Singer Song Wrier Sia, 48, Who Suffers From ‘Chronic Pain’ Due to Neurological Disease, Set To Release New Album ‘Reasonable Woman’

A statement from Team Sia, shared alongside what appears to be the “Reasonable Woman” album cover on Sia’s Instagram, read, “BIG ALBUM NEWS ‘Reasonable Woman’ is officially coming out on Friday, May 3rd!”

The announcement then proceeded to list the new album’s tracklist, “Little Wing, Immortal Queen, Dance Alone, I Had A Heart, Gimme Love, Nowhere To Be, Towards The Sun, Incredible, Champion, I Forgive You, Wanna Be Known, One Night, Fame Won’t Love You, Go On, Rock And Balloon.”

Some of her new songs will feature collaborators, including Jimmy Jolliff, Kaliii, Chaka Khan, Kylie Minogue, Paris Hilton, Labrinth, and Tierra Whack.

Team Sia concluded, “There are so many incredible friends who helped give their all to make the album what it is, can’t wait for you to hear it.

“Go, go, go pre-order the album at the link in bio and keep on dancing.”

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Her new album “Reasonable Album” comes just eight years after her popular album “This Is Acting” was released in 2016, so it’s apparent how excited Sia fans are now that her album is coming soon.

In response to her announcement, one of her fans commented, “The most REASONABLE WOMAN, the most UNSTOPPABLE, the IMMORTAL QUEEN herself,” while another wrote, “Yesss, we’ve been waiting so long for this.”

Other fans wrote, “I’ve been waiting for this album since 2021, I’m so excited, Sia I love u so much, your lyrics saved my life,” and, “Immediately Iconic!”

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Sia On Living With a Neurological Disease & Chronic Pain

It’s impressive to see Sia continuing to do what she loves and make new music, especially since she revealed back in 2019 how she’s been suffering with a neurological disease and chronic pain.

“Hey, I’m suffering with chronic pain, a neurological disease, ehlers danlos and I just wanted to say to those of you suffering from pain, whether physical or emotional, I love you, keep going,” Sia wrote in an October 2019 Twitter (now known as “X”) post, which is no longer available, according to People.

“Life is (f—ing) hard. Pain is demoralizing, and you’re not alone.”

According to the Los Angeles Times, Sia later offered more insight into her neurological and mental health struggles, revealing she was taking time to undergo treatment for complex post-traumatic stress disorder and has developed a condition called neuralgia, which Medline Plus describes as pain caused by damaged or irritated nerves.

Medline Plus explains neuralgia is “a sharp, shocking pain that follows the path of a nerve and is due to irritation or damage to the nerve.” Symptoms of neuralgia may include increased sensitivity of the skin on the path of the damaged nerve, pain along the nerve path that is stabbing or sharp, and weakness or complete paralysis of muscles.

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Referring to her neurological disorder, she explained, “If you’d like more information it’s neuralgia caused by a routine surgery three years ago. I’m also taking time off to do intensive therapy on Complex PTSD. Turns out my bipolar 2 diagnosis [something she opened up about years ago] was wrong.”

“Plenty of people suffering more than me,” she wrote on social media, as per the Los Angeles Times report. “At least I have resources. I really feel for those struggling w/the healthcare system. KEEP GOING!”

As for the Ehlers-Danlos syndrome she’s also living with, Medline Plus explains it as “a group of disorders that affect connective tissues supporting the skin, bones, blood vessels, and many other organs and tissues,” adding, “Defects in connective tissues cause the signs and symptoms of these conditions, which range from mildly loose joints to life-threatening complications.”

According to Ehlers-danlos.com, this condition is a grouping of 13 heritable connective tissue disorders. Symptoms include joint hypermobility, skin hyperextensibility, and tissue fragility.

The conditions are caused by genetic changes that affect connective tissue. Each type of EDS has its own set of features with distinct diagnostic criteria. Some features are seen across all types of EDS, including joint hypermobility, skin hyperextensibility, and tissue fragility.

