I created this site having lived for over three years with a combination of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS, also known as Myalgic Encephalomyelitis or ME) and Long Covid (also sometimes called Long Haul Covid or Post-Covid Syndrome). I’m not fully out of the woods yet, but I’ve emerged from the darkest, scariest parts. Only a few long months ago, I was completely housebound. Now I’m moving back into the world and starting to rebuild my life. Woohoo!
I’m also a clinical psychologist. My training in this field has been really helpful in my recovery journey. I’m aware that most people living with CFS, Long Covid and other fatigue-related conditions don’t have access to many of the insights and practices that come with doing a doctorate in psychology. To make things even harder, mental fatigue and brain fog can make doing your own research impossible while you are in the thick of illness.
With all of this in mind, I wanted to create this site to share short, digestible insights and practices from psychology and beyond. My hope is that if you are trying to navigate the maze of recovery from CFS, Long Covid or another fatigue-related condition, the ideas I share here will be as valuable to you as they have been to me.
psychologist, eh?
i hope you aren’t going to tell me my condition is all in my head!
I completely get this concern. Mainstream medicine does not understand CFS and Long Covid well at all. Perversely, because research has not found biological markers of these conditions in the body, many people have cast doubt on the reality of the physical symptoms sufferers experience. People living with CFS have historically been gaslit and stigmatised. One unexpected consequence of the pandemic has been that awareness of the brutal reality of living with these conditions has started to grow with the wave of people experiencing chronic symptoms after being infected with Covid-19.
The symptoms of CFS and Long Covid are clearly not “in your head”. However, as you’ve probably noticed, your brain is in your body! What happens in the body impacts the mind. And, make no mistake, what happens in the mind influences the body, too. This mind-body connection gives us powerful knowledge to work with our body (bottom-up) and mind (top-down) to aid our recovery. Working with our minds to cultivate acceptance and self-compassion, and with our bodies to create safety, can be profoundly healing.
what i am offering
Firstly, honesty. If you are living with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Long Covid or a similar condition, you’ve likely already had your hopes for a miracle cure raised and dashed several times. I’m not going to make any such claims here. If there was a magic pill or treatment, you would have heard about it by now. The reality of recovery as I have experienced it, as well as what I have learned from others, is that it is usually gradual, often painstakingly so, and rarely linear.
Secondly, hope. While recovery from CFS and Long Covid can feel a lot like trying to navigate an unreasonably difficult maze, with many dead-ends and what feel like backward steps, it is possible. Just because these and other fatigue related conditions are poorly understood and affect people in diverse ways, this does not mean that recovery is impossible. One of the most insidious aspects of living with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Long Covid is struggling with this doubt, which is sadly often fuelled by medical professionals. My sense is that when we internalise such limiting beliefs, they can become self-fulfilling, due to the mind-body connection and the actions we take (and don’t take) as a result of them.
Thirdly, humility. Everything I share on this site is a humble offering. Because CFS and Long Covid are poorly understood, what I share here is hypothetical. You are encouraged to experiment with these ideas and decide for yourself whether they are worth holding onto. My aim is not merely to share things I think are useful for recovery, but also to explain why I think they are, based on scientific knowledge as much as possible. For me, this understanding is crucial, since it allows us to build something called a sense of coherence. This concept has been linked to better health outcomes, and I will post more about it.
Finally, free content. I do not want to profit from your suffering. All things going well, I will be returning to work in the UK’s National Health Service (NHS), starting a new role in a Post-Covid Assessment and Support Service before long. I know from personal experience how living with CFS and Long Covid can put a major strain on your finances, due to not being able to work and/or paying for various treatments and therapies. I don’t want to ask you to fork out for insights and practices that everyone should be able to access. I was lucky enough to be paid to train as a psychologist in the NHS and I believe in an idea put forth by an American psychologist called George Miller back in 1969. He said that we as a profession should “give psychology away” for free so that the general public can benefit, rather than holding on to specialised knowledge in order to safeguard our status as experts.
I really hope that The Fatigue Psychologist is helpful to you or someone you are supporting. If you do find it useful, please share it with anyone else you think may benefit.
