By Chiu Lau, Psychologist & Founder of Possibilities Psychological Services
Before I was diagnosed with ME/CFS, I was told by well-intentioned people, friends, personal trainers, even doctors, that exercise was the solution to my “tiredness.” If I just tried my best to be “healthier”, they said, I would get fitter, stronger, less tired all the time. Said the Muay Thai instructor as I clutched my chest while dry retching “Don’t stop just because it hurts. Pain is part of getting better.”
I believed them. Why would I not? That is the message we get as a society.
Working out = good. Discomfort means you’re getting stronger. So, I followed their advice. I pushed through my body’s protests and treated exhaustion as a weakness to be overcome. Instead of improving, however, my health unravelled. Symptoms worsened, flare-ups came more often, and recovery took longer and longer each time. What was framed as discipline and resilience was actually accelerating my illness. My doctor said “you give up too easily” shaking his head in disappointment. The personal trainer laughed “you’ll never succeed with that attitude”.
What my body needed was not more exercise. It needed rest, the kind of rest that runs counter to everything we are taught in a culture obsessed with productivity and grit.
The Cost of Pushing Through
For people living with ME/CFS and Long COVID, pushing beyond physical limits does not build strength. It often triggers a phenomenon called post-exertional malaise (PEM). Unlike ordinary fatigue after exertion, PEM is a delayed and disproportionate worsening of symptoms that can last days, weeks, or even longer.
The cruel paradox is that while exercise is widely prescribed for many conditions, in illnesses marked by impaired energy production, exercise can cause harm. Well-meaning encouragement to “just do a bit more” may feel motivating in the short term, but it risks trapping patients like us in cycles of overexertion and collapse.
This is why graded exercise therapy (GET), once standard advice, was formally withdrawn from the UK’s NICE guidelines for ME/CFS in 2021. Patient advocacy organisations, including the ME Association and Long COVID advocacy groups, continue to warn against one-size-fits-all exercise prescriptions.
Living Within the Energy Envelope
One of the most important tools for people with energy-limiting conditions is the energy envelope model. Think of it as a battery that does not last very long, doesn’t recharge properly and sometimes shuts down despite being at 30%. Bodies without mitochondrial disorders can drain their battery during the day and restore it overnight. For people with ME/CFS or Long COVID, the battery is smaller, less stable, and never fully recharges. Kinda like iPhone batteries (Just kidding. Please don’t dox me).
Living within the energy envelope means pacing activity to avoid overdrawing from reserves. And ‘activity’ or ‘exertion’ doesn’t just mean doing physically intensive tasks such as ploughing the fields, running a marathon or bathing your cat. For many of us, ‘exertion’ includes brushing teeth, eating toast, remaining upright, exposure to lights, smells and sounds. Instead of pushing until we crash, we should aim to balance exertion with rest so that the body can maintain (a fragile) stability. For us, exceeding this envelope does not build capacity. It shrinks it further. It increases illness severity.
What Radical Rest Looks Like
If pacing is about balance, radical rest is about leaning fully into the body’s need for recovery. It means recognising that rest is not passive or indulgent, but a prescription for survival.
For me, radical rest meant lying down at scheduled intervals throughout the day even when I felt I could keep going. It meant closing my eyes in silence between tasks while putting my legs up against the wall, recharging my battery before activities instead of only after, and allowing my nervous system regular decompression breaks from constant sensory stimulation. It also meant letting go of internalised pressure to prove I was still productive or capable in the old sense.
Radical rest does not mean abandoning movement altogether. Gentle stretching, mindful breathing, or restorative somatic-based practices may still have a place depending on your body’s capacity. The difference is that activity is approached with caution, attunement, and respect for your body’s limits, not with the mindset of pushing through.
Challenging Cultural Narratives About Rest
Rest has a branding problem. We are taught from childhood that rest is laziness, that pain equals progress, that stopping is weakness. These messages are deeply ingrained in corporate hustle, self development circles, fitness culture, and even in our own self-talk. For people with chronic illness, internalising these narratives can be devastating. Nonetheless we push through, in order to convince people around us, even ourselves, that we are worthy, that we’re not lazy.
As psychologist Devon Price writes in Laziness Does Not Exist:
“If a person’s behavior doesn’t make sense to you, it is because you are missing a part of their context. It’s that simple.”
This insight applies powerfully to chronic illness. What looks like “not trying” from the outside is often a carefully calibrated act of self-preservation. Radical rest asks us to reframe. Instead of seeing rest as giving up, we could see it as an act of resistance. Resistance to ableism, to hustle culture, to the demand that our bodies perform at all costs. Rest becomes an act of self-compassion and, for many, the foundation of any possibility of healing.
However, we must also acknowledge that rest (radical or not) is out of reach for many eg. single parents, carers, and those juggling multiple responsibilities may not have the luxury to stop when their body needs them to. This is why radical rest is not just a personal practice but also a collective call to reimagine systems that make rest accessible and safe for everyone.
A Wider Invitation
While radical rest is a lifeline for those with ME/CFS and Long COVID, its lessons resonate more broadly. Burnout, perfectionism, and the cult of busyness are not unique to chronic illness. Many people push past their limits daily, ignoring the body’s signals until it forces a reckoning.
What might change if we collectively valued rest as much as effort? If workplaces respected rhythms instead of enforcing constant output? If we listened to our bodies not as machines to optimise but as ecosystems to nurture? What might change if collectively we returned to the traditional wisdom of our respective ancestors that prioritied health, balance and harmony?
Radical rest does not offer a quick fix. But it does offer a respectful, more sustainable way of being in the world, one that honours our body, rather than silencing it.
Closing
When I look back on the advice I was given, to push harder and keep going no matter what, I can see how deeply it was shaped by cultural myths about strength, self worth and resilience. For people with ME/CFS and Long COVID however, that kind of advice is not just unhelpful. It is very harmful.
If we can rewrite the story of rest – from laziness to survival, from weakness to wisdom – we open the door to a kinder, more sustainable society.
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Chiu Lau is a neurodivergent Psychologist with an invisible disability. She is also the founder of Possibilities Psychological Services, an Australia-wide online therapy provider. Since 2003, Chiu has developed expertise in the management of mental health, trauma, invisible disabilities, neurodivergence (including autism, ADHD, PDA, learning & intellectual disabilities), rare genetic conditions, carer & sibling mental health support, and gender diverse presentations.
Recognising the challenges associated with navigating various intervention and mental health provider options, Chiu invites you to book a complimentary 20-minute discovery call to explore your options and possibilities here.