18 months in and I’m stuck with something I didn’t expect to be the hardest part. It’s not the PEM itself - I get that now, I can pace around it most days. ngl It’s that after 8 months of my primary care doc telling me my fatigue was anxiety, my neurologist’s PA saying my symptoms were stress related, I’ve lost the ability to trust what my body is actually telling me. Last week I hit what felt like a real crash; 3-day window, couldn’t think straight, orthostatic stuff was bad. But then I thought: am I actually crashing, or have I just been told my symptoms aren’t real so many times that I’m catastrophizing a normal bad day? How do I know the difference anymore? It’s like the gaslighting rewired something. Now even when I CAN read my body clearly, there’s this voice saying but what if you’re wrong, what if it’s just anxiety again. And that voice is making the crashes worse because I’m second-guessing whether to rest or push through. Has anyone else dealt with this? Not the crashes themselves, but the doubt that came after being told you were making it up. How did you rebuild that trust in your own experience?