Some gifts of the chronic fatigue:
- Finding how my life has value in the absence of doing. (And how that’s true for others as well.)
- Learning to slow down, rest, take care of myself.
- Learning to put my needs first, and communicate about it.
- Questioning and having to let go of identifications with doing and achievement related identities.
- Learning about my body and mind, how beliefs influence my experience of health etc.
- Learning about healing modalities, learning about CFS.
- Having time to relax, enjoy myself, learn, be.
- Having time to notice what’s here, find curiosity for it.
- Finding new appreciation and value of any life, independent of doing and activities in the world.
- Questioning my labels, including the basic ones of fatigue, pain etc.
- Noticing the effects of beliefs on how I experience my mind and body, my life in the world.
- Realizing in a new way that “I” am not in control. If life goes somewhere, that’s what happens. If life doesn’t go somewhere, it doesn’t.
- Being unable to push away or set aside uncomfortable experiences – emotions, sensations, images, thoughts. Invitation to be with them, with curiosity, instead of setting them aside as I used to.
- Modeling this for others, sharing it with others through words and how I live my life.