Flat emotion— fatigue or depression

[SickOfSickness]

I'm so sorry your son is having these issues.

I wonder if by any chance he could do some small bits of drawing? If you encouraged him to just do that a couple minutes daily, maybe that would give some insight. At first, of course, it might not tell you much but if he got comfortable doing it, it could really change over time. Just a thought.

The basic first things which you may have already considered a lot would be: Is there any chance that something has changed in his environment, diet, supplements, or medications prior to the change? Maybe a quite a bit prior? Or anything traumatic or upsetting that didn't cause depression but caused a sort of fear/trauma withdrawal.

 

[Hope_eternal]

[

I'm so sorry your son is having these issues.

I wonder if by any chance he could do some small bits of drawing? If you encouraged him to just do that a couple minutes daily, maybe that would give some insight. At first, of course, it might not tell you much but if he got comfortable doing it, it could really change over time. Just a thought.

The basic first things which you may have already considered a lot would be: Is there any chance that something has changed in his environment, diet, supplements, or medications prior to the change? Maybe a quite a bit prior? Or anything traumatic or upsetting that didn't cause depression but caused a sort of fear/trauma withdrawal.

Thank you. He’s never really been art inclined unfortunately. Honestly he’s not the easiest to
persuade in to trying new things. There’s so much I’ve suggested but goes to deaf ears. That is a really nice idea. I wish I could get him to do things like that.

There are some things that have changed. We’ve tried new supplements and taken some away. I think one we took away, we need to add back in. It helped some with the flat emotion, I think. We meet with his doctor Monday to go over treatment.

I appreciate your note.

 

[Lena9701]

I had to chuckle a little bit about your caregiver getting the message you are willing them out of the room. I definitely get that message loud and clear with my son. It’s so difficult because I just want to shower him with care and love. I hate this for him. But I know it’s too hard on him to have us around. It takes too much out of him.

Thank you for your note — it truly resonated with me. I hope for you much healing and renewed energy ❤️‍🩹

I am sure your love and care is helping him immensely! (If it helps at all to hear it from someone who has been in a similar-ish position) I know my mum's taking care of me was holding me together when I was at my worst even when I was expressing myself only with leave me alone vibes.

Wishing all the very best to you and your son as well

 

[Hope_eternal]

I am sure your love and care is helping him immensely! (If it helps at all to hear it from someone who has been in a similar-ish position) I know my mum's taking care of me was holding me together when I was at my worst even when I was expressing myself only with leave me alone vibes.

Wishing all the very best to you and your son as well

Thank you 🙏

 

[GreenEdge]

I’m concerned. It’s so hard as a caretaker to gauge what is going on. My son has just not been the same since the end of Dec when we took an out of town doctor trip.,He’s been so much more fatigued and his mood is very flat. No emotion, won’t look me in the eye. I ask him regularly if he’s feeling down, depressed, irritated etc but he responds no (by a slow barely noticeable head shake). I ask him if his flat expressionless demeanor is due to fatigue and he shrugs a barely noticeable shoulder shrug. This has been going on for months to varying degrees. He remains in the bed for 23 1/2 hrs a day. Nothing we have tried seems to make things better for him. Before December we would get glimmers of his old self where he’d engage in conversation and laugh with us at least a couple times a month. He hasn’t done that in 4 months., Can anyone shed some insight as to what may be going on? Maybe this is completely normal in chronic fatigue sufferers. I can imagine lack of energy would make your emotions flat. It’s so hard to see him like this. I hope he’s ok mentally. He says he is but he sure doesn’t look like it. 😭

Me too, like I'm getting dementia. This has only happened in last few years and I've had me/cfs for 29 years. I wonder if it's been caused by covid-19 vaccine?

My movement is affected. I've found crawling helps activate muscles I didn't know I had. I'm now crawling as a form of exercise to retrain my central nervous system. The more I do, the better I get.

Crawling is a reset for our central nervous system: it helps to restore our central nervous system, lower stress levels, and allows for quicker recovery time from an intense training program and/or the demands of our daily activities.

