The #1 Thing To Do In A Crash

Today I'm tackling an issue that lands dead smack RIGHT in the center of MECFS; it is called the C-R-A-S-H.

I call them "wobbles" (for reasons we wont go into in this letter), but by whatever name we use, you know precisely what I'm talking about.

You can FEEL it coming on; it's a sudden loss of aliveness... like somebody unplugged your cellular power plant, often paired with an internal feeling of restlessness or vibration, increased sensitivity to noise and light, and of course, an overpowering need to get away from stimulation and power down.

I used to say that it felt like the dementors from Harry Potter had come to suck the life out of me. This disproportionate CRASH in response to the activity or exertion that provoked it, is what of course separates our illness from so many others. PEM is what sets us apart. 

There is a lot of things you can do in a crash to help it pass faster and not hit as hard. There are even ways to approach PEM so that it works for you instead of against you; but those are topics for another day, or a much longer letter. 

So today I just want to address the ONE THING you want to do in a crash; the thing that impacts it more than just about anything.

And here it is: 

If you’re in a crash—or feel one coming on—the # 1 thing to do is to stop feeding the stress loop of the crash. Because what keeps a crash going isn’t just the exertion or trigger that led to it: it’s what begins to happen inside your system once the symptoms start to be activated, overwhelmed and energy systems hit their max. 

So lets' talk about the process of a crash. 

This may not apply to EVERYONE reading this, but several hundred I have spoken to can confirm an experience that goes like this:

---symptoms spike, capacity drops, and it emotions start to run high. In fact, it can feel as if you are getting sucked into a vortex of darkness, with extremely dark thoughts and feelings almost arresting you. And the more you get sucked in, the worse the crash feels. The suction of the crash seems to intensify. 

For me, and for many others I've worked with, there is a feeling of terror inside a crash, of being poisoned and/or a feeling of dying. I would think... "Oh my God - this again. Just how bad is this one going to get? How long will this last? Did I just make myself worse again? Is this going to undo all the progress I've made? Is this my new baseline?" 

And before I even realized it, I was already inside the spiral and circling the drain. 

If you spend a while in the crash.... it is only natural that your mind will have nothing to occupy it in the darkness or quiet. The body is meant to move, and the mind idle without a task is prone to rumination. And so - you start scanning your body for signs that the symptoms are lifting, you start searching for answers, your start trying to make sense of what’s happening to you. Your mind monitors every sensation, analyzes every variable, reaches for control wherever it can find it; usually incessantly and constantly all day long.

And underneath all of that is a message being sent to a nervous system that is already dysregulated: you are not safe.

That message LANDS like a ton of bricks onto your already crash induced state. 

Because in a nueroimmune illness, the systems that maintain homeostasis are already hypersensitive, and as a result, that internal urgency amplifies what is already there, adding fuel to a fire that was already burning. As a result, what might have been a shorter crash wave becomes something that lingers far longer than it needed to.

Most people don’t realize this is happening. I know that I absolutely didn’t, for a very, very long time. I thought I was doing everything right. I tracked symptoms religiously, I researched, I adjusted my activity and I tried to fix things with drugs and supplements. They were done with recovery in mind, but the problem was - my system was registering something very different than recovery: all it heard was - urgency, alarm, and threat.

All of this being said, there is a secondary clarification point that needs to be made: how we respond to crashes has NOTHING to do with your thoughts creating your illness. This is not about “thinking your way out” of ME/CFS. What’s happening in a crash is deeply physiological—your nervous system, your immune signaling, your energy systems, all of it is involved. It's just that as a result, how you meet yourself inside that moment can impact the crash, too. 

Not because you can override the biology, but because you can change the signals being sent into a system that is already overwhelmed. When you soften the internal response—when you reduce the urgency, even slightly....you begin to shift the environment your body is operating in.

The magic of this particular tool (not the entire recovery roadmap by any means but a very important aspect of it)...is that it begins to teach your system a different pattern. One that is not rooted in constant alarm, but in safety. One that doesn’t escalate the spiral, but gently interrupts it. And that shift—subtle as it may feel—can begin to reduce the very sensitivity that contributes to crashes in the first place.

I created the program I now teach while I was still sick. It didn’t have the language or clearly defined pillars it has now, but it was already there in essence. It was the program that didn’t exist when I needed it—the one I wish I had, and the one I had to build myself to fill in the gaps that were left behind.

And during that time, I created something else, too.

A simple, self-guided meditation for when I was in a crash, which I now call the Wobble Meditation. I didn’t create it to fix everything. I created it because I needed a way to interrupt the loop—to meet my body differently in those moments when everything felt like it was unraveling. And once I got well, it was the first thing I chose to share.

Years later, it still amazes me how often I hear from people that this simple shift—this softening—helped soothe their system, helped shorten their crashes, and helped them feel just a little more grounded in the middle of it. It’s remained one of the most loved tools I’ve ever created.

Hope it brings whoever is reading this, some peace.