PRINTABLE: CFS CHECKLIST + WAYS TO MONITOR YOUR FATIGUE
With CFS, fatigue is ever-present. The smallest change in your daily life can cause all sorts of ramifications, and then you must adapt at a moment’s notice. It’s unbelievably tough. Regularly monitoring your fatigue levels, however, is one of the most useful things you can do. Amongst many things, it brings an element of control that the condition takes away from you and allows you to perhaps even affect how the fatigue manifests later on.
Here are 5 ways I recommend monitoring that fatigue of yours.
ONE - SELF-FEELING
This is an obvious one, but you simply ask yourself ‘how do I feel?’ If the answer is negative, then it’s probably true. You just must be careful that it is the actual truth, and not the mind telling lies. As you know, fatigue has a terrible way of draining the drive and motivation to do anything, and that includes clarity of the mind.
TWO – A TRUSTED SECOND OPINION
This one is only viable if you have someone close by, who sees you all the time, and knows you very well. You can ask this individual how you look, or how you seem and they will likely give you an honest answer. Don’t monitor your fatigue based purely on their opinion however, but it’s certainly useful quantifying your own.
THREE – HAVE A PERSONAL CHECKLIST
This is something you may not be able to do just yet, as you don’t yet have the tools for it. What you need is a tracker like the one above (download it at the end of this paragraph), which allows you to assess your current fatigue in short order. It’s not something you should spend a great deal of time doing either, need to preserve that valuable energy. The checklist just lets you see what you think on paper, and that makes all the difference sometimes.
FOUR – COMPARE TO OTHER DAYS
Again, this seems like an obvious one, but comparing today’s fatigue with any other days that you remember will give you a frame of reference. Do you remember that really bad day you had? How close is today to that? If you have benchmarks of good and bad days in your memory, use those to compare today’s experience and see if you can work out the differences. You might be fatigued for different reasons, or the fatigue just might feel very different.
FIVE – TAKE A BREAK AND TAKE NOTE OF THE RESPONSE
When I suggest this to my clientele, they look at me in confusion most of the time. Monitoring your fatigue by looking solely at the fatigue itself is fine. However, when you stop and have a break, if you look at how the body responds, that can actually tell you a lot. If you sat down, and within five minutes could not move, you know your fatigue was/is horrific. If after that break you feel like you did, and could go again, then you know its perhaps not as bad as you may have first thought. The fatigue response is one of the best ways to judge those levels.
Give some of these a go.
Mark