Text Size
 
Using Scheduled Rest to Prevent Symptoms
Bruce Campbell
08/18/2010
 
 

When I was first ill with CFS, I often experienced cycles of push and crash. If I was more active than my body could tolerate, I experienced intense symptoms and then used rest to recover. 

Spending a few hours or a whole day in bed was an effective strategy for recovering from periods of doing too much, but my life felt out of control.
 

About nine months after becoming ill, I learned that I could use rest for another reason besides recuperation. I found that rest could actually prevent higher symptoms. 

I decided to try resting every afternoon, but I wasn’t sure what “rest” meant. Was I resting if I was reading or watching television? Or did rest mean lying down? I did some experiments and found that the most restorative rest resulted from lying down in a quiet place with my eyes closed.
 

I was surprised at the results from a 15 minute rest. Even that short rest seemed to help, reducing my symptoms, increasing my stamina and making my life more stable. After a while I added a morning rest as well. 

Over time, I came to believe that my scheduled rest was the most important thing I did to aid my recovery. Resting everyday according to a fixed schedule, not just when I felt sick or tired, was part of a shift from living in response to symptoms to living a planned life. 

The experience showed me that rest could be used for more than recovering from doing too much; it could be employed as a preventive measure as well. In the terms suggested by one of the students in our self-help program, I learned the difference between recuperative rest and pre-emptive rest.
 

Taking pre-emptive rests enabled me to reduce my total rest time, because I spent so much less time in recuperative rest. Resting on a planned schedule greatly stabilized my life, enabling me to get off the roller coaster and giving me a much greater sense of control.
 

(Adapted from RecoveryFromCFS.org)