Here is a palimpsest collection for Hypermobility / Fibromyalgia / Nervous System, intentionally layered rather than replaced.
PALIMPSEST: Hypermobility
Layer I — The erased text (still visible)
“You’re just flexible.”
“Benign hypermobility.”
“Stretch more.”
-
Pain dismissed
-
Injury framed as clumsiness
-
Flexibility praised, consequences ignored
-
Body treated as structurally sound
(This layer never fully disappears.)
Layer II — The medical overwrite
“Joint laxity.”
“Connective tissue disorder.”
“Mechanical instability.”
-
Beighton scores
-
Orthopedics and rheumatology
-
Imaging that shows “nothing wrong”
-
Rehab focused on joints, not systems
(Helpful, but incomplete.)
Layer III — The fibromyalgia inscription
“Central sensitization.”
“Widespread pain.”
“Disordered pain processing.”
-
Pain becomes real but abstract
-
Body reframed as nervous system
-
Risk of psychologization
-
Structure fades too far into background
(Truthful, but overcorrected.)
Layer IV — The neoteric script (current ink)
Hypermobility as system dysregulation
-
Proprioception failure
-
Muscle overcompensation
-
Autonomic instability
-
Peripheral input feeding central amplification
Pain emerges from interaction, not location.
Layer V — The personal handwriting
This is where diagnosis stops helping.
-
Your specific joints
-
Your fatigue pattern
-
Your flare logic
-
Your tolerances
-
Your compensations
This layer can only be written by you, slowly.
PALIMPSEST PRINCIPLES
-
Old explanations were incomplete, not stupid
-
New explanations do not erase lived experience
-
Pain is cumulative memory
-
Bodies remember what language forgets
-
Treatment works best when it respects all layers simultaneously
What this changes in practice
Instead of:
“Is it hypermobility or fibromyalgia?”
The palimpsest answer:
It is hypermobility writing pain,
fibromyalgia reading it,
and the nervous system editing both.
Final marginal note (never fully erased)
You are not broken.
You are overwritten.
And some of the old text still matters.
No comments:
Post a Comment