"I can adjust, recalibrate, and still keep creating a life I love — one that makes room for joy, purpose, relationships, ambition, and the reality of what my body needs."
Fibromyalgia May Change Your Pace, But It Does Not Have To Take Your Ambition, Identity, Or Strength.
I have a complicated relationship with change. I like change when it is my idea, when I can prepare for it, make a decent plan around it, and have enough capacity to feel wise and flexible about the whole thing.
Unfortunately, real change often does not behave that politely. Sometimes it comes as a diagnosis, a flare, or the strange realization that the way we have been living, working, helping, achieving, and pushing simply does not work anymore.
When you live with fibromyalgia, change is not an abstract life lesson. It is physical. It shows up in your muscles, sleep, brain, plans, relationships, and sense of who you are. One day you can do something, and another day your body reacts as if you have suggested climbing Everest in flip-flops.
For many of us, this is where the word failure sneaks in. We think we failed at pacing, keeping up, or being the person we used to be. But I do not think that is the right word. I think the system has changed. And when a system changes, the old settings stop working.
That does not mean the old settings were wrong. I do not like advice that makes our former selves sound foolish. The old system may have helped us study, work, raise children, care for family, manage responsibilities, and keep life going when there was no obvious alternative.
Many of us did not build our identity around being relaxed and beautifully balanced. We built it around managing, showing up, being useful, and getting things done, even when we were tired, even when it was too much, even when we paid for it afterwards.
The problem is that a system that once helped us function can become too expensive when fibromyalgia changes the conditions. Discipline can turn into overdrive. Responsibility can turn into self-abandonment. Being reliable can become a trap when we never allow ourselves to be honestly unavailable.
That is not failure. It is a system update.
When Fibromyalgia Changes the System
The hard part is that this update does not only affect your calendar. It affects your identity. If you have always known yourself as the one who manages, needing help can feel strangely humiliating. If your confidence came from being productive, useful, and independent, pacing can feel less like a strategy and more like a demotion.
There is grief when you miss the person who could say yes without calculating the consequences. There is grief when “I am tired” is far too small a sentence. There is grief when you look fine, function well enough, and still know that everything costs more than it used to.
I do not think we need to rush past that grief in order to be resilient. Sometimes resilience starts by telling the truth. This changed me. This is hard. I miss parts of my old life. Sometimes I would very much like to return to this particular life lesson and choose store credit instead. But I have also noticed something else, and this part took me longer to understand.
For a while, even when I was functioning much better, even when I made it into remission, there was still a part of me that felt as if life was on hold. I was working, planning, creating, showing up again. From the outside, it probably looked like I had arrived in my new life.
But inside, I was still waiting.
Waiting for the moment when my “real” new life would finally begin. Waiting until I felt fully safe. Waiting until I could trust my body completely. Waiting until the uncertainty disappeared enough for me to stop holding my breath.
And maybe that is another part of the update: accepting not only that life has changed, but that this changed life is not a waiting room. It is not the temporary version before everything becomes normal again. It is my life now.
That sounds sad at first. It did to me. But it is not only sad. Because when you stop living as if you are permanently on hold, something can soften. You stop measuring every day against the old version. You stop treating your body as the annoying obstacle between you and your “real” life. You begin to ask better questions. Not “When will I finally get back to who I was?” but “How do I want to live from here, with what is true now?”
And surprisingly, the answer is not always smaller.
Fibromyalgia, Identity, and the Grief of Change
Sometimes life becomes wider in unexpected places. When you are no longer only pushing, surviving, and trying to outrun your symptoms, you may have more space to notice other people. You may listen differently. You may become more empathetic, not in the polished inspirational way, but in the practical way of knowing what it means when life does not behave as planned.
I noticed this recently in our alumni group, where Certified Fibromyalgia Coach® and Advisor graduates meet weekly to continue learning, reflecting, and supporting each other. We were asked to contact friends and family and ask them which adjectives they would use to describe us.
I expected the usual words: ambitious, demanding, reliable, maybe strong. The high-achiever vocabulary I know very well and, honestly, still recognize. But this time another word came back again and again: empathetic.
And other adjectives such as warm-hearted, open, authentic, helpful, motivating, and someone with heart in the right place.
