By Sukriti Wahi Wellness 13.08.2025

“I Suffered for Years With Chronic Fatigue, This Is What Actually Helped Me Heal”

It took three years, many missteps and a whole new way of thinking.

From the frenetic pace of magazine deadlines to the forced stillness of weeks in bed, Sukriti Wahi has lived through the extremes of energy and exhaustion. In this piece, she traces her journey with Chronic Fatigue, including the strategies and self-advocacy that helped her reclaim her health.

Bones that felt like bricks.

That’s the best way I can describe the weighty exhaustion I experienced when I used to have chronic fatigue “crashes”. It wasn’t the same as being “tired”, oh no – and I would still get “normal folks' tiredness”, too. This was a couch-is-quicksand sensation that made it feel as though my limbs were being sucked into the cushions. For days on end.

But I’m getting ahead of myself – let me rewind.

My issues with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME), also referred to as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) – a long-term illness characterised by profound fatigue and post-exertional malaise (worsening of symptoms after physical or mental activity) began back in mid-2018.

As for what triggered it? In my case, it was glandular fever (mononucleosis), contracted during a period of immense stress. To paint a picture of my stress levels at the time, because it will become relevant later, I was emotionally exhausted from being in the depths of a difficult, anxiety-inducing relationship, mentally drained from the demanding workload of being a one-person team, and physically burnt out from thrashing my nervous system with frequent HIIT, high-cardio dance and heavy strength training.

With that in mind, I *probably* wasn’t in the best shape when I got sick, as research does show that ongoing stress can weaken the immune system. Although I got past the worst of the glandular fever after two months of total bed rest, I remained fairly exhausted for the rest of the year. I truly believe my body never forgot the state I’d been in when I became unwell in the first place (the body keeps the score, as they say, but more on that later).

Come 2019, I more or less resumed my life pre-glandular fever, and even started my dream job in fashion magazines. Back to my high-intensity workouts, back to my all-consuming dance training, back to lifting heavy weights, back to socialising frequently… back to feeling deeply fatigued. Heavy. For days. To top it off, I was also catching colds like they were going out of style. Frankly, I was so out of tune with my body because my brain was obsessed (read: stressed) with my work that I didn’t realise it, but this was the start of my “stress, crash, repeat” cycle.

In short: Exercise/overthink/socialise (stress). Crash (usually two days later). Repeat (because I didn’t realise any of these were the problem).

I carried on like this until 2020, not quite clocking that anything was wrong – it seems shocking in retrospect. Around the middle of the year, I started – and wrote about – having a quarter-life crisis (fun). I also went off the contraceptive pill, and while I thankfully didn’t experience any of the usual symptoms many do transitioning off of it, my ME/CFS (which I still didn’t realise I had) worsened tenfold. Now, along with a newly intensified fatigue, I also had fevers, swollen lymph nodes, brain fog and muscle aches to contend with – with each “episode” running for around five days before I felt normal again. At its worst, these episodes were happening around twice a month for six months.

With the heightened symptoms, I (finally) began to realise the fatigue was not normal and saw multiple “-ologists” in different specialities. They did countless tests, only for me to come away with an incorrect diagnosis, prescription for a medication I didn’t need and a growing sense of hopelessness as my issues continued. Finally, during a particularly bad episode, my GP decided to do a blood test when I was in the thick of it, rather than while I was feeling well. For the first time, my test showed that, despite no virus being present, my body was having an immune response to… nothing. But it was having one.

Eventually, the conclusion was it could be ME/CFS – a diagnosis often doled out when nothing turns up on medical tests, but the symptoms align and have been going on for an extended period. The well-intended advice? Rest. Don’t stress.

Easier said than done. And also not the whole picture. Nor something someone like me, who had been so active and disciplined until that point, could accept.

But this was where my self-healing journey truly began, most of it spanning 2021 to 2023, and where I learnt the most valuable lessons about what self-care really looks like when you need it the most.

1. Your illness is not in your mind – but your mind can help you heal

None of the doctors I saw said outright that my fatigue was “in my head”, but its fancier twin sister “psychosomatic” – used to describe an illness or condition caused or worsened by inner conflict or mental stress – did come up a few times.

