041 Chronic Fatigue, Slowing Down, and Learning to Ask for Help

• What chronic fatigue can look like over decades

• Why slowing down isn’t quitting — it’s maintenance

• How therapeutic lifestyle changes support real life with illness

• The difference between optimism and hope when your body won’t cooperate

• Why asking for specific help matters more than “pushing through”

• How faith can support you on unmanageable days without pressure

• “Slowing down removed the chaos — and my body felt it immediately.”

• “Hope isn’t pretending things are fine. It’s doing what you can and trusting the rest.”

• “People want to help. Asking gives them permission to love you well.”

• “Chronic illness doesn’t disqualify you from purpose.”

Email: belinda@belindaterromooney.com 

Website: https://belindaterromooney.com/

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Hosted by April Aramanda

The Invisible Illness Club Podcast

Music: Audio Jungle

April Aramanda: Welcome, Belinda. We’re glad to have you here on the Invisible Illness Club podcast. How are you doing today?

Belinda Terro Mooney: Hi, April. I’m doing great, thank you.

April Aramanda: Before we jump into the questions, can you tell us a little about your life right now and what this season looks like?

Belinda Terro Mooney: I’ve been going through a prayer process and realizing my life was way too busy, and my health was suffering because of it. I heard the words, “Slow down and be well.” It could have been “slow down to be well.” So I wrote it on a card and put it on my mirror.

On December 11th, I went to Austin for my godson’s wedding, and I brought a book called Slowing Down to the Speed of Joy by Matthew Kelly.

That book confirmed everything I was hearing—being too busy results in not only mental clutter, but physical damage to the body. I think that’s most of us right now.

He talks about racing around, cramming too much into our schedules, running from one thing to the next—we’re not taking care of ourselves. We don’t have margin for when things happen. Then we feel worse about ourselves because we can’t keep up.

So I started throwing things out of my schedule. Literally: “I’m out. I’m out. I’m out.” Out of this organization, out of that group. It felt like emptying a closet—taking everything out because there’s so much in there you can’t even see. And then you put back only what you really need so it’s in order.

I’ve done that with my closet and my bathroom, and I realized it’s a metaphor for my whole life. I graciously stepped out of another group today and it ended well—the woman was kind. And I felt the relief all over my body. I’m not rushing anymore. Even my speech is slower. If we’d done this a month ago, I would’ve been talking so fast.

So I’m slowing down. I have slowed down, and I’m going to keep slowing down—take care of my health, my spiritual life, and my relationships. Look at what’s important. Maintain what needs to be maintained. And whatever time I do have, I’m going to give it where it’s supposed to go—not to a bunch of other things I could let go of.

There are lots of good things in the world. I don’t do terrible things. It’s all “good”… it’s simply too much. Like keeping clothes you don’t need instead of giving them to someone who could use them.

So I’m putting my schedule, my home, my mind, and what I need to take care of for my family and myself into order. I’m doing the best I’ve done pretty much in my whole life right now.

April Aramanda: That’s awesome. I’ve been learning that lesson too—unfortunately, because I’m someone who pushes myself. I was a single mom for 17 years, and when I married my husband, I had to get used to letting someone else help and carry some of the load. I still don’t ask for help sometimes, or I do too much. Even today he told me, “Sit down—you’re out of breath. I can deal with this.” So I understand the busy schedule and the chaos.

Belinda Terro Mooney: When we slow down to the speed of joy, we get the chaos out and we do what really needs to be done. Why are we racing around anyway?

I thought about this with my writing. I have a couple more books to finish—two are second editions. And I was thinking, “That one can be done in three months, that one in three months.” No. If one takes a year or two, then I’ll get to the next one when it comes. That pressure is coming from me, and it’s stopping. I can’t keep that pace up. I don’t want a heart attack or a stroke. I’ve worked too hard to get to where I am to collapse now. I’m stopping.

April Aramanda: How long have you been living with chronic fatigue, and what has that journey been like?

Belinda Terro Mooney: I can’t even remember how long—that’s how long it’s been. I’m 66 now, as we’re recording. I just had my birthday.

