You know what you know you can do. You might want to make a list of these things to refer back to when you get frustrated. List your talents, skills, achievements, hobbies, etc.

2. Your Known Limits - Limits are no fun, but if you are honest with yourself, you can find ways around them.

If you know you don't know what's causing your disease, you can at least go find resources to answer your questions (that's why I love world wide web!). The right question will lead you to right answer. If you know you have headaches, migraines, eye pain, redness, insomnia, irritability, frustration, and anger, your questions maybe be: Why do I have these? What causes them? What makes them better or worse? How can I change them?

3. Your Hidden Abilities - These are cool because they reflect untapped potential!

The only way to find out what you are capable of is to try something new. Bouldering has been that way for me. I always loved to climb trees, thought about rock climbing, and never got around to it. Having a climbing partner has made all difference in world. There are many things we should do, even things we want to do, but we find we cannot do them alone. Human beings need human beings.

So, try that new thing you haven't gotten around to. Rent a musical instrument. Get a book. Talk to someone new. Search web. And find someone who's just as excited about it to share it with. You won't know what you can do until you've really tried!

4. Your Hidden Limits - This may be scariest category. Fortunately, we have solutions:

Oriental Medicine is a system of relationships based on thousands of years of clinical experience. An OM doctor can say, "Your red eyes, headaches and anger are related. They are part of a pattern. We have herbal formulas to treat that pattern" The 5 constitutional types (Wood, Earth, Water, Metal, Fire) are one system of relationships. Once we have an idea of your pattern or type, we can give you not just herbs, but also appropriate diet, lifestyle, and exercise advice. For example:

Balancing Wood Type

Exercise: Wood Types do better with aerobic exercise. Running is better than lifting weights. There's nothing wrong with lifting weights, but wood types need to move a lot. They have a lot of energy to burn off, and if they don't do that, it just stagnates and leads to symptoms.

Diet: Wood Types should avoid greasy fried food. And coffee! Sour foods are good for them. Spicy foods could be too hot and moving for them.

Lifestyle: Movement is key with wood types. A healthy wood type is actually a great leader, a good planner. The archetype is General.

Write it down. Thoughts need to move. Sometimes this isn't possible just 'in your head.' You may just be going in circles. Journaling, writing, and self-examination are good ways to get your thoughts in order and moving. You'd be amazed. I am every time I do it. Write down your goals, your priorities, your resentments, your fears. If you know it, you can do something about it. If you can't write it, you don't really know it.

Just do it. Get into action. Do something you know you can achieve. The enemies are impatience and frustration. Don't choose goals that are unreachable; if you do, divide them into pieces you can achieve. If you get frustrated, stop doing what you're doing, and do something else that you can accomplish. Go back to #1, what you know you know, and experience your ability.

Renew your inspiration. Many wood types are naturally creative 'idea-people.' If you don't get a chance to let your ideas flow, you may feel frustrated. For ideas to flow, you must be unblocked, rested, relaxed, and enthusiastic. Self-examination (writing or talking) unblocks you. Get out of your head! Restorative sleep (enough and right kind) is imperative. Learn to relax. Read or listen to inspirational sources for enthusiasm. Seek God with all your heart.

Chinese Herbs Chinese herbs, like acupuncture, can work systemically, and/or they can be targeted. Chinese medicine discovers your particular constitution and patterns of imbalance, and seeks to balance them, thus giving body strength to restore normalcy.

Working With Medical Professionals Find health practitioners who are qualified AND that you can trust, because they have training and experience to make accurate diagnoses, choose appropriate remedies, and make best plan for your healing. Once you've found good practitioners, follow their advice. Trying to save money on alternative health care may tempt you to ignore your practitioner's treatment plan and see them less often than they suggest. Or, you may try to avoid professionals and get your information from magazines (whose number one goal is to sell advertising - thus, they do not go into complex medical issues or therapies in kind of depth needed for safe and accurate usage of natural medicines, nor do they print articles that compete with or contradict their advertiser’s products).

The Chinese Medicine Fibromyalgia Expert If there is a FM/CFS expert in Chinese medicine, it's Lynda Harvey-Carter. I haven't heard of anyone else who's had as much success. To follow her program, you'll need to go to a Chinese medicine practitioner for a good 12-16 weekly visits, get herbs and take them religiously, do some counseling on any emotional issues you have (pre-FM, or just dealing with FM),change your diet, take certain nutrients, and get involved in spiritual growth that requires growth of character, trust, surrender, hope, and faith. The patients who were most willing to make most changes in their lives were most likely to recover completely from their FM.

The other insight that Lynda had about recovery from FM is that sooner you catch it and treat it, better recovery you can have. It's not unheard of for people newly diagnosed with it to get serious about treating it and completely recover. I mean it goes away. For good.

But if you only go halfway, or you wait too long to do something about it, you may be ensuring that you have to put up with this pain for rest of your life.

How to Find a Good CM Practitioner in Your Area Use my website's acupuncturist-finding resource (see below). Most people end up at National database. Remember, when you search your city or state, that although some practitioners have not taken national herbs test, they may still be trained in, good at, and legally allowed to prescribe Chinese herbs. Many states only look at acupuncture test, and include Chinese herbs in acupuncturist's scope of practice.

A common question patients ask is "how many people have you treated with my disease?" That's a sensible question, but perhaps not always best one. Most CM practitioners treat a little bit of everything. Some try to specialize, or end up get referrals for a particular disease, but most are general practitioners. I'd say this is possible because, although CM is quite complex, it is not nearly as complex as most western medicine (WM) specialties. Also, WM specialization has become norm, and because there are 800,000 of them in U.S., may have to specialize! However, there are only about 15,000 acupuncturists here, so we need not, and perhaps cannot specialize yet. Fortunately, we learn enough in school to be good general practitioners, and there are more and more reference books. Many experienced practitioners have shared their successes with rest of us, and translators are constantly offering English-speaking acupuncturists new Chinese experience or research on many topics.