Loving Someone With Energy Illness Means You Can't Fix Everything

There is a time and place for fixing problems. And then there is a time and place for acceptance and love despite problems. 

The average healthy person tends to value the ability to always fix problems and improve their life. They regularly ask themselves how they can be better to improve their happiness, life satisfaction, and relationships. 

The average healthy person has a full time job in which they are required to hone their skills, envision ways to be better at their work, and learn new methods. Working on self-betterment to be able to stay relevant, compete, and earn promotions is expected in a good professional. 

Human nature is competitive. It's meant to be healthy. It's meant to challenge us to do better and evolve. 

What happens when a person becomes sick with an energy illness that makes them unable to participate in self-betterment and healthy competition? 

Well, most people assume they are lazy. Laziness, being defined as the lack of interest in participating in responsibilities. Laziness is a real problem in the world, but it's usually due some other underlying problem. People aren't naturally lazy, but they can feel so bored, underwhelmed, useless, and meaningless that they lose interest in doing responsibilities. That's an entirely different problem to physical illness. 

What happens to the person with an energy illness (CFS/ME, POTS, Endometriosis, Fibromyalgia, chronic poisoning, certain types of cancer, etc) is that they don't lose the desire to manage responsibilities and participate in self-betterment, but instead they lose the ability. They lose the ability to spend energy on anything other than moment-to-moment survival. Simply just staying alive. This becomes a major source of frustration. 

Other people, who don't understand their illness, can increase their frustrations by doing one specific thing: Trying to fix their problem of not growing into a better, stronger, more skilled person each day. Telling a person with ME/CFS to get up off their lazy butt and do something to make them feel like a productive human being is the WORST advice they can give. Instead of inspiring them, it drains them and leaves them feeling more sick. 

I can promise you that that the vast majority of people with energy illnesses really do want to fully participate in life. They want to live, not stay in survival mode in bed most days. Telling them to stop taking care of themselves by conserving energy needed to stay alive, and instead spend that energy on doing something to feel productive, actually makes them feel worse. 

If you want to love someone with an energy illness, you need to stay present with them and allow them to feel like they are enough. Allowing them to feel like they are safe with you and you will not drain their limited energy is the most helpful thing you can do. When they feel safe, secure, and loved without conditions, they will not spend their limited energy feeling guilt, shame, and useless. Instead, they might feel inspired to do their best without hurting themselves. Any extra energy they have could be put to use in a healing way. 

If you want to love someone with an energy illness, don't talk about fixing their problems unless they say they can handle it (and be prepared to stop talking as soon as they say they can't talk more about it.) What healthy people don't understand is that making plans and resolving to do something takes a lot of energy. It requires imagining yourself doing it, which is an action that can drain energy for people with energy illnesses. Also, saying a problem needs to be fixed implies that the status-quo can't continue, which is a source of stress for people with energy illnesses. The best thing you can do to love a person with an energy illness is to not bring problems to their attention, unless it's a problem they need to be involved in resolving, and then do it gently. 

Of course these energy illnesses are on a spectrum. ME/CFS has a wide range of severity. Every person will have a different energy level and tolerance. Each person has a different personality too. I think naturally extroverted people who used to thrive on accomplishing things before getting sick have the hardest time with these illnesses. They might not tell you how tired they really feel, and they might ignore how little energy they really have. 

But no matter how severe their illness is, they need to know they're safe to live and act with only the limited amount of energy they have. They need to not be judged for it. They need to feel supported and loved. Remember, they would be participating fully in life if they could. It's not fair, and if you point out to them that you wish they would do and be better, it makes their lives even harder. 

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