By in Psychotherapy

7 Tips to Help with Chronic Fatigue

If you’ve been looking for a remedy to your Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) or more commonly, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), you’ll probably be realising by now that there’s something other than just the physical symptoms involved. Exhaustion and fatigue are the common companions of high stress living, which may or may not be obvious to you. So if you really want to address the impact of fatigue and lack of energy then useful is to look at your life from all angles and take a proper inventory of changes can be made beyond the conscious mind. While the easiest ones to introduce are food, drink and routine changes, these deeper layers require patience, and stillness. Here are my top 7 tips for defeating fatigue.

#1 Meditate on your feelings

The world demands so much of our outwards attention that we rarely give ourselves time to even recognise our feelings let alone express them. We live often by some externally imposed standard, expecting ourselves to be invincible and in the same co-operative and productive mood every day. This causes us to deny our deeper feelings which are still being felt by the body, whether we know it or not. Find time to meditate on your feelings and your thoughts and to observe what is happening in the body. This could save you many a trip to the doctors with symptoms such as palpitations, fatigue and headaches. As you get used to the seasons of your emotions, you’ll learn to honour and respect yourself a lot more creating less tension in the body.

#2 Create a happy dialogue with yourself

When you meditate, you may become conscious of a negative dialogue that you are having with yourself. For example, if you don’t do this, then this will happen: if you’re not perfect for everyone, you’ll be judged, and so on. Learn to observe these negative thoughts and try turning them around so that, if I do do this then maybe something good will happen. Or even perhaps, if I don’t do this, what is the worst thing that can happen. Either way, this kind of approach to turning your negative dialogue into more forgiving inner dialogue will relieve a lot of stress and pressure that you place on yourself unconsciously. This in turn will free up energy that you were wasting on your stressful inner dialogue.

#3 Recognise where the emotions come from

What I mean by this is whether your emotions come from childhood or another time in the past. If they were brought about by a particular event, however big or small, ask yourself the question, if I didn’t keep responding with the same emotional content of the past to current events, what could I feel instead? That was then. This is now. Is the emotion you used to feel appropriate now? If not, there’s more energy you can free up to allow yourself to recover from the unconscious stress you are placing on yourself. Your dark places are only a part of life. Practice deep reflection so you can gain insight into your dark places and embrace them.

#4 Take time out for you

Busy people will say they have no time for themselves. I would argue, you cannot afford to believe that. You have to make time for yourself. If you don’t you will eventually wear yourself down with unspoken and unprocessed emotional content and grind to halt. It is far harder to pick yourself up from this place, which may have even turned into Chronic Fatigue Syndrome by now, than it is to correct yourself as you go. Don’t cut corners thinking it won’t happen to you. Bring yourself present into the here and now and ask what does my body need?

#5 Get plenty of sleep

Sleep is naturally very restorative. If you are doing the above, you will find it easier to sleep and gain more energy for the day. If you have stuff playing on your mind at night that is stopping you sleeping, get yourself a notepad and diarise your thoughts during the night. Don’t spend hours churning stuff over. Get it down on paper. It functions like a download. Once it’s recorded you have downloaded it from your conscious mind. Look at it in the morning. Meditate on it. Ask yourself was it worth lying awake for it?

#6 Trust yourself

Much mental and emotional fatigue comes from not being able to trust yourself to handle challenging situations effectively. Trusting yourself means you have to hand over your worries to the universe (or your higher power – whatever that is) and have faith that the best will come of your challenges. You cannot control everything. All you can do is trust that whatever happens, you will find a way through it. If there is something troubling you, do yourself a reality check. Write a list of things that might happen and next to them write down what you can realistically do to deal with them. What changes does dealing with them require you to make? Meditate on them. And remember, you cannot be all things to all people. You are responsible for yourself and not everyone else.

#7 Look after yourself physically

Needless to say, taking time for yourself means you have to look after your physical body too. You need to find a healthy self respect and self love for the needs of the body. Eating the right foods, making sure you have healthy food to hand even when you are rushed off your feet, and that you are drinking plenty of non-caffeinated fluids, is essential to running your body at the optimum speed you demand of it. Building exercise into your week and getting fresh outdoor air are also essential. The body was designed to walk and run and eat wild foods. Not to be sat in an office chair all day. We have moved many hundreds of generations into the future away from this natural rythmn of life. Emulating that very basic of human needs in our high pressure world is essential for our healthy functioning.

If you take the advice in this article, you will need to develop half hour or so every day to work through each point in turn. Your road to recovery is about developing new habits, new consciousness, and new awareness of the sanctity of the mind and body. If you fill it with stressful, cyclical thoughts, bad foods, and fears from the past, then you will keep your body on red alert, creating stress hormones that further depress the immune system, and ultimately working yourself down into a state of fatigue and often depression. If you would like help in learning how to master your mind and increase your ability to recover, I would be very happy to offer my support to help you on your journey to wellbeing.

To find out more about ways of coping with CFS, you can contact The Body Matters on 01702 714968.

Jenny Lynn
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