Chronic Fatigue Treatment: Pacing
Chronic fatigue treatment is more about management than cure. As you probably know, there is no medication that can cure chronic fatigue syndrome. Nevertheless, there is a lot that people with mild, moderate or even sever CFS or ME can do to improve the quality of their lives.
Pacing is a chronic fatigue treatment that is very popular with many chronic fatigue and M.E. patients and support groups because it improves the quality of life and makes people feel more in control of their activities. Most importantly, it allows the body to rest as much as it needs so that it can heal in its own way, in its own time.
People with chronic fatigue syndrome or ME have to face the fact that they cannot do as much as they used to. Exactly what you can do will vary from person to person and even from day to day. Start by thinking about what you can do on a bad day. Which activities are most important to you? How could you could structure a bad day to get plenty of rest between these activities?
There are probably some things that you will need to give up altogether. Many people have to stop work or college, but some people with milder symptoms are able to continue to work either full or part time by giving up other things, like sports or social activities. What are your priorities?
Social activities as well as physical activities are exhausting for most people with chronic fatigue. On the other hand, it is important for all human beings to maintain some contact with others. If you are severely ill this may be only your carer. If you have moderate or mild chronic fatigue, you will probably be able to maintain some contact with a wider circle, but probably in different ways than you are used to.
Do you find it easier to visit others or to have them visit you? Or would it better to stop seeing most people, but talk to them on the phone? If you imagine yourself (healthy) in 10 years’ time, who are the people that you would not want to have lost contact with?
It can be hard for friends and family to understand chronic fatigue treatment. They may have trouble believing that you know what is best for you. Pacing is less popular with those who do not know much about the condition. Even health professionals will push you to increase your activity levels because they think this is the way to improve. But it must be done very gradually.
In fact, you may find that one of the most important things you can do for your own chronic fatigue treatment is to understand and to help those around you to understand that a person with chronic fatigue is NOT helped by going to their limits. Explain to them that it is like flu, but much more long term: if you do too much, you will get worse, not better.
Of course, assuming that your health does improve, you will be able to increase your activities little by little. But it is not the increasing of activity that causes the improvement – it is the rest that you allow yourself when you reduce all types of activities (physical, mental, social and emotional) to a level that your body can handle.
In other words, pacing for chronic fatigue treatment is not like fitness training for a healthy person, where the more they increase the activity in their workout, the fitter they get. Chronic fatigue treatment, as we have already said, involves allowing the body to rest and heal for as long it needs and then increasing activity to match the improvement that has already happened.
