Oh, I Don’t Know ANYONE Like This!

The Ener­gy Envelope

Many peo­ple with CFIDS and fibromyal­gia feel caught in a vicious cycle of push and crash, swing­ing between over­ac­tiv­i­ty and rest. Their symp­toms and their reac­tions to them inter­act to keep them caught in a frus­trat­ing loop. When their symp­toms are low, they push to get as much done as they can. But doing too much inten­si­fies their symp­toms and so they crash. The high lev­el of symp­toms leads them to rest in order to reduce dis­com­fort. This is usu­al­ly suc­cess­ful; rest reduces their pain, fatigue, and oth­er symptoms.

But then anoth­er cycle begins. Feel­ing frus­trat­ed at all they didn’t do while rest­ing, they plunge into anoth­er round of over­ac­tiv­i­ty to catch up. This in turn caus­es anoth­er inten­si­fi­ca­tion of symp­toms, so they expe­ri­ence anoth­er crash. Liv­ing in response to symp­toms, they are caught on a demor­al­iz­ing roller coast­er in which high symp­toms alter­nate with peri­ods of extend­ed rest, and they feel out of con­trol. This cycle can be espe­cial­ly frus­trat­ing for CFIDS patients because they often find that even appar­ent­ly small amounts of activ­i­ty trig­ger a dis­pro­por­tion­ate increase in symptoms.