Hellish couple of weeks with a nice bit in the middle

I've been having symptoms again. A couple of weeks ago I had symptoms because I was doing too much mental activity and not enough physical.

I also had a flare up of symptoms around a conflict that occured on a webgroup that I am a member of. I had mental fatigue and some physical fatigue and twitching muslces, which I haven't had for a very long time. I find it really difficult to know what to do in RT terms when someone gets angry with you. This person thought that RT was a 'con' and that it was like a cult and they were pretty aggresive towards me. They also pretty much said I if RT was helping me then I didn't have ME in the first place. I found this all a bit hard to take and decided to leave that group.

In that situation for RT, I just was assertive in expressing my opinions whilst maintaining respect for the other person. When it reached a point that I was unhappy with, I took myself out of the situation. In the past I might have just moaned about it or even got a bit passive aggressive myself. My symptoms didn't subside until I went away for the weekend.

Now for the nice bit in the middle... on the morning I was going away I had no symptoms and I only had symptoms once after driving for one and a half hours (in chunks) and on the way home as my bloke was driving my car in fog and I was getting nervous (he's a good driver...honest!). Ther rest of the time I managed to keep up with all my friends. I walked a lot, stayed up late, drank wine, talked loads, played games with the kids etc etc. I would have found it difficult being away with so many people (7 adults, 2 kids) up until now and I'm really happy that I can do that kind of stuff again. My legs ached most of the time from walking, but it was a healthy ache rather than an ME ache.

After being away for the weekend, I managed to go to college on the Monday as well as swimming, then on the Tuesday I went to college again. My stamina is getting better by the week now and I can notice a real difference in how much I can do in one day without getting symptoms.

During the week I spoke to a friend who was very upset that I didn't invite her away for the weekend. She is SO angry with me. I tried to talk to her about it, but I ended up making it worse and she put the phone down on me. I was really upset that I had hurt her and didn't know what to do, which ended up causing my symptoms to flare up again. I had about 3 days with symptoms again. I did RT on the symptoms, reading the message, but they didn't go away. I decided to write her a letter, I spoke to another friend about it and I had a good cry, which I think helped because the next day the symptoms had subsided.

I tried to think about what I needed to do to put my needs first and I felt that I needed to express how I felt, so that bit was taken care of with the letter. I needed to allow my feelings to come out, so crying did that bit. I also needed to be reassured that I'm not a really rubbish friend, so talking to another friend fulfilled that bit.

They symptoms had gone yesterday, so I went out for a walk with a friend which was really lovely, then I went out in the evening too. Even a month or 2 ago, I would not have been able to go for a walk and go out in the evening on the same day. I've also been out for a walk today despite staying out til the early hours last night. I'm tired today but not fatigued.