While having CFS can be a pain to live with but, truthfully, if there’s one thing I hate more than anything about it, surprisingly, is it’s name.

Chronic Fatigue, in ways, is pretty self explanatory. No one really has to ask what it means as it’s a pretty simple name. But this comes with downsides. Because people think it just tiredness all the time, they don’t understand everything that comes along with it.

Everyone gets tired. Teenagers can get particularly tired due to all the changes we experience and on top of that we have ridiculous school times along with homework on top of that. So saying you have Chronic Fatigue to another teenager can almost feel embarrassing as you are aware they too are probably extremely tried. But what I end up having to remind myself is while everyone else is tired, they will still be able to physical activities without extreme discomfort or pain and continue the next day like usual.

With Chronic Fatigue, it isn’t like that.

With chronic Fatigue, you can’t build up stamina the way a normal person could. You’re stuck with only being able to walk the same distance while you are ill, which may decrease rather than improve when trying to build up stamina.

With Chronic Fatigue, doing exercise first thing in the morning leaves you extremely brain fogged for the day meaning you use the wrong words in speech, takes longer to process things leaving you confused and not being able to think straight leaving you unable to do simple things that you could usually do.

With Chronic Fatigue, it’s standing for a few minutes before you get pain which makes you feel almost unable to breath. And even after sitting down, the pain lingers on.

With Chronic Fatigue, it’s defining your priorities so damn straight because unlike most people who can go out and socialise and do any work when they get back, you can only choose one.

With Chronic Fatigue, it’s going out on a day trip and then being extremely bad for a while. It’s almost like having the flu. Only with Chronic Fatigue, you don’t know if it’s only going to be a couple of days, a couple of weeks or a couple of months.

So the reason I hate the name Chronic Fatigue is because people only think it’s just being ‘tired.’ And there’s so much more to it than being just tired.



This post is mainly based on what I personally have experienced with CFS as the symptoms vary from person to person and it can also be the same for ME, which is known as the illness where “you’re tired all the time.”

You can find this post over on my personal blog: https://understandinglouie.wordpress.com/

Published by Lucy Channing