As part of disability awareness month, I have been sharing some strategies for management of chronic conditions. These strategies are also beneficial when healing from trauma. The strategy I am going to touch on today is one I struggle with and am working on, it’s called pacing.
What is Pacing?
Pacing is the idea of spreading out tasks (especially those that take a lot of your energy) across a span of time. Often because of the culture we live in, we are constantly on the move and feel guilty or lazy for not keeping up with the “norm”. However, when you have a chronic illness/disability this will often put you in a symptom flare or prevent you from doing other things. The goal of pacing is to allow you to do tasks you need to do, but prevent symptom flare ups.
How to Implement This Strategy
If you do this as intended, pacing will look different for every person. That is because it is based on your routine, required tasks, and symptom management needs.
I recently worked with one of my doctors at the Cleveland Clinic on developing a pacing schedule that works for me. Here are the steps we went through:
- Analyze my daily routine (what is required each day)
- Determine parts of my routine that are causing symptom flares
- Determine length of time before tiring
- Start adding pauses at about 1/3 of that time/distance
- Continued analysis and tweaks as needed
Actual Implementation of Pacing
I have done a good job of the first few steps. I also do a great job generally of pacing in my personal life. However,I struggle with pacing at work. In my line of work there is often not an opportunity to insert a break. Everyone needs me and it is incredibly fast paced. I also feel more guilty and lazy trying to implement this at work.
To end: some reminders my doctor gave me that I hope will help you too.
- You are worthy of small breaks
- You cannot adequately show up if your cup is on empty
- If taking a break naturally doesn’t work for you, try scheduling breaks on your calendar.
- Speed isn’t everything!
- This will help you do a better job and feel better doing it
You can do it! If others don’t understand, it’s okay. You have to do what is best for your body and mind.
