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Do ME/CFS and FM patients have a sharpe tongue?

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duncan

Senior Member
Messages
2,240
Upset with a world that denigrates your disease as a form of the vapors?

Feeling a bit vexed that you've just been diagnosed with a functional somatic syndrome?

Peeved with your conversion disorder label?

CBT and GET not working out for you?

Please seek counseling...
 
Snowdrop

Snowdrop

Rebel without a biscuit
Messages
2,933
Do PWME/Fibro have a sharp tongue?

Well, I suppose you could look at it this way; ME/Fibro hits a cross-section of the population and in any random cross-section of people there are probably going to be a few with a sharp tongue.

Does being chronically ill cause people to be sharp tongued?

Well, being chronically ill certainly affects the personality. It can even change one's world view. But it's a knarly question.
I think there are even issues of how long one has been ill that speak to changes in personality. In the short and medium term one is learning to accept, to understand, to cope with the illness. As well as learning to deal with various attitudes of people around them.

As for the sharp tongue? I find that it has been impossible (for at least over a decade) to have a sharp tongue (here I'm talking about spoken as opposed to written).

I am simple not capable of it. I would find that level of emotional commitment to what I'm saying to be too exhausting.

At the end of the day, I expect we all deal with ME/Fibro in the way that nature/nurture made us.

That is to say, what is your point Adrienne Dellwo?

Adrienne Dellwo has fibromyalgia.

Edit to add: As soon as I clicked 'send post' I realised my answer was probably (RE: what is your point) trying to earn money to live on.

Maybe she'll stumble on some real ME/cfs info one day and find a goldmine.
One can hope. But I think sites like that really would prefer fluff.
 
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Bob

Senior Member
Messages
16,455
Location
England (south coast)
I haven't read the article and I'm not going to; I don't want to give the website extra traffic or cause myself grief by reading it. But the title of the blog suggests a case of singling-out and targeting a specific patient population with ignorant abuse.

We have a wide range of personalities on the forum, and I've met a wide range of people with ME/CFS. The patients and carers I associate with on this forum, on social media, and who I've spoken to and met are the most wonderful people I've ever known. Every day I'm moved by the quality of the community that I'm part if. Only today, I was thinking that I'd really like to tell everyone what a wonderful bunch you all are, and what warm feelings of gratitude, friendship and community I have towards you all.

Simply associating with people on the forum lifts my life, and strengthens me beyond what I could ever have imagined was possible living with such a dreadful illness. Without you all, I'm sure I'd be in a constant state of isolation, despair and bewilderment. The vast majority in the community are exceptionally caring, and empathetic and passionate. Every day I witness these qualities on the forum; I see the very best of human nature.

Sure, we all have moments where we get cranky and short tempered, and we do get the occasional person on the forum who we consider to be disruptive, or who we don't see eye to eye with, but that's perfectly normal in any walk of life.
 
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ahmo

ahmo

Senior Member
Messages
4,805
Location
Northcoast NSW, Australia
@Bob :bouquet::hug:

Frankly, my sharp tongue, which is to say, impatience, has lessened as time has passed. That's because I've finally found the right diet and cofactors to tame my nervous system. At my worst, my sharp tongue was cured because there vwas not enough energy to express myself.
 
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daisybell

Senior Member
Messages
1,613
Location
New Zealand
Bob said:
Simply associating with people on the forum lifts my life, and strengthens me beyond what I could ever have imagined was possible living with such a dreadful illness. Without you all, I'm sure I'd be in a constant state of isolation, despair and bewilderment. The vast majority in the community are exceptionally caring, and empathetic and passionate. Every day I witness these qualities on the forum; I see the very best of human nature.
Click to expand...

Beautifully said! I absolutely agree. Thank you
 
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Battery Muncher

Senior Member
Messages
620
As several people have said above, my tongue was probably sharper before this illness.

Nowadays, I don't have the energy to continue a feud. Or even a simple argument. Where possible, I just walk away and save my health.
 
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Denise

Senior Member
Messages
1,095
I wonder if others might think patients have "a sharp tongue" because in an effort to conserve resources, patients have to try to be as succinct as possible and it can talk such huge amounts of energy just to speak that others think we are being curt, etc when in fact we can't get any more words out and often can't consider the tone used.

Edit - as in - people think we are being "sharp" because they don't understand what it takes for us to communicate anything at all.
 
Hip

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,865
I don't think it's anything to worry about if some ME/CFS patients have a sharp tongue. First of all, a sharp tongue may serve us very well. It gets us noticed. Actually, I think it is our secret weapon. The last thing you would want in a disease like ME/CFS, which is largely ignored by the medical profession and medical research, is meek and mild patients just sitting there saying nothing. When you are being ignored, politeness is not the right tactic. Vitriol works better.

A sharp tongue, in combination with the medium of the Internet, I think has provided us with a way to fight against being neglected and medically overlooked.

Although a sharp tongue is not the only mode of expression that helps our cause. Sometimes patiently explaining the scientific details, or accurately depicting, via first hand accounts, the horrible symptoms of ME/CFS is also effective.



I certainly think I have developed a sharper tongue since getting ME/CFS. Although I think I am getting better at using it more judiciously. I think my sharp tongue arises mainly out of my irritability symptoms. Irritability is a one of the CCC listed symptoms of ME/CFS.

In my case, before I taking medication for it, my irritability was so severe, that my tongue would become razor sharp on some days, shooting critical words in all directions, and firing off caustic comments at the slightest provocation! Ask the people I live with! However, since I started taking very low dose amisulpride a few years ago (see this thread and this thread), which is an atypical antipsychotic, it really helped calm down my irritability and propensity to be annoyed at anything that moved. If I stop taking it, wow, I soon turn back into a vitriolic monster!

Irritability is a major problem in autism, and atypical antipsychotics are used in autism to treat irritability, so that probably explains why they worked well for my ME/CFS irritability.
 
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rosie26

rosie26

Senior Member
Messages
2,446
Location
NZ
Denise said:
I wonder if others might think patients have "a sharp tongue" because in an effort to conserve resources, patients have to try to be as succinct as possible and it can talk such huge amounts of energy just to speak that others think we are being curt, etc when in fact we can't get any more words out and often can't consider the tone used.

Edit - as in - people think we are being "sharp" because they don't understand what it takes for us to communicate anything at all.
Click to expand...
This describes me when I do get reactive. Sometimes, I can barely say a yes/no due to exhaustion. I have someone who forgets that I just told them that I cannot speak right now in the house and my second repeat reply can be crispy curt. I am mostly nice though. I don't think I am telling fibs there when I say that.

I'm not too bothered by all this unless I have missed something!
 
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Sean

Senior Member
Messages
7,378
When you have to cut through a whole lot of human bullshit to get to the heart of a serious problem, and expose it for all to see, a sharp tongue is not a bad tool to have your bag.
 
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leokitten

leokitten

Senior Member
Messages
1,595
Location
U.S.
I haven't read any other articles by this person but I wasn't offended. I guess some might find it a bit light when it comes to writing about her disease. For me she was only talking about how fibromyalgia causes her to be much more irritable.

@Hip to me got it right, exactly what I thought when reading the article. Emotional lability and irritability are definite ICC/CCC symptoms and we all know it's just a downstream manifestation of the pathophysiological processes that occur in ME/CFS, whether it's autoimmune, infection, or ischemia/hypoperfusion driven neuroinflammation or something else.
 
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