Necessity and Energy
I experience something odd where necessity gives me adrenaline that enables me to do a bit more (just a bit more, I'm still limited) than my normal energy limits permit. I have talked before about how having to go to the bathroom for number 2 gives me adrenaline that allows me to get up and walk to the bathroom (about 6 feet away from my bed luckily). This is the most dramatic example. I have hypothesized many possible reasons for this adrenaline boost but it may be tied to necessity.
I experience this in more subtle ways all the time. The strangest example is that if my caregiver is in the room and helping me, I am able to do much less than when she is gone. When she is in the room, she is able to do things for me, which makes them unnecessary for me to do myself and it’s harder or impossible to do some of these things. After I get back from the bathroom, I put ice on my stomach for an hour because it is sensitive afterwards and the ice protects it. When she is gone, I’m fully capable of putting the ice on myself - wiping the ziplock bags dry, placing towels on my stomach to keep it from getting too cold, putting the bags of ice below and above my J-tube, and covering it with a towel to keep condensation from dripping everywhere. I can do all these things without any difficulty when alone. But when she is here helping me, I can’t do any of them. I try. I don’t like being reliant on help. But I can feel that I can’t. I reach for the bag of ice, and my brain gives me the feeling I know too well that I will hurt myself if I don’t stop. So she has to do it all.
It also happens all the time when on my own. Things that are necessary are easier for me to do than things that are not. A lot of times when I was really sick I had to play Jedi mind tricks on myself and force my brain to think of things as being necessary so that I could do them. This was difficult to do, and often took some time, even months. Other times it was impossible.
Sometimes I would suddenly have doubts about whether something I had been doing for years was really necessary and all of a sudden my brain would freeze up and I’d get that feeling again when I moved to tried to do it, or pre-visualized trying to do it. I would then sit there for some time thinking through why I needed to do whatever it was and if I could re convince my brain that it was necessary I could do it again. I once just ignored this feeling of not being able to do something and it hurt my brain so badly, I was in a complete brain dead fog all day. But it was something I had done the day before with no problem because I didn’t have doubt about it’s necessity.
Doubt about necessity was a real problem.
I don’t know what this is, and I have no answers to this one, it is just a strange phenomenon that I have experienced for years.
If only I could harness whatever is being released when something is necessary and have that energy all the time, my limits would go way up. But it would also possibly be bad for me long term.
Another ME/CFS mystery to be solved one day...
I experience this in more subtle ways all the time. The strangest example is that if my caregiver is in the room and helping me, I am able to do much less than when she is gone. When she is in the room, she is able to do things for me, which makes them unnecessary for me to do myself and it’s harder or impossible to do some of these things. After I get back from the bathroom, I put ice on my stomach for an hour because it is sensitive afterwards and the ice protects it. When she is gone, I’m fully capable of putting the ice on myself - wiping the ziplock bags dry, placing towels on my stomach to keep it from getting too cold, putting the bags of ice below and above my J-tube, and covering it with a towel to keep condensation from dripping everywhere. I can do all these things without any difficulty when alone. But when she is here helping me, I can’t do any of them. I try. I don’t like being reliant on help. But I can feel that I can’t. I reach for the bag of ice, and my brain gives me the feeling I know too well that I will hurt myself if I don’t stop. So she has to do it all.
It also happens all the time when on my own. Things that are necessary are easier for me to do than things that are not. A lot of times when I was really sick I had to play Jedi mind tricks on myself and force my brain to think of things as being necessary so that I could do them. This was difficult to do, and often took some time, even months. Other times it was impossible.
Sometimes I would suddenly have doubts about whether something I had been doing for years was really necessary and all of a sudden my brain would freeze up and I’d get that feeling again when I moved to tried to do it, or pre-visualized trying to do it. I would then sit there for some time thinking through why I needed to do whatever it was and if I could re convince my brain that it was necessary I could do it again. I once just ignored this feeling of not being able to do something and it hurt my brain so badly, I was in a complete brain dead fog all day. But it was something I had done the day before with no problem because I didn’t have doubt about it’s necessity.
Doubt about necessity was a real problem.
I don’t know what this is, and I have no answers to this one, it is just a strange phenomenon that I have experienced for years.
If only I could harness whatever is being released when something is necessary and have that energy all the time, my limits would go way up. But it would also possibly be bad for me long term.
Another ME/CFS mystery to be solved one day...