I have this experience sometimes myself. It sounds like a pacing problem. I have found that pacing works only if you stop *before* you feel like you've exerted yourself. It's frustrating, and sometimes I just go until I can't go because I just want to do stuff! There are a lot of people that feel we should NEVER do this, but I find that sometimes having a fun or productive day is necessary even if it isn't necessarily the best for me.

But if I'm using pacing, I do need to quit well before I want to quit and even before ANY signs of fatigue or over-exertion show up. Seems like energy management is a never-ending experiment. I wish you well with it.

I'm a bad person to advise on this issue since I am the queen of overdoing it. I'm a mom. It's not an excuse, but the truth is, kids' needs do take up a lot of energy. But, yeah, I've had those near-normal days when I am giddy with excitement over the possibility of having the strength to do the things I love. It's hard sometimes to know when the crash will come. I agree with LarkLaurie in that it would be best to stop before the crash, but it's often hard to know when it will come. I get some signs like a dull headache or an elevated heart rate and I realize I'd better slow my roll a little. You'll get the hang of listening to your body. Blessings on your journey, dear girl.

I can echo the other fine responses, and wanted to add the thought that maybe checking your blood sugar might be in order at those times. It could be low if you didn't have a snack mid afternoon. Hypoglycemia can feel a lot like a crash, too.

Having lunch with a friend jumped out at me. One suggestion - track how you feel after socializing. Are you an extrovert or an introvert as defined by Meyers Briggs? An introvert needs solitude to recharge her batteries. An extrovert recharges her batteries being with other people. There are free online tests to see where you fall on the spectrum between the two.

I am an extreme introvert. I also have anxiety. Even a seemingly relaxing lunch with a friend will drain me. The more people involved, the more I'm drained I am afterward.

Lying down in a dark quiet room helps. I try to do so on a daily basis; sometimes more than once if needed. At times, I find myself stubbornly fighting against it, like a two year old fights taking a nap, but that is just silly. I can get up and often feel better, possibly doing a little more afterward rather than suffering through it.

So, give yourself permission to lie down and close your eyes in a quiet dark room! It's a real treat when you do so without self condemnation.

Courtney, this sounds like a classic case of overdoing. You're supposed to expend about 50% of the energy you think you have, so on a day when you feel energetic you have to stop yourself way before you feel like it.

Of course I don't practice what I preach and am often in the boom/bust cycle of overdoing/crash/overdoing/crash and so on.

What really makes me mad is when I relapse and didn't expend a lot of energy before crashing and can't figure out why I crashed.

Where I really overdo is social talking/thinking (because you're always subconsciously thinking about social cues). Social talking takes way more out of me than I think it should, really brings me down later. It's so easy to underestimate energy expenditure with social talking, even on the phone.

I disagree with Since1981 that if you're an extrovert you gain energy. That might be true for a non-CFS person but as an extrovert who can tie crashes to social stuff, I believe it just takes a lot of energy to do social and we don't notice it at the time.

So I need to do better on pulling back on a good day too.