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Fibromyalgia, OT, Siksika Nation and Cultural Continuity, Maslow, Free Local Events, New Art Up

Fibromyalgia, OT, Siksika Nation and Cultural Continuity, Maslow, Free Local Events, New Art Up

Eiko Mizushima
July 01, 2025

Song of the Week

Listen to this song as you read to help open you up. It’s Not Right But It’s Okay by Felix Jaehn and Whitney Houston

Can OT help with Fibromyalgia?

A few days ago a friend asked me if occupational therapy helps with fibromyalgia. The answer is it depends. Depends how the interventions are delivered. Trauma informed and integrative OT can help because they can hold the multi-dimensional aspects of fibromyalgia. Ok but before we get into that, what is fibromyalgia?

According to the Mayo Clinic (2025):

Fibromyalgia is a long-term condition that involves widespread body pain. The pain happens along with fatigue. It also can involve issues with sleep, memory and mood. Researchers think that fibromyalgia affects the way the brain and spinal cord process painful and non painful signals. That increases your overall sensitivity to pain.

Symptoms often start after a triggering event. Triggers can include injuries, surgery, infections or emotional stress. Or the symptoms can build up over time, with no single event to trigger them.

Women are more likely to get fibromyalgia than are men. Many people who have fibromyalgia also have: headaches, jaw and facial pain due to TMJ, irritable bowel syndrome, anxiety, and depression.

The pain, fatigue, and poor sleep linked with fibromyalgia can affect your personal life and career. It also can be stressful to live with a condition that's often misunderstood by others. That can lead to mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety.

You can see that fibromyalgia has to be held as an emotional, spiritual, cultural, and physical thing. I think this is true of most types of ailments we face because the body operates as a whole organism. Though there are certainly ways that seeing the body in parts has helped us isolate issues and understand them better; I like isolating variables to determine origin points and keystone issues. It can be very clarifying and healing to know what a foundational issue is, and how the layers built above or around it are impacted. If you build a house on a bumpy foundation, the walls will crumble faster over time or with an earthquake right? Yet if we only focus on the foundation and deny that rain is now coming through the roof or dismiss the puddles forming on the floor as a figment of the imagination…well that water will trickle down into the foundation and exacerbate the issues already there. Folks who have fibromyalgia have often been told that the pain is in their head or that they have been exaggerating pain symptoms. That’s a recipe for increasing pain symptoms because the fight/flight/freeze response is re-engaged and folks aren’t getting help for a real issue that then compounds even further with the inflammation of invalidation and needing to fight to prove that your lived experience is a real felt thing.

A trauma informed occupational therapy approach would look like creating humane routines and rituals to assist with energy conservation with daily activities, stress reduction, sleep, anxiety and depression symptoms, identifying support groups, ways to reduce pain and stiffness in joints and other tissues.

A trauma informed somatic experiencing approach would look to allow feelings and sensations to arise, feel what needs to be felt, and eventually uncoupling the fight/flight/freeze response from triggering symptoms that lead to immobilization, despair, constant fear and muscle tension in the body which create never-ending cycles of inflammation, hypertension, and all the health issues that come along with it.

My hot take is that this has a lot to do with epigenetic, ancestral, generational, spiritual, and trauma of the land. These stories and experiences live in our bodies at the cellular level and at even more microscopic levels. I could all day about this, but alas, this is just a newsletter. If you’d like to hear more, you know where to find me.

If you’d like to read the research, here are some studies:

Effectiveness of Occupational Therapy Interventions for Adults With Fibromyalgia: A Systematic Review - PubMed

Although the evidence supports interventions within the scope of occupational therapy practice for people with fibromyalgia, few interventions were occupation based.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28027041

Occupational Therapy Interventions for Adults With Fibromyalgia

Abstract. Evidence Connection articles provide a clinical application of systematic reviews developed in conjunction with the American Occupational Therapy Association’s (AOTA’s) Evidence-Based Practice Project. In this Evidence Connection article, we describe a case report of a person recently diagnosed with fibromyalgia. The occupational therapy assessment and intervention process in the home setting is described. Findings from the systematic review (Poole & Siegel, 2017) on this topic were published in the January/February 2017 issue of the American Journal of Occupational Therapy and in AOTA’s Occupational Therapy Practice Guidelines for Adults With Arthritis and Other Rheumatic Conditions (Poole et al., 2017). Each article in this series summarizes the evidence from the published reviews on a given topic and presents an application of the evidence to a related clinical case. Evidence Connection articles illustrate how the research evidence from the reviews can be used to inform and guide clinical reasoning.

research.aota.org/ajot/article/72/5/7205395010p1/6484/Occupational-Therapy-Interventions-for-Adults-With

Still Time to Buy Your Tickets to the Antifascist Drunk(ish) History Show at Bryant Lake Bowl!

If you can’t attend you can donate to our fundraiser to raise funds to continue to make our culturally grounded and community informed practices accessible to as many folks as possible. We’ve sold ½ our tickets in a few days, so we will likely sell out. We will have lots of online tickets available for folks to watch from home, spread the word and bring a friend!

Join us for a seriously joyous night of wisdom, history, laughter, and camaraderie at the ANTIFASCIST DRUNK(ISH) HISTORY SHOW! Our brilliant storyteller-performers Autumn Brown, Olivia Levins Holden, Ricardo Levins Morales, Oanh Vu and Aziz Hallal Bisanz will guide you through a journey of how extraordinary people have resisted their oppressors throughout the ages. Whether you're a history fiend, on the lookout for some hope, or just trying to step into a powerful room, this event is sure to entertain and inspire in equal measure. Don't miss out on this unique blend of comedy and preparing for what's to come - grab your tickets now!

Can't join, but want to donate to our fundraiser? Visit our gofundme!

Can't join or can't afford tickets? Save the date for our FREE Social Open House on Saturday, October 4th 1-4p @ Sabathani, Room 206.

Link to the

Schedule With Me

I offer trauma informed somatic therapy, craniosacral therapy, Swedish massage, Thai bodywork, myofascial release, group workshops, and healing through art, play, and connecting to nature. Free 15 minute consultations if you’re intrigued or interested.

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