While it felt dismissive on the surface, there was some merit to the argument. After cycling through multiple ME/CFS crashes, I realised it wasn’t just the stress of the trigger (e.g. a workout) that was causing my issues. It was the negative self-talk that I found myself spiralling in before and after a potential trigger (“If I work out, will I crash? Did I push too hard? If I go to my friend’s housewarming, will I be drained? Should I cancel ‘X’ and stay in?"). This kept me trapped in a state of chronic stress, as opposed to acute stress.

And this is also not in my head. There is plenty of research to support the link between mindset and healing, with positive thinking found to reduce stress, tackle infections, improve cellular repair, and immune system function, and enhance brain-body connection.

Speaking of brain-body connection: remember all that stress I talked about experiencing when I caught glandular fever? Maybe it’s a bit woo-woo, but I truly believe that the episodes I was having were because my body remembered the stressed state I was in at the time, and whenever it would experience it again (like in a workout), it felt the need to call the white blood cell cavalry to arms to prevent further damage (bless, but like… stop).

So, the first step and lesson? I had to shift my mindset to reset my baseline.

2. It’s okay to “mourn” who you were before. It’s part of the process.

This step went hand-in-hand with the first. I had to stop holding onto the idea that I should simply be able to deadlift 80kg, have social plans on a weekend or dance for hours at a high intensity, as I did before glandular fever. Accepting that I wasn’t there at that moment allowed me to turn a new page and be kinder to my current self, while maintaining the belief that someday, I would get back there.

3. “Rest” doesn’t always mean “sleep”

One of the kickers of chronic fatigue is – joy of joys – sleep doesn’t fix it (excuse me while I paint on a clown face). That said, rest was still a huge part of my healing journey – multiple different types of rest. While exercise was my most obvious crash trigger, usually hitting me two days after the workout, socialising (especially for my introverted self), intense work periods, and generally figuring out where the hell I was going in life (that ol’ chestnut), were all things that added drops to the stress bucket that would eventually tip over into an ME/CFS flare-up.

So if this meant cancelling plans or workouts to stay horizontal? It had to be done (sounds fun when you’re well, but not in that state!). Staying off social media for a few days to avoid being overwhelmed and overstimulated (remember, it was 2020)? Allowed. While I didn’t always feel rested, I knew it kept things from getting worse, and over time, helped to rewire my nervous system so that when there were occasions I felt okay to push myself a little, I could do it.

4. Only you know when to push and when to pull back – and both are important

As much as I needed to know when to rest, I also needed to know when and how much to push, especially when it came to exercise, to establish my baseline.

Without pre-empting an episode and falling back into negative self-talk, I worked on becoming hyper-aware of how my body felt and making sure to gently nudge the intensity and frequency of my workouts (or outings) in incremental amounts (e.g. adding two extra minutes onto my 10-minute stroll) over time.

This, in turn, gave me a sense of achievement, which reaffirmed that I was capable, my body was a safe place, and left me feeling more positive about doing it again the next time.

5. No two ME/CFS journeys are the same, so you have to be your own biggest advocate

Reading about others’ stories of ME/CFS to help in my healing process, it became clear to me that no two people’s symptoms or experiences are the same. I also realised that I had to be my own biggest advocate because only I know what I’m dealing with.

Medically speaking, this meant not stopping until I found healthcare professionals who would listen to me, and even trying alternative therapies (no shade to doctors – my family is full of them!), such as naturopathy and acupuncture.

Outside of medicine, I realised that I also had to be my advocate IRL. I had to push past the Girl Boss-era hangover from not taking sick days, which was still entrenched in fashion media at the time, or working while in the thick of an episode (though I never told anyone at work for fear of seeming less capable). When it came to friends, I had to tell my close ones what was going on and trust they would understand when I needed to cancel and not feel (too) bad about it.

6. Recovery isn’t linear, but that doesn’t mean you won’t get there

It took three years of diligently implementing all of the above, of gradually rebuilding my baseline, but I’ve finally reached a place where I can say I’m pretty much healed and very rarely have crashes (certainly not to the severity I experienced back then).

I can also say that in those three years, it was less “straight hypotenuse to the top” and more “jagged little spiral”. Like progress in most parts of life, recovery often felt like taking two steps forward to take five steps back.

But step forward I did.

This article reflects the author’s personal experience with ME/CFS and is not intended as medical advice. ME/CFS is a complex condition and experiences, symptoms, and management approaches vary widely. Guidelines and recommended treatments also differ across countries and continue to evolve as new research emerges. If you are experiencing symptoms or have concerns about your health, please consult a qualified healthcare professional.