I found that surprisingly moving. Not because I had never cared about other people before, but because I realized that something had genuinely changed in the last three years since my diagnosis. I was still ambitious. I was still committed. I was still me. But the way I was moving through life had changed. Less pushing just to survive. More listening. Less performance. More presence. Less trying to prove that I could still do everything. More noticing what is actually happening, in me and in other people.
One of the most interesting things was that my husband noticed this before I fully did. During several holidays, he said something like, “You are somehow much more relaxed, but also more active. It is much nicer with you.”
I had to laugh, because apparently the system update had improved the user experience for other people too. But he was right.
And what I loved was that he did not say it in a dramatic way, as if I had become a completely different person. It was more of an everyday observation. We were on holiday, doing normal things, deciding what to do next, when to rest, where to walk, whether to stay longer or go back before it became too much. And somehow there was less tension in all of it. Less proving. Less forcing. More actually being there.
I was not more relaxed because I had stopped caring. I was more relaxed because I was no longer fighting my body every minute. I was more active because I was not spending all my energy pretending I had unlimited energy. I was more present because I had stopped treating rest, joy, and recovery as annoying interruptions before my real life could begin.
Fibromyalgia may change our pace, but it does not automatically take our ambition. It may ask our ambition to become more intelligent, more sustainable, and less dependent on heroic self-overriding. We are still allowed to create, work, care, contribute, learn, grow, travel, laugh, and want things. The difference is that the new system has to include the body in the plan from the beginning, not as an emergency repair at the end.
Change is part of life — and especially life with fibromyalgia. Pain can change. Energy can change. Circumstances can change. Sometimes the life that worked for us yesterday simply does not fit quite as well today. And that can be hard. Because adapting can feel suspiciously like giving something up. But I have learned that changing the plan does not mean giving up on the life I want. I can adjust, recalibrate, and still keep creating a life I love — one that makes room for joy, purpose, relationships, ambition, and the reality of what my body needs.
It does not have to be a perfectly managed life. I will still overdo it sometimes. I will still make plans I later need to change. I will probably ignore my own pacing advice now and then. That is not failure. It is simply new information.
And sometimes, the smartest thing we can do is update the system accordingly.
Action Steps: Your Four-Week System Update
Choose one area where the old system no longer fits your current body, energy, or life.
Week 1: Notice
Observe one pattern without judging it. Where do you still act as if your energy were unlimited? What does this cost you?
Week 2: Choose One Update
Choose one small change: recovery before or after something demanding, stopping one step earlier, making a goal smaller, adding a pause, asking for help sooner, or doing something for joy before everything is finished.
Week 3: Test It
Try your update in real life. Notice what becomes easier, what feels uncomfortable, and where you feel more present or like yourself.
Week 4: Adjust
Make it fit your actual life. Maybe it needs to be smaller, clearer, or kinder to the part of you that still feels guilty.
At the end, ask yourself:
Did this update give me more life, not just fewer symptoms?
Could You Use Some Support With Your System Update?
If fibromyalgia has changed your pace and you are trying to find your way into a life that still feels like yours, I would be honoured to support you. As a Certified Fibromyalgia Coach®, I combine personal experience with proven tools to help you reduce pain, boost energy, and reclaim your life. If you found this article helpful, just imagine what a one-on-one conversation could do!
In your consultation, you can meet me personally, ask your questions, and find out whether coaching fits into your set-up and the support you need right now.
No pressure. No performance. Just a first honest conversation.
Schedule your consultation with Jeannette today and discover how having someone who truly understands fibromyalgia can make all the difference.
- Header and author photos courtesy of Jeannette Rechsteiner
- All other images created with the help of AI by Jeannette Rechsteiner
About Jeannette Rechsteiner
Jeannette lives in Switzerland with her husband and three children. After 30 years of unexplained symptoms, she was diagnosed with fibromyalgia in 2023 and ADHD in 2024. She is an economist, analyst, and entrepreneur, and serves on the board of the Swiss Fibromyalgia Association. With extensive experience managing complex demands, Jeannette helps high-achievers restore balance, regain hope, and design lives that work – with heart, humor, and practical strategies. Coaching in English or German.
Photo by Jeannette Rechsteiner
