Laupala,

Real familiar with what you posted..I experience the same thing.

Bud

And I still haven't figured out how to pace myself....

The "next day" effect is hitting with a vengeance today.

Do any of you have resources you use to deal with this? Are there drugs that help? Anything?

I did what "past" me would have considered am extremely minimal amount of activity. I felt great doing it. I never let myself get a headache. I paced myself throughout. I stopped well before I thought I should. I felt useful and somewhat productive for the first time in weeks.

And yet... By 8:30am today I was dropping things (which I've discovered is not only annoying - so many broken dishes! - but also my main cue I'm about to overload and completely shut down...)

Help?

It does not only require pacing but also avoiding some environments. We can control our effort but if we try to maintain what we think is a safe pace but do it in a noisy or chaotic environment, we can crash anyway.

There are many variables to consider.

Maybe it would help if you told us what you did the day or days before your crash, including the environment.

For me, defining my triggers remains elusive. For one thing, I change week to week: what might have almost been a correct definition two weeks ago becomes irrelevant today. I do think the notion of specific things--use, stimulation e.g. sensory, specific thoughts or events--causing symptoms is valid. But in my case it's emotions that are the big player, although I have a teeny bit of light and sharp/loud noise sensitivity and, at least several weeks ago, processing complex environments so as to focus on what's important, a few other things . . So someone with strong emotions or psychiatric issues of some kind might have internal triggers, combined with basic loads such as how much you're using your brain.

I also vacillate on whether or not to keep a specific journal. I sometimes think it's better to just kind of not pay attention, that bad things will go away if they're ignored.

I do find that shutting down helps. I'm watching yoga videos and am pleased to find that they've mastered what I've been calling deep relaxation. This has a wonderful way of purging your system of stress and stressful things. It feels wonderful (although I don't want to live there, at least not yet), and all of us should have this in our large tool kits.

I also have a straightforward theory which would partially explain elusiveness of triggers which hopefully I'll post somewhere soon.