In a social media group for people with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), someone mentioned that she sometimes feels like an imposter since she has days where she feels more normal and can do more.
As with so much of the odd and not-so-odd things related to CFS, this is something I recognzie for myself.
One of the typical things with CFS is that we have good and bad days and even weeks and months where we either have more energy or feel worse than usual.
Because of this typical feature of CFS, I also sometimes feel like an imposter. At the very least, I notice a concern that others will think I am just making it up. After all, on some days, I can go out and do things almost like I could before I got sick.
Why is that? After all, I have all the main and core symptoms of CFS, including the typical viral-infection starting point, and also an official diagnosis. And the swings is a common feature of CFS. It’s to be expected.
The main reason is probably that we still don’t have a good medical understanding of CFS. Although we know a lot about it, and know it’s a physical illness, the specific mechanisms are still a mystery.
As soon as we have a better understanding of the mechanisms, a lot will shift.
We may be on our way to good medical treatment.
Doctors, governments, and people in general will take it far more seriously and recognize it as an illness on line with any other physical illness.
And a lot of the extra stress and worry that people with CFS live with because it is, to some extent, a mystery illness, will drop away.