Talking / mental fatigue

[Jeff2]

Man, I recognize so many of the symptoms expressed in this thread.

 

[Wishful]

I've noticed one additional side-effect of CFS: I've avoided socialization for so long that my vocal cord endurance is very limited. I was talking to a friend recently, and found that my voice started failing after not very long. The PEM after that wasn't too bad, but has been at other times.

 

[otterjack]

I have that too, the stamina of my vocal cords seems to have faded over the years. If I'm forced to talk for too long, my voice gives out and I become hoarse.

It's something that non ME people really don't understand.

 

[sleepingbeautyxxx]

I feel the same. My first symptoms definitely were sluggishness, fatigue and brain fog. I'm still going to school full and it's exhausting me extremely. In my worst times my body started aching from thinking to hard and I got light headaches from just trying to concentrate.

I can do a little bit of exercise here and there and it won't affect me much. I can clean my room and do chores in the household and it won't affect me much. But if I'm 7 hours a day in school with all that noise, I'm drained and get achy or get mild headaches. I realized that especially language classes are horrible (at least french) since its already hard to make up nice sentences in your first language, let alone a foreign one.

I also used to get dizzy if I talked to much whereas I didn't when I was doing sports.

I think for some people mental work or noise might just be more exhausting, especially if you're highly sensitive which I am.

Tell the people that don't understand that mental work can just be as much stress, if not more, than physical work. Therefore you can do some physical things without immediately getting worse.

 

[6666]

I talk very little with people each day because of this...so restrictive!

 

[otterjack]

Had an issue with a friend the the other day. She didn't understand why I couldn't talk to her on the phone for "a few minutes" even though a couple of days earlier I'd "gone into town" which she thought would be more stressful. Clearly didn't grasp that the condition changes from day to day, and also that having to shift the brain into gear and engage is stressful...

 

[skiesareclearing]

I know this is not a new topic. Too mentally fatigued/overstimulated to do search. Does anyone else feel most worse just when trying to talk (especially while sitting upright), process images, compose a paragraph than doing menial physical tasks?

It is not just the brain fog but complete meltdown, agitation, achy feeling, complete overstimulation and mental fatigue. Golstein once wrote of a patient that had to quit school because of mental fatigue but could still run the marathon. This greatly exagerates my condition as physical fatigue and OI are disabling. But it often easier for me to do some laundry, wash dishes, or walk around block and sometimes even more than just have a normal conversation or process images, etc. i don't know how a healthy person can understand this and I still have to try and describe it to family, doctors, disability.

In terms of treatment i've gotten limited help from Goldstein's ideas, nitroglycerin (very temorary) and nimodipine (not consistent response and expensive). Not sure what response I am looking for just tired of symptoms and having to keel describing them to famiky, doctors and disability.

It is a relief to have found this thread. NO ONE understands my inability to have a conversation. I tell people it is less tiring for me to walk 10 minutes (and these days that's a lot) than to talk 10 minutes. I hate to tell people--but it's true--that listening is even more tiring than talking. This has been going on from the very early days of being ill (and that's going back decades)-- having to ask people at a small dinner party to please keep their voices down! not being able to go into restaurants, etc. The only wee bit of comfort I found was when I saw in a Chinese medicine book a description of some condition and one of the symptoms was "reluctance to speak." For the first time I didn't feel alone in the world. Unfortunately, I have no help to offer. I avoid the phone, I am VERY careful about who I do speak to if I can help it (obviously sometimes you're forced to speak to someone who feels bad to you). I think a lot of this has to do with how the body's protective boundary mechanisms deteriorate with illness and with ongoing emotional stress. In psychic terms, the aura gets blown. But it's both physical and energetic. Over the years it's put me in a very self-protective stance toward the world. And it's been extremely isolating.

 

[skiesareclearing]

Had an issue with a friend the the other day. She didn't understand why I couldn't talk to her on the phone for "a few minutes" even though a couple of days earlier I'd "gone into town" which she thought would be more stressful. Clearly didn't grasp that the condition changes from day to day, and also that having to shift the brain into gear and engage is stressful...

People don't get how much energy the brain uses. Only those of us living on the edge feel it.

 

[skiesareclearing]

I've noticed one additional side-effect of CFS: I've avoided socialization for so long that my vocal cord endurance is very limited. I was talking to a friend recently, and found that my voice started failing after not very long. The PEM after that wasn't too bad, but has been at other times.

What's PEM?

 

[Wishful]

PEM is post-exertional malaise: worsened ME symptoms following physical or cerebral exertion, and is the defining symptom of ME. For me, physically-induced PEM has a consistent 24-hr delay, while the cerebral (such as from socializing) has a more variable delay of a few hours.

I understand what a relief it is to read that other people have similar experiences, especially after suffering years of wondering what's wrong with me and wondering if I was the only person with this disorder. Once I figured out that I might actually have ME, and started reading this forum, things began to make sense.

It might help if you tell your skeptics that there are other people with ME who have the same problem with talking that you do, and that it's a known neurochemically-induced disorder. We don't yet know which neurochemicals are involved, but it is chemical rather than psychological.

Wait. Telling people about it would induce PEM. Print up a nice card with the explanation on it instead.