When It’s All Too Much

Living with a chronic illness—especially one presenting as fatigue—is like having an old iPhone.

This simile came to me when, in 2024, I took my four year old iPhone to this amazing tech fixing store. I told the owner that it still had all its original parts, it looked perfectly fine on the outside, but it just didn’t seem to hold the charge it used to. It needed more plug-time to do what it used to do with just one charge. This led me to start carrying an extra battery pack with me, or a charger and plug. The owner opened up my iPhone’s battery status and showed me that at max charge (when the icon says it’s charged 100%), the battery can only power up to 73% of its original capacity.

On the outside, my phone looked like every other phone, but on the inside, it needed a lot more help to get through a single day.

“On the outside, my phone looked like every other phone, but on the inside, it needed a lot more help to get through a single day.”

-Tenay Benes

tenaybenes.com

I got a new battery and all my iPhone problems went away. I wish I could just get a new battery for my body, too. I’m working on it, but until that day comes, here are some strategies I use to manage my limited energy resulting from toxin exposure, medical injury, and the downstream effects of chronic post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Prioritize Activities

I only have a limited amount of energy each day, so I want to use my energy for the most important activities of my day, not necessarily the first activities of my day. I have learned to think through which activities are the most important and to guard my energy until I get to the activities that I most value.

For me, that looks something like this:

• Self-care – My list starts with things for my own welfare that only I can do for myself (like going for a walk, praying while soaking in a tub full of epsom salts and baking soda water, doing something really fun for me, or going to a health appointment). My husband can do many things for me that I don’t have to spend my energy doing (like grocery shopping, cooking, or cleaning) so those are NOT on my priority list. If he can’t do them, I can pay someone to do those things temporarily until either he or I have enough energy to resume them. Why is self-care first? Because everything else flows downstream from how well I care for myself, or not.
• Marriage care – Second on my list is things that only I can do for my marriage. My husband may not need me to be his confidant about an issue at work—that’s something another friend of his could handle—so if I am low on energy and he wants me to be present for him in an issue like that, I tell him my energy is limited and if someone else can help him, to please reach out to them instead. However, if my husband wants to resolve some issue in our marriage or spend time connecting with me, that is something only I can do, so I make that a priority. Why is marriage care second on my list, above—say—parenting? Because if my marriage is sh*t, it’s really hard to co-parent together well, that’s why. And kids feel the stress of conflict between their parents, whether they can verbalize it or not. Thus, I’d rather reduce that unseen-but-certainly-felt stress and also use my marriage connection to refuel both me and my husband (which happens from time to time if we are on top of getting our needs met). I will also note that I’ve learned how to share what kind of interaction I need to have with my husband for my marriage interactions to be filling, not draining. I have put limits on how many and how long extra-deep conversations we have (about time space, or multidimensional spirituality, or the syntropic forces of the universe) to once per week. I have also began requiring more light-hearted conversations and playful interactions together at least once per day.
• Child care – Third on my list is parenting things that only I can do for my kid—and I’m not ashamed that it’s third priority, not top priority. (How many happy moms do you know who do no self-care and have a crappy marriage?) This means mommy special time gets top priority, and lesser things like helping my kid clean her room can be handled by my husband (or she can just have a messy room for a few days). This is also where my husband and I have learned to pick our battles so that we can stay consistent on the battles we have chosen and not get burned out by choosing too many battles to fight with our kid. I also take my kid to appointments in which I can best support her (usually emotional or feminine things), and send her with her dad to the ones in which he can best support her (usually physical things).
• Community care – Fourth in my list are friends and neighbors, who come before caring for my mission for me (see below). You know why? Because if relationships matter less than accomplishing some external goal in my professional life (including in ministry), then I’ve missed the whole point of the examples Yeshu gave 2,000 years ago and the words written by God in scriptures. People are more important than performance, period. My community also has priorities within priorities: my closest relationships come first, followed by people with the greatest need who only I can help and who value the type of help I can offer.
• Mission care – At the way bottom of my list is tending to my mission, whether that’s as a graduate student, as an entrepreneur, or as a provider of ministry services. Of course, I have a list of things I want to accomplish—like publishing books, starting tech companies, and building villages—that’s a mile long and will take longer than my lifetime to complete, but just because my goals are big doesn’t mean they take first place. My prayer has always been, “First to my family, Lord, and then to the world,” meaning that any professional success I have outside of my home has to flow out from the overflow of my personal success in my relationships within myself and inside my home.

“…if relationships matter less than accomplishing some …[professional] goal …then I’ve missed the whole point of …Yeshu …and the …scriptures. People are more important than performance, period.”

-Tenay Benes

Tenaybenes.Com

Practical Strategies

Here are some practical tips on how I put my priorities into action, especially on low energy days:

• I calendar everything and invite both my husband and myself to attend our kid’s appointments, so that if I have low energy, they are on his radar, and if I have high energy, I take them by priority.
• I wake up each morning and ask my body, soul, spirit, and source (God) how I’m doing that day and what I need to prioritize.
• I keep my caffeine intake non-existent and glycemic index low if I am going through a stressful season (like starting a new school year) or feeling like my energy is going to be low that day.
• I eat protein in the morning and take bunches of supplements based on what my body is saying she needs (I ask about each pill because some days, I don’t need vitamin B3 as much I need Zinc, or whatever and I’ve learned to tune into those responses from my body.)
• I only participate in professional activities that can flex with me if my body is low energy. For example, my graduate school offers a disability accomodation for people with documented disabilities called a Flex Plan, in which I don’t need to attend as many in-class activities and I can get a few extra days to complete short-term work. I also negotiated with one of my professors to come onto campus once per week and dial into class once per week according to his preference so that I could reduce my commute time.
• I stack my activities out of the house because transitions and commuting takes a lot of energy without accomplishing a lot. So if I can take two classes on campus one day versus one class per day for two days, I choose the former.
• I schedule in 30 minute transitions between events. Switching tasks in my brain takes a lot of calories and if I force it without letting my brain close out its thoughts naturally, I feel way more tired than when I give myself a human amount of time to start the next event (like another meeting or another class).
• I stay in bed at least 8 hours per night. I take naps if I’m low energy.

One day, I will not have these fatigue problems anymore. Until that day, I can support my symptoms with priorities and strategies.