What Is Classic Pacing?
By Ingebjørg Midsem Dahl
Pacing is a method of coping with low levels of physical, mental and social energy. It is about learning to recognise the body’s boundaries and staying within them. When you do this systematically most people with ME find that their limits slowly expand. You have to respect your limits both in single activities, throughout the day and during longer periods such as weeks and months. In strictly defined neurological ME, the symptom level is not stable, but gets worse when the activities go past its own limit. For this reason, symptoms which turn up during activities are warning signs. You should stop at the first warning sign, or preferably a little bit earlier. If you get concentration problems and a headache fifteen minutes into a TV program, you should stop after ten minutes, have a rest, and do something else afterwards. If you’re exhausted after a three hour shopping trip, you can stop after one hour and see if that works better. You need to learn to keep the symptoms at a low, stable level. They don’t necessarily go away, particularly not at first or if you have severe ME, but pacing usually keeps the symptoms at bay enough to make your everyday life easier.
Pacing requires a lot of experimentation, trial and error, and at first you will often feel that you’re failing. It takes time to find out how much the body can tolerate. One trick is to focus on what you can do on a bad day, and then you can split up and rearrange activities so you get a good switch between different types of energy and rest. Little and often is better than big chunks of activities with long rest periods in between. If you stick to this type of flexible routine, even on good days, you’ll usually find that the peaks and troughs even out, and your limits expand so that you feel gradually better. When the improvement gets going, you can increase your activity level in a very slow and controlled way. Pacing is not an exercise programme. You have to remain within your energy limits, even during an improvement phase. This can prevent many relapses.
Most people find that they need more information about pacing than a short description like this in order to apply the method to their daily lives. I therefore recommend that you have a look at Chapter 1 of the book “Classic Pacing for a better life with ME” which can be found here, or the article “Pacing” which can be read here also.
Pacing requires a lot of experimentation, trial and error, and at first you will often feel that you’re failing. It takes time to find out how much the body can tolerate. One trick is to focus on what you can do on a bad day, and then you can split up and rearrange activities so you get a good switch between different types of energy and rest. Little and often is better than big chunks of activities with long rest periods in between. If you stick to this type of flexible routine, even on good days, you’ll usually find that the peaks and troughs even out, and your limits expand so that you feel gradually better. When the improvement gets going, you can increase your activity level in a very slow and controlled way. Pacing is not an exercise programme. You have to remain within your energy limits, even during an improvement phase. This can prevent many relapses.
Most people find that they need more information about pacing than a short description like this in order to apply the method to their daily lives. I therefore recommend that you have a look at Chapter 1 of the book “Classic Pacing for a better life with ME” which can be found here, or the article “Pacing” which can be read here also.
Copyright © Ingebjørg Midsem Dahl 2018
