Every day in the run up to Christmas I’m going to talk about a symptom or side effect of fibromyalgia, to give some insight into what it’s like to live with the condition.

December 14th: Anxiety

My favourite. The bane of my life. The big cloud that follows me around day after day.

I was diagnosed with clinical anxiety when I was 19 but I’ve had it in varying degrees for as long as I can remember. It got worse after I had my daughter in 2020 and is a constant baseline every day. The medication doesn’t really make it go away, it makes it manageable.

Like everything else, the link between fibromyalgia and anxiety is unclear. It’s hardly surprising that the two often occur together though; there’s very little predictability when it comes to how you’ll feel day to day. Fibro can be affected by so many external factors (stress being a major one) that something minor that usually poses no issue can knock you out without warning. Plus there’s a whole host of new sources of stress – like inability to do activities that you used to be able to manage easily, or the FOMO when you have to cancel plans with friends.