{"id":830,"date":"2018-02-17T23:56:02","date_gmt":"2018-02-18T07:56:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/recoveryfromcfs.org\/?page_id=830"},"modified":"2020-05-26T11:11:45","modified_gmt":"2020-05-26T18:11:45","slug":"ch06","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/recoveryfromcfs.org\/ch06\/","title":{"rendered":"ch06"},"content":{"rendered":"
[vc_row][vc_column width=”1\/4″][vc_column_text][\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][vc_column width=”3\/4″][vc_custom_heading text=”6. Pacing vs Crashing” font_container=”tag:h3|text_align:left|color:%233999ad” use_theme_fonts=”yes”][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row css=”.vc_custom_1514103561711{padding-top: 30px !important;padding-right: 0px !important;padding-bottom: 30px !important;padding-left: 0px !important;}”][vc_column width=”1\/4″ css=”.vc_custom_1517547497357{background-color: #ffffff !important;}”][vc_custom_heading text=”Table of Contents” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:center|color:%233399ae” google_fonts=”font_family:Coda%20Caption%3A800|font_style:800%20bold%20regular%3A800%3Anormal” css=”.vc_custom_1521950901550{margin-top: -40px !important;}”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner css=”.vc_custom_1517547735980{background-color: #3399ae !important;}”]
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<\/span>Part I: Getting Started<\/div>
\n1: Keys to Recovery<\/strong><\/a>
\n2: Now What Do I Do?<\/strong><\/a>
\n3: My Situation<\/strong><\/a>
\n4: Multiple Strategies<\/strong><\/a>
\n5:\u00a0Is Recovery Realistic?<\/strong><\/a>
\n<\/div><\/div>\n
<\/span>Part II: Pacing<\/div>
\n6: Pacing vs Crashing<\/strong><\/a>
\n7: My Energy Envelope<\/strong><\/a>
\n8: Life in the Envelope<\/strong><\/a>
\n9: My Secret Weapon<\/strong><\/a>
\n10: CFS Scientist<\/strong><\/a>
\n11: Exercise<\/strong><\/a>
\n12: Minimizing Relapses<\/strong><\/a>
\n13: Expand the Envelope<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n
<\/span>Part III: Other Challenges<\/div>
\n14: Managing Stress<\/strong><\/a>
\n15: Emotions<\/strong><\/a>
\n16: Beyond Loss<\/strong><\/a>
\n17: Finding Help<\/strong><\/a>
\n<\/div><\/div>\n
<\/span>Part IV: Concluding Thoughts<\/div>
\n18: Recovery?<\/strong><\/a>
\n19: What Worked<\/strong><\/a>
\n20: What About You?<\/strong><\/a>
\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>[\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner]

 <\/p>\n

PDF version<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>[\/vc_column][vc_column width=”1\/2″][vc_column_text]\"\"I experienced tremendous frustration in the first six months I was ill. I felt that I was living on a roller coaster, swinging between times of intense symptoms and periods of rest. When I felt an increase in my symptoms, I went to bed. When the symptoms subsided, I resumed activity, but no matter what I did, I couldn\u2019t seem to escape the cycle of push and crash.<\/p>\n

Even when I lowered my activity level to half of normal and then to a quarter, it was still too much and I soon found myself back in bed. I was caught in a demoralizing cycle of overactivity and rest. Living in response to my symptoms, my life felt out of control.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t have the words to understand my experience at the time, but I later recognized that my activity was triggering Post-Exertional Malaise (PEM), the intensification of symptoms caused by overdoing. As I mentioned earlier, the key fact about PEM is that the intensification is out of proportion to the overdoing. All I knew at the time was that punishment for activity felt so unfair!<\/p>\n

Pacing as an Alternative<\/strong><\/p>\n

At some point, I heard about the idea of pacing, which involved living according to a schedule that combined similar levels of activity every day with planned rests. Pacing held out the promise of stability as an alternative to repeated cycles of push and crash, and it gave me a way to understand the cycles of intense symptoms followed by rest. The heightened symptoms were caused by overdoing, which triggered PEM, which in turn forced me to rest.<\/p>\n

Understanding this cycle of push and crash led to a depressing realization: I had unknowingly created a lot of my own suffering by being more active than my body could tolerate. But then I realized that if my activity level affected\u00a0 my symptoms so directly, that effect should work in both directions. If living one way intensified symptoms, living differently should enable me to reduce my symptoms.<\/p>\n

Pacing offered the possibility of a more stable and predictable life, a way to live life according to a plan, rather than in response to symptoms. The benefits of pacing as I understood it included:<\/p>\n