The Mayo Clinic says that different kinds of EDS are affiliated with a variety of genetic causes. Some of these causes are inherited and passed from parent to offspring. People who have the most common form of EDS, hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, have a fifty percent chance of passing the gene to their children.

Powering Through Adversity

We love how Sia continues to impress and do what she loves even though she battles chronic pain and a neurological disease, which is why we’d like to point out how SurvivorNet specializes in covering the lives of people who overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Often, seeing the positive helps them maintain their resilience.

WATCH: Defining and Building Resilience

Dr. Zuri Murrell, an oncologist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, previously spoke to SurvivorNet about the role of a positive outlook on survival rates, saying, “I’m pretty good at telling what kind of patient are going to still have this attitude and probably going to live the longest, even with bad, bad disease. And those are patients who, they have gratitude in life.”

Resilience is an important trait, but not the easiest to build. The ultimate goal is not to avoid tough times, but to be able to bounce back from them. And yet, when they are faced with an overwhelming, life-changing situation, how do people shift their view? How do they learn to see the problem as temporary, rather than permanent, and figure out a solution?

It’s complicated, because building resilience is more about your mental and emotional fortitude than anything else. According to the American Psychological Association, “the resources and skills associated with more positive adaptation (i.e., greater resilience) can be cultivated and practiced.” In other words, resilience is not something you’re born with, which should be encouraging. Instead, after every challenge in your life, you build more and more resilience to those hard times.

You can build resilience the way you build muscle – through patience and steady exercise of the skill. Here are some lessons taken from Fischer, Runkel, and Soller, all who have spoke with SurvivorNet in earlier interviews.

• Be willing to learn. If one way doesn’t work, find a different way. If an obstacle lands in your way, build a path around it or over it. In Resilience, one of the athletes says, “You always have to be learning. Otherwise, life gets stagnant.” The more you learn, the more you grow and growth is a sign of resilience.
• Spend time with people who inspire you. Our world is filled with people who overcome challenges, and their success can energize you to overcome your own. Think about famous people who hava faced adversity and did not give up Stephen King actually threw his manuscript, Carrie, in the trash because it had been rejected by publishers so many times. His wife encouraged him to keep sending it out, and he finally sold it in 1974 launching a massively successful career as a novelist. Take the time to read and learn about the lives of Helen Keller, Jackie Robinson, Bethany Hamilton, Nelson Mandela, and others.
• Allow yourself to grieve. Don’t push away or dismiss your frustration and sadness. Ben Fischer says that life can be filled with lots of crying, but “Those cries make us stronger.”
• Be flexible. Abandon the idea that there is only one solution or that you must stick to your original plan. The best solution or plan is the one that eventually works. You may need to change your original plan as the circumstances change.
• Lean in to your community. Your friends, colleagues, and family are invaluable, and when you’re feeling stressed or overwhelmed by a problem, their support can carry you. The Harvard Study of Adult Development is the longest study of human well-being. Many news outlets have covered its results, which show that maintaining strong, healthy relationships helped people live longer lives.   Psychiatrist and author Dr. Samantha Boardman tells SurvivorNet that connecting with and contributing to the lives of other people are two of “the three wellsprings of vitality” (the third is feeling positively challenged).

Facing Cancer: How to Turn Stress into Strength

If you’ve been through a difficult health challenge or any type of adversity throughout your live,  Dr. Boardman told SurvivorNet in an earlier interview that one way to get your mental health back in check after a diagnosis is to try to play up your strengths.

“I sometimes will ask patients, tell me about yourself when you were at your best,” she explained. “Using that story, trying to figure out what strengths come to mind. Is it patience? Is it appreciation of beauty? It is perseverance? [Then we can] use those strengths in constructive ways to navigate their cancer journey.”

Dr. Boardman says another way to approach harnessing the strength you already have is by tapping into your values. This could be family, close friendships, spirituality, or commitment to a healthy lifestyle.

Reminding yourself of what your values are and how you are living accordingly is another way to unleash that inner strength.

