The spirit and face of a Warrior

When I see or hear the word warrior there are many images that come to mind.  I think about the great Mongolian warrior, Ghengis Kahn.  He was one of history's great leaders and he conquered most of Eurasia during the thirteenth century.  The Macedonian, Alexander the Great, is thought to be the greatest warrior the world has ever known.  He was a master of tactics, strategy, statecraft, and logistics .  Napoleon forged the finest army of a generation with his application of war principles, which resulted in a rennaissance in military doctrine, are still in practice today.  Frederick the Great, Julius Caesar, Gustavus Adolphus and George S. Patton are others that are well known to the world.

But there are modern day warriors that are not well-known and they wage a private war, many times in isolation.  Just like the ancient warriors these warriors apply tactics, strategy, statecraft and logistics.  These warriors are not readily identified, because they do not wear armour or carry swords and they have no army following close behind.  These warriors are armed with the Internet and look to each other for comraderie and to share strategy and tactics.  What characterizes these warriors that are so invisible to the world?

The warriors I speak of are an elite group of "wounded" warriors and their ranks span our mother earth.  The intrinsic enemy they fight is poorly understood and it seeks to destroy the body, the mind, the spirit and quality of life.  Its vicious attack is relentless.  Its persistence creates an urgency in the warrior it invades, but urgency only robs the warrior of precious energy resources.  The extrinsic enemy wears street clothes or lab coats; they are the warrior's family, friends, acquaintances and healthcare professionals.  This enemy is lethal, because it seeks to defeat the warrior's emotional resources and is frequently dehumanizing.  At a time when these warriors need emotional and physical support the most, they must mobilize a fierceness from within they have never witnessed before, and they must become their own advocate.  The remarkable characteristic these warriors possess is the ability to call up a determined and intense spirit that is simultaneously caring, kind, sensitive and supportive of others.  These "wounded" warriors have the ability to fight a fierce battle and yet demonstrate a compassion and understanding for others beyond themselves.  This unique capacity for compassionate caring for others while struggling with pain,

Highly Sensitive People seem to develop fibromyalgia

I have always been interested in new theories and scientific research related to healthcare and human behavior.  It seems that behavioral science is coming closer to unraveling the fibromyalgia mystery.  I am active on a fibromyalgia forum and was interested to see a post that had been made by a psychologist involved in research.  This psychologist is evaluating the effect that childhood experiences have had on the development of fibromyalgia.  The theory being studied is that people with fibromyalgia have had an overprotective or unpredictable childhood that resulted in stress.  One of the interesting factors is this stress was not recognized as a stressor by the child.  In addition, it is thought that the absence of non-performance based acceptance and predictability is enough to cause serious psychological wounds.  Other characteristics that are implicated in fibromyalgia are perfectionism, needing to hold it all together, using your head to make decisions regardless of how you feel, poor self care, always being there for others to help fix their problems and having a Type A personality.  Certainly some interesting research.

The August 2011 issue of Psychology Today had an article titled Sense and Sensitivity.  This article discusses concepts regarding the 20 percent of the population that are highly sensitive people.  The highly sensitive person absorbs the moods and feelings of others around them and is able to sense moods in an entire room and cultural trends too.  The highly sensitive person is "attuned to subtleties of all kinds, they have a complex inner life and need time to process the constant flow of sensory data that is their inheritance."  The highly sensitive person has a nervous system that is set to register stimuli at a very low frequency and then these stimuli are amplified internally.  It is thought that the highly sensitive person is particularly prone to disorders such as chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia.  The highly sensitive person gets their feelings bruised easily and tend to personalize