Explaining my Chronic Fatigue : The Phone Battery Theory

Let’s talk about chronic fatigue. It’s a symptom which comes with a lot of long term chronic conditions and is it’s own chronic illness in itself.

For me, chronic fatigue is possibly the hardest symptom I deal with on a regular basis, and is something which is incredibly difficult to explain to people who don’t live with chronic fatigue.

What is Chronic Fatigue?

Chronic fatigue is more than just feeling tired. There’s a sense of exhaustion; everything, even the smallest of movements, takes effort and is combined with aches and pains.

I sometimes liken it to it feeling as though you’re carrying around a massive weight with you. You know those weighted jackets athletes train with? I guess it’s like that.

Fatigue can be frustrating. You never know when it’s going to come and when it does it can knock you out for days, weeks or sometimes even longer. It’s annoying when you have things planned and then whoosh out of nowhere it feels like you’re carrying around a tonne of bricks.

Why I don’t like using The Spoon Theory to explain my fatigue

A popular theory to explain fatigue, which is used commonly in the chronic illness community is The Spoon Theory. Heck, I’ve even used it myself however I’ve found it doesn’t always explain it well enough.

The basic idea behind the spoon theory is that we have a certain amount of spoons and daily tasks like getting out of bed, making breakfast, getting dressed, showering etc take a certain amount of spoons.

This is where, for me, the spoon theory falls down. How do you know how many spoons each task usually take? How many spoons do you get? I’ve never seen it fully explained with the numbers, and I just feel like it lacks real clarity.

Fatigue is more like our phone battery

Today I heard a great analogy for chronic fatigue, it being like our phone battery.

Our phone battery’s work much better when we don’t drain them. However, if our battery’s are constantly draining, they don’t hold their power as well, and the power goes down quicker.

Some days, we’re fully charged when we wake up, but the simplest task drains us. And then it’s harder for us to recharge again.

Once you’re in this cycle, it’s hard to keep your energy up.

For some reason,this makes a lot more sense in my head. And it helps people understand how it can be really hard to get out of a chronic fatigue flare too, because we just keep loosing our energy.

How to manage chronic fatigue

One of my most asked questions, and something I search a lot myself, is the best way to manage chronic fatigue.

The truthful answer is, we’re all different. Plus, even when you do all of the ‘right’ things, your chronic fatigue is still there.

Sometimes you just have to admit defeat, grab a cup of tea and lie down in bed. And guess what, that’s okay.

When you have a chronic illness, part of the fatigue is your body working overtime to attack and heal itself. That takes a lot of energy and it’s okay to need to take it slow.

Was it part of your life plan? Probably not. But it’s something you have to adapt to, learn to live with and, most importantly, learnt to accept.

Chronic fatigue kicks my arse sometimes and I’m useless. It used to frustrate me and really get me down. But learning to not beat myself up about it makes it a lot easier. That’s not me saying it’s easy, because it’s really not.

But that’s the gift of acceptance with a chronic illness and learning to live well with a chronic illness. We can’t always control what our body is doing, but we can control how we react and feel (most of the time!)

Sadly there’s no magic wand we can wave to fix our chronic fatigue (hopefully there’ll be some breakthrough medical discovery soon!) but being able to communicate how we’re feeling and find other ways to feel good can help.

Do you live with chronic fatigue? Leave your top tip for managing it in the comments below!