are warm and soft and squish, and as the fourth parent I won’t have to be sleep deprived but will also probably still be busy enough to not dwell on my own problems that much
Go on a true elimination diet in case the cause is a food of some sort
Go on HRT to transition to male, because men are less likely to suffer from fibromyalgia
Actually analyze my Oura ring and life-tracking data so that I can see if there are any correlates to flare-ups
Read those crackpot books that claim to have found the cure for fibromyalgia and then try out their non-FDA-approved drugs
Catch COVID, since it seems like that has a bunch of non-obvious effects on the body, so maybe it’d fix my problems
Invent a time machine and make my younger self sleep more and stop eating gluten and dairy sooner
I intentionally chose a pretty thorny problem because I think a lot of the blockage around it is just a lack of self-efficacy. I left it sort of loosely defined, but the general thrust was ‘lessen the impact fibromyalgia has on my everyday functioning’:
Fibromyalgia
Start seeing a rheumatologist
Go to medical school and become the leading expert researcher on this topic
Break up with my boyfriend so that I have more control over my sleep schedule
Join a stress management group like my therapist told me to
Hire Sarah Constantin to do a MetaMed thing for me
Pretend it’s not happening so it goes away (Sarno method)
Join a sports team
Solve mind uploading so physical illness ceases to exist
Replace all my limbs with prosthetics
Smoke a lot of weed
Lobotomy
Run 2 miles every day so I get dem endorphin highs
Take strong sleeping pills that promote deep sleep
Hire someone to plan and cook all my meals so that I get the right balance of nutrients and none of the allergens
Hire a live-in masseuse
Try CBT specifically for chronic pain
Do 30 minutes of yoga twice every day
Live alone and adopt a cat so I have no social stressors but also don’t get so lonely that it’s harmful to my health
Full body compression suit (more dakka for compression socks and arm braces!)
Sleep (and work?) in a float tank
Spend a whole frickin ton of effort and money on an ergonomic desk setup that I’d actually use
Invent suspensors (like in Dune) to support part of my body weight and thus put less strain on my joints and muscles
Take tricyclic antidepressants (which also mitigate chronic pain)
Hire someone to give me piggy back rides everywhere
Become a politician so that I have to be on all the time and don’t have time to pay attention my symptoms (seems like it worked for JFK)
Meditate a bunch
Invent a salve that get rids of pain
Find a form of caffeine or some other stimulant that doesn’t put me to sleep, then take that every single day to make me be awake
Join daily house exercise
Eat pig thyroid
Human touch is supposed to be healing, so just cuddle with people all day every day
Move somewhere where it’s always sunny and I can just bask in the sun all day and get that sweet sweet vitamin D
Just try eating every plant I see and see if that ends up being a cure for fibromyalgia
Marry a billionaire because it’s probably fixable if you just throw enough money at it
Go on the all meat diet
Go keto
Find something I enjoy doing so much that I just forget about everything else; preferably some cool artistic thing, like painting
Ask everyone around me to stop giving me any sympathy or cutting me slack when I have symptoms (maybe instead just yelling at me to try harder, like a sports coach) so that if the Hansonian signaling theory of chronic pain is right my brain will learn to stop pulling that shit
Implant electrodes in whichever gland that is that’s implicated (the hypothalamus?)
Retrain my pain sensors by delivering really strong electric shocks to my skin every once in a while, so that the daily level of pain stops registering
Replace all my bones with titanium and get soft tissue transplants from someone who doesn’t have loose tendons
Live in a forest, because being nature is good for mental and physical health
Have someone I trust become dictator of the world so that I don’t have to worry about political instability
Move back home to help raise my friend’s baby, because babies are warm and soft and squish, and as the fourth parent I won’t have to be sleep deprived but will also probably still be busy enough to not dwell on my own problems that much
Go on a true elimination diet in case the cause is a food of some sort
Go on HRT to transition to male, because men are less likely to suffer from fibromyalgia
Actually analyze my Oura ring and life-tracking data so that I can see if there are any correlates to flare-ups
Read those crackpot books that claim to have found the cure for fibromyalgia and then try out their non-FDA-approved drugs
Catch COVID, since it seems like that has a bunch of non-obvious effects on the body, so maybe it’d fix my problems
Invent a time machine and make my younger self sleep more and stop eating gluten and dairy sooner
I ended up posting my “solstice speech” babble, but last night I also tried “fix my sleep problems” babble, and am amused that I, too, considered
hire Sarah Constantin to fix it for me
Ha, yeah, I noticed that one of my overlaps with someone else was ‘lobotomy’.