 

[Scarlett*54]

I’m concerned. It’s so hard as a caretaker to gauge what is going on. My son has just not been the same since the end of Dec when we took an out of town doctor trip.,He’s been so much more fatigued and his mood is very flat. No emotion, won’t look me in the eye. I ask him regularly if he’s feeling down, depressed, irritated etc but he responds no (by a slow barely noticeable head shake). I ask him if his flat expressionless demeanor is due to fatigue and he shrugs a barely noticeable shoulder shrug. This has been going on for months to varying degrees. He remains in the bed for 23 1/2 hrs a day. Nothing we have tried seems to make things better for him. Before December we would get glimmers of his old self where he’d engage in conversation and laugh with us at least a couple times a month. He hasn’t done that in 4 months., Can anyone shed some insight as to what may be going on? Maybe this is completely normal in chronic fatigue sufferers. I can imagine lack of energy would make your emotions flat. It’s so hard to see him like this. I hope he’s ok mentally. He says he is but he sure doesn’t look like it. 😭

Dear Hope_eternal,
I am so sorry for what you and your son are going through. I have suffered from CFS & fibromyalgia for many years. Also depression. I found that certain antidepressants did get me thru the hard times & enabled me to work (because I had to work). Please know that I am not trying to pry but this sounds serious; is your son willing to see a doctor for both physical & mental health check up?

 

[ruben]

The thing is that when you're physically not feeling 100%, one of the first changes to happen will be simply you talk less. You can't be the "life and soul" when you have this condition.

 

[Hope_eternal]

Me too, like I'm getting dementia. This has only happened in last few years and I've had me/cfs for 29 years. I wonder if it's been caused by covid-19 vaccine?

My movement is affected. I've found crawling helps activate muscles I didn't know I had. I'm now crawling as a form of exercise to retrain my central nervous system. The more I do, the better I get.

I’m sorry you are experiencing this. I think there is a lot we don’t know about the vaccine and how it has affected many people. Causing all sorts of mysterious symptoms. I don’t like to even think about it. I hope you are able to find something that helps the dementia symptoms. Maybe a functional doctor can help?

That’s very interesting to hear about how crawling is helpful to the nervous system. I’ll need to
Look more into that. That’s really great you are getting great benefits from it. Thanks for sharing!.

 

[Hope_eternal]

Dear Hope_eternal,
I am so sorry for what you and your son are going through. I have suffered from CFS & fibromyalgia for many years. Also depression. I found that certain antidepressants did get me thru the hard times & enabled me to work (because I had to work). Please know that I am not trying to pry but this sounds serious; is your son willing to see a doctor for both physical & mental health check up?

Thank you for your concern. I appreciate your note. He’s on depression medication and is seen by a psychiatrist . Actually the last couple days he’s been acting better. I think he was in a crashed state before. He’s been smiling and quietly laughing and more responsive so I suppose it was his energy was super low for a few weeks. Ug this illness is brutal. I get so worried.

 

[Scarlett*54]

Thank you for your concern. I appreciate your note. He’s on depression medication and is seen by a psychiatrist . Actually the last couple days he’s been acting better. I think he was in a crashed state before. He’s been smiling and quietly laughing and more responsive so I suppose it was his energy was super low for a few weeks. Ug this illness is brutal. I get so worried.

I'm so glad he's doing a bit better. And glad he has a mother like you to help him thru. Happy Mother's Day to you!

 

[Rufous McKinney]

I've found crawling helps activate muscles I didn't know I had. I'm now crawling as a form of exercise to retrain my central nervous system. The more I do, the better I get.

really interesting comment....worth considering further.

They say if children do not crawl, they can have more developmental problems. My daughter skipped crawling all together and both my grandaughters hardly crawled, either. They have no problems.

Now my grandaughters play "cat" and go Meow Meow and are playing this game crawling around.

And do you use knee pads?

 

[Dysfunkion]

Thank you for your concern. I appreciate your note. He’s on depression medication and is seen by a psychiatrist . Actually the last couple days he’s been acting better. I think he was in a crashed state before. He’s been smiling and quietly laughing and more responsive so I suppose it was his energy was super low for a few weeks. Ug this illness is brutal. I get so worried.

They likely were and I know how scary it can look from the outside from concerned family members and such. I can relate to the initial story though because I see myself in it. I'd say from those responses you got from him that he was so fatigued that his body and mind barely had the energy to even respond and was having a lot of internal negative emotions too. They probably didn't want to worry you and say anything was so wrong and plus those states are very difficult to describe too, they almost feel like a state of paralysis. I also try my best to say I'm alright when I'm around someone who wants to see me better but I simply can't perform the whole human role at the time even if it's written all over my face that nothing is alright. They just wouldn't get it, there's nothing they can do, and I don't want to bring anyone else down with my misery. I just can't help but look disturbingly blank, melancholic, and stiff. If I catch myself in the mirror I even notice it myself and it looks unsettling.

