Note: Nancy is a CFS patient from New York who joined the CFIDS & FM Self-Help Program in Fall, 2015. She wrote the message below a few months later to welcome a new member.

Hi Mary and welcome to the group!

I am relatively new here myself; I’ve been in this group two months, after completing the introductory course in the fall.

I've had CFS for 7 years and was bedridden for a year. I spent years pushing and crashing, then began to learn pacing. I was stable for a year or so, but had to learn a whole new level of self-care and discipline when my mom came to live with me and I became her caretaker two years ago. My health dipped for more than a year, and I have been in pain daily most of that time.

What’s been so helpful about this program is that their techniques are more detailed and specific versions of what I had been doing to get better the first time. It's giving me a new, more committed mindset as well as a new set of tools to use minute by minute through the day.

I have learned more about the daily intricacies of pacing and conserving energy here than I was able to do on my own. And I've begun to experience pain-free days again -- through keeping track of activity every day, finding my limits and sticking to them more strictly, and also disciplining myself to rest more regularly and frequently.

I now have a chair in the kitchen, and sit down every few minutes while I'm cooking. I also recently used one of those motorized wheelchairs in the grocery store, which I never would have done before, but am so glad to be doing because I have learned that walking is much more tiring than I realized.

This group has also inspired me to get a pedometer and count daily steps as another way of keeping track of energy usage. All of which has led to a much-desired symptom reduction that I had not been able to achieve on my own.

I have also realized how much my mood and self-image has depended on my being energetic and fast-moving, and how little I wanted to accept actually being chronically ill. Being more accepting of myself, however, has not been depressing at all, but has been a real relief!

Without this group, I might still be in pain and not know how to use pacing to get me out of pain. And without the commitment of our group leader and her belief in my ability to live within my Energy Envelope, I might have simply given up and learned to live with the pain.