so this is embarrassing to admit given my background, but it took me a year and a half to actually understand that my crashes aren’t from what i did today. the delay is 36-48 hours. sometimes longer. i knew this about PEM academically.
i taught it. but when i was living it, i kept connecting the crash to the wrong day’s activity because that’s just how brains work, we look for the nearest cause. month three through month nine, my log was a mess because i was trying to figure out what tuesday’s activity level did to tuesday’s symptoms. nothing made sense.
some light days i still crashed. some days where i definitely overdid it, i felt okay, which made me think maybe i was getting better. i wasn’t getting better. i was just confused about timing.
what cracked it open was going back through my log and shifting everything forward two days. suddenly the pattern got tighter. the week i walked two extra blocks and felt fine about it - i crashed thursday, not tuesday. the sunday i went to a family lunch - i was on the floor by tuesday evening.
once i understood the actual window, pacing got harder, not easier. because now i have to make decisions about today based on how i feel from two days ago, which means staying inside my limits on a day that genuinely feels okay. that’s a different cognitive ask than just stopping when you feel tired. and it messes with the log too, because you have to hold the right comparison in your head while you’re already dealing with brain fog.
anyone else figure out their PEM delay late, and how did it change how you track?