Chronic fatigue and pacing - introduction

I've decided to do a series of posts on pacing since I seem to have a lot of notes about my experiences with pacing and what I've been doing with it over the last few years. If you see a chronic fatigue specialist in the UK, or even a therapist who knows what chronic fatigue is, they'll recommend you do pacing. It's also one of the NICE guidelines for treating the condition. If you have another condition, such as lupus, that has a massive fatigue component, I would recommend pacing to help with that. I'll be writing from personal experience and it will be informed with my love of psychology, science, behaviour therapy, life and Buddhism (a laymans form of Buddhism).

So what is pacing? Pacing means planning your day so that you have plenty of rest between any activity you choose to do. In short, you do an activity, rest, do an activity, rest, and so on. It also means not doing activities that are beyond your abilities, i.e. not planning a 10k run (as if!) followed by a 10 minute rest. It means being sensible and, if you're like me, being sensible is not that easy to achieve. We don't always do what is good for us.

That'll do for now.

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