ME/CFS Doing This One Thing May Give You Insight Into Factors Influencing Your Health

Coach, Trainer and former sufferer of ME/CFS and fibromyalgia Simon Pimenta explores the benefits of keeping a journal, and alternatives for those who are unable to do so.

Part 1 Why Keep A Journal?

When I had ME/CFS I kept a journal. There are many benefits of doing so. I appreciate that when energy is limited, and given that there are lots of other things that need to be done that aren’t getting done, journaling might not feel like a high priority. However,  it can be a useful tool for the following reasons:

1. There Is Scientific Evidence That Journaling Has Health Benefits.
Research by psychologist James Pennebaker at the University of Texas at Austin shows that regular journaling strengthens immune cells. Pennebaker believes that writing about stressful events helps reduce the impact of these stressors on your physical health, by helping you come to terms with them.

2. It Can Act As A Useful Record.
You may keep a note of any treatments you try; medication, supplements or other therapeutic interventions and record changes that you notice.

3. It Can Give You Important Insight Into Your Condition.
Recording the information suggested below may help you have a better understanding of factors influencing the fluctuations in your health.

Part 2: Tips For Keeping A Journal

1. Do It When You Can.
If you forget, that’s fine, you can pick up from where you left off. If you can, do it at the same time of day, either first thing when you wake up, when you go to bed. Doing it any time is better than not doing it at all.

2. Enlist Help
If you are unable to write, if there is someone who you trust enough, ask them if they could help you. Get them to record your reflections as you dictate them.

3. Reflect
If you are unable to write, and can’t get anyone else to help you, then spend a little bit of time thinking about the steps suggested below.

Part 3 What To Record

When I had ME/CFS I found it useful to do the following:

1. Thoughts And Feelings
Write down whatever is going through your head.

As mentioned above, this can have a therapeutic effect.

 

2. Treatments
As mentioned above, I used it as a record of treatments. A note of caution: this could lead one to focus too much on how they are feeling, and thinking too much about symptoms. So I suggest that any key changes are briefly observed, and then move on. As much as possible during the day, I would try not to focus or worry about symptoms, whilst paying heed to the needs of my body.

3. Score My Health
On a scale of 1-10, with 1 being bed bound, and 10 being a normal healthy person, I would note my score. Based on that score, I would think about what I could realistically achieve that day. As I started using the techniques that I refer to in Part 3, I found that my score could improve during the course of the day.

4. Note Health Fluctuations
I would then note the following:

a. Whether my score had improved or declined since yesterday.

b. What had been happening in the last few days. If my score had declined, what could I identify that may have been a factor? Had I:

Tried to do too much?
Had an argument with someone?
Got stressed, been worrying/anxious?

If like me, you find that you are a normal human being, then you will understand that I did at times do all of the above!

c. If I was feeling better, what had been happening in the last few days that may have contributed to feeling better. Had I been feeling fairly relaxed or was there some other factor: eating well, sleeping well?

What I became more aware of is that periods of stress exacerbated my symptoms. Now it might seem that I have just stated the obvious, but for a long time, ME/CFS was a random condition that I could not make any sense of. I hadn’t identified any of the factors that influenced the fluctuations in my health.

As I became more aware of how day by day events were influencing my health, that gave me some important clues that I could use to my advantage. I learned some important information about what scientists now know about how the mind and body affect each other. Utilising all this information, I learned to:

1.  Identify stressors, including stressors that I had previously been unaware of. For instance, automatically getting stressed just by thinking about going for a walk or going out. I had’t realised that I was triggering this response. It had become an unconscious process.

2. Utilise strategies for avoiding these stressors, or neutralising them when they did get triggered.

3. Develop strategies for creating more calm and peace in my daily life.

Of course this wasn’t easy! I had to work hard to implement these techniques, and I experienced ups and downs. However, I realised that I had to implement strategies for dealing with stress more effectively, as I would pay the price for any stress. I am sure this is something that others have experienced; that our body lets us know when we have over done it or got stressed.

Although there were many factors that contributed to my recovery from 8 years of ME/CFS (and my getting sick in the first place), I believe an important factor in my recovery was following the above steps. I had tried many treatments in an attempt to get well. Some had helped to some degree, but nothing had got me back to the full state of health that I sought. I am happy to share more about what I believe caused me to become ill, and what aided my recovery in other articles; let me know if that is of interest.

 

Part 4: Strategies That You Can Learn

Since my recovery, I have worked with clients, teaching them the strategies that I learned. Often clients will say “I don’t know why I am feeling worse”. However, when I talk to them about what has been going on, they become aware of things that caused them stress.

Equally people don’t always make the link between the periods of feeling well and the fact that they have been had a period of feeling relaxed and relatively stress free.

As mentioned already, one of the challenges is that some of the stressors are things that we are not even aware of, so it can be heard to tackle them. A friend who has ME/CFS commented that he experienced a baseline anxiety and didn’t think that he could change that. I totally related to his comment, as when I had ME/CFS, I experienced that at times.

However, some of the things I learned about how the mind and brain work helped me understand how to reduce anxiety. You can read more about this in my free report ‘ME/CFS: A Piece Of The Jigsaw’ (which also includes some simple strategies for Relaxation). In the report, I explore how:

Additional stress when a person is already sick can perpetuate the condition by suppressing immune function, sleep, energy production. Most people know that when they are unwell, that any extra stress is not tolerated as it would be when they were well.

Activating the ‘rest and digest’ aka the parasympathetic response has the opposite effect, as it:
Allows the immune function to start working
Allows us to achieve restorative sleep
Allows the body- particularly the muscles and liver, to store reserves of energy- which doesn’t happen when immune function is suppressed.

You can access a copy of the report on my homepage.

Closing Thoughts

Spending some time recording my fluctuations in health was definitely a useful exercise, even though I was sometimes inconsistent in doing it. However, it did help me understand some of the factors that were influencing the condition and enabled me to take positive steps, that I believed helped my recovery.

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  SIMON PIMENTA is a hypnotherapist, coach and trainer working with people to boost resilience and performance, and minimise stress. After working in a demanding job as the Director of a Housing Trust, he went off sick and remained unable to work for the next 8 years. He discovered a pioneering approach to resolving health issues and quickly got back his health, and now trains others using these same techniques, to help them become happier, healthier and achieve their goals.