Lastly, patients shouldn’t underestimate the value of simply opening up, Dr. Boardman says. This could mean speaking to a close family member or friend, or it could mean seeking support in other ways by finding a therapist that meets your needs or looking into joining a support group.

Stay Positive, It Matters

Having negative feelings throughout a health struggle is to be expected, however, doctors will tell you that people who find a way to work through the emotions and stay positive tend to have better outcomes.

Resources for People Facing Rare Diseases

With a rare diagnosis, it’s common for feelings of anxiety, fear, and loneliness, to arise. However, it’s important to know you’re not alone.

Below are some helpful resources for the many people affected by lesser-known or less-researched diseases.

Academic Centers and Comprehensive Care Centers

For some rare disease warriors, community centers provide wonderful treatment options. But for people with rare conditions, cancer or otherwise, more specialized care may be required. In that case, the most effective place to find a specialist is often at academic centers and comprehensive care centers.

Seeking Care at a Comprehensive Cancer Center

In an earlier interview with SurvivorNet, Dr. Kenneth Miller, director of outpatient oncology at the University of Maryland’s comprehensive cancer center, discussed what differentiates a “comprehensive cancer center” from other treatment providers.

Dr. Miller said, “Pretty much automatically, there’s going to be a team approach [to your care]. Surgical oncology, medical oncology, radiation oncology, and all the support services, and also wonderful pathology and radiology.”

He added that at a comprehensive cancer center, all of these different specialists work together as a team to help you find the best course of treatment for your specific kind of cancer.

“We call it a tumor board group to go through all the details of your case, so you get a group of very smart people coming up with a plan together that is hopefully optimal and gives you the best chance of doing well.”

Clinicaltrials.gov and the SurvivorNet Clinical Trial Finder

Another place to turn to when you’ve been diagnosed with a rare disease and you’re considering experimental treatment or trying to find specialists is clinicaltrials.gov, a database maintained by the U.S. government that compiles privately and publicly funded clinical trials conducted around the world.

Clinical trials themselves are research studies that compare the most effective known treatment for a specific type or stage of a disease with a new approach.

Clinical Trials Can be Life-Saving for Some

And if you’d prefer to search for clinical trials on a more user-friendly site, try SurvivorNet’s A.I. driven tool built on top of clinicaltrials.gov: the SurvivorNet Clinical Trial Finder. This tool is updated daily and gives users access to more than 100,000+ individual clinical trials to help them find treatment options.

Dr. Beth Karlan, a gynecologic oncologist with UCLA Health, told SurvivorNet in a previous interview that clinical trials can play an important role in some patients’ treatment, but they also serve a larger purpose.

“Clinical trials hopefully can benefit you, but is also providing very, very vital information to the whole scientific community about the effectiveness of these treatments,” Dr. Karlan said.

“We need everyone to be partners with us if we’re ever going to truly cure cancer or prevent people from having to die from cancer.”

PubMed

And something similar to clinicaltrials.gov, PubMed is another place to look for help if you’re trying to obtain research on your rare disease. This website includes more than 33 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals and online books.

If you type in your disease, you’ll see a list of studies and articles about the condition. You can even add a filter to only look at clinical trial information. By looking at the doctors associated with the published clinical trial results and other articles, you may be able to find doctors that specialize in research for your disease.

Newly-Developed Drugs

Another step you may take after being diagnosed with a rare disease is looking into the drug companies developing drugs to treat your condition.

The “Right to Try” Controversy: When Should People be Given Experimental Drugs?

Drug companies may be able to help patients enroll in clinical trials, and in some rare cases, they may even be able to offer “compassionate use.” Compassionate drug use makes a new drug that has not been fully approved available to a patient facing a serious illness. This only typically happens when a patient has exhausted all other treatment options, but it is an important option to understand.

Similarly, researching drug companies may be a path to “off-label” drug use. Off-label drug use involves taking a drug that has been approved for treating one condition in the hopes that it may treat another condition that it has not yet been approved for.

Contributing: SurvivorNet Staff

Learn more about SurvivorNet's rigorous medical review process.

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