States like that with me are usually triggered when my immune system is going haywire from exposure to something and my guts are usually acting up too when it happens. I have fluctuations throughout the day in my energy levels but on a normal day I'll just appear during those hours a bit more slow and less responsive. If I keep on my supplement stack as usual, keep my diet in line enough, and aren't exposed to any hair sprays/perfumes/too many cleaners/ect then I can usually be pretty stable. I suspect based on my experiences and how I'm aware of what is happening but have no control is it's like some multi system problem where a dysregulation in one area causes a massive drop in neurotransmitters or something for a long period of time (just horribly theorizing, this is what it feels like though. total depletion while something else is out of control). Normally when they're triggered they can last an entire day and then some. I can also get it from from specific sensory events like getting my hair shaved after a long time of not cutting it, rapid temperature shifts, and being disturbed when I need space (getting ripped from one situation to another very rapidly can also cause this and being in a resting state and suddenly getting jolted into a longer term high energy situation is by far the worst).

 

[GreenEdge]

really interesting comment....worth considering further.

They say if children do not crawl, they can have more developmental problems. My daughter skipped crawling all together and both my grandaughters hardly crawled, either. They have no problems.

Now my grandaughters play "cat" and go Meow Meow and are playing this game crawling around.

And do you use knee pads?

I did buy knee pads, but I returned them because they changed how I crawled.

I think it needs to be 100% natural since we just want to reinforce the original programming from learning to crawl. I decided that a piece of duct tape was all I needed to protect knees. It's now getting colder here, so I just wear jeans.

 

[Rufous McKinney]

Duct tape plus jeans!

I am now wondering if crawling is even possible...(?) Getting down the floor is doable but getting back up again, far less so.....

and the missing fat pads, missing muscle, etc...ouch

 

[Mary]

@Hope_eternal - are your son's electrolyte levels checked periodically? When my phosphorous is low, it puts me in a low mood which nothing will touch, plus makes me very tired, until my levels get back up. I discovered issues with low phosphorous after starting to take B1, which helped a lot with energy and then caused my phosphorous to tank due to refeeding syndrome. (see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2440847/ )

A similar thing happened with starting methylfolate which caused my potassium to tank, refeeding syndrome again. It seems that people w.ith ME/CFS are prone to refeeding syndrome.

I regulate all this myself, taking supplements primarily by symptoms.

Here are a couple of interesting links about hypophosphatemia and ME/CFS:

https://www.jclinmedcasereports.com/articles/OJCMCR-1963.pdf
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9683977/

This is a shot in the dark - it just popped into my head how I felt when my phosphorous was low. Refeeding syndrome generally affects people who have been starving, anorexic, severely malnourished. But many people here have experienced it, particularly with methylation and potassium. And some have had issues with phosphorous too. I think our bodies have trouble absorbing the nutrients we need.

 

[Hope_eternal]

@Hope_eternal - are your son's electrolyte levels checked periodically? When my phosphorous is low, it puts me in a low mood which nothing will touch, plus makes me very tired, until my levels get back up. I discovered issues with low phosphorous after starting to take B1, which helped a lot with energy and then caused my phosphorous to tank due to refeeding syndrome. (see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2440847/ )

A similar thing happened with starting methylfolate which caused my potassium to tank, refeeding syndrome again. It seems that people w.ith ME/CFS are prone to refeeding syndrome.

I regulate all this myself, taking supplements primarily by symptoms.

Here are a couple of interesting links about hypophosphatemia and ME/CFS:

https://www.jclinmedcasereports.com/articles/OJCMCR-1963.pdf
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9683977/

This is a shot in the dark - it just popped into my head how I felt when my phosphorous was low. Refeeding syndrome generally affects people who have been starving, anorexic, severely malnourished. But many people here have experienced it, particularly with methylation and potassium. And some have had issues with phosphorous too. I think our bodies have trouble absorbing the nutrients we need.

Thank you for this. I’m struggling right now myself with exhaustion but will read the links once I gain my strength back, I appreciate you sharing this.