I had mono in my 30s and I know I was chronically fatigued after that. Then I had it again when I was pregnant with my second child. Even though I was 42, it didn’t feel like a typical pregnancy or “older woman pregnancy.” It felt like mono again—and it was.

So for over half my life, I’ve had strong chronic fatigue, where it’s hard to get out of bed some days.

Through exercise—which you don’t want to do when you’re chronically fatigued—it actually takes stress out of my body. It relaxes me. I have less pain with walking. I walk.

Now I’m doing sauna, which is really good for your health—steam and sauna, but especially sauna. And swimming when I can at the gym. That helps the symptoms.

And I’m doing as much as I can with sleep and eating. I’m putting therapeutic lifestyle changes into my life: sleep, food, hydration, exercise, relationships, spiritual life, social support. I wrote a workbook about that, and I’ve used it with my human services students. I do what I tell my coaching clients and students to do—I’m walking the walk.

Between vitamins, supplements, hydration—I’m constantly drinking hot tea or water. Herbal tea, and one cup of green tea in the morning. Caffeine is too much for me after lunch. So one green tea, then herbal tea.

I still do meditation and prayer. I still talk to friends—relationships matter. You’ve got spiritual relationship, physical areas like food and exercise and hydration, sleep, creativity. I’m doing fun things like coloring—things you don’t have to be an artist to do.

I’m feeling much better. And now that I’ve cleared things out of my life, I’m like, “Wow, I actually have time to do what I want to do.” No one is counting on me to show up for meetings. I can… breathe.

I’m getting ready to buy some kids’ coloring books and crayons so I can color while I watch a movie at night. I like word finds too.

I watch mystery movies, and I’m reading a series—the Molly Chase series—historical fiction by Rhonda Ortiz. I read the first two and now I’m on her launch team, so I’m reading the third. I’m reading fiction again.

When I’m doing relaxing things—like reading, walking—my brain gets endorphins. I don’t feel the fatigue in the same way. After about 10 minutes of walking, I feel better and better. Usually I walk about 30 minutes outside if I can, indoors if I can. Sometimes I walk around my house with a timer, listening to music—keeping a pace to get stress out.

A doctor told me a long time ago: “Belinda, you need to walk every day to get the stress out.” You don’t even have to think of it as exercise—think of it as stress reduction. And if you’re outside, you get the calming effects of birds and nature.

I live in a beautiful area with paths and trees. All of this is helping. It’s better than it ever has been in my life.

April Aramanda: You’ve shared with me there’s nothing romantic about chronic illness. If anyone thinks we’re laying in bed enjoying ourselves—we’re not. We might be watching TV, but we’re fighting pain 24/7. What are things people don’t see from the outside?

Belinda Terro Mooney: They don’t see the chronic pain because most people don’t want to talk about pain all the time. I don’t want to tell people I have chronic fatigue—what can they do? The doctor can’t even do anything about it.

I talked to my physician not long ago and asked if I should do blood work for mono again. She said, “I couldn’t do anything about it anyway.”

So people don’t see it because we don’t want to complain, we don’t want to bring people down, and they can’t fix it. We need a place where people understand—where we can say, “Today’s not a great day,” and reach out to people who get it.

Besides walking and sauna, hot Epsom salt baths help pain. And focusing on my mental mindset—refusing to spiral—helps too. When I sit there thinking, “My neck is hurting again,” it hurts more.

So I ask: “What do I need to do?” Massage my neck? Do some self-care? Get a therapeutic massage sometimes? Instead of thinking about it, do something positive—ask someone for help: bring tea, set up an Epsom salt foot bath. There are so many small things.

For people around us who don’t understand chronic pain, ask them to imagine a low-grade headache that never goes away. You can do things to help it, and think hopefully, but it’s always there—and you have to adapt.

For me as a Catholic Christian, it helps to offer up my pain in union with the sufferings of Jesus. And outside of that spiritual practice, I still have to do the physical, mental, and social things—talking with friends, being on the phone while I’m walking around the house. I’m not thinking about pain when I’m talking with people. They help me.

We have to develop our list of things that help most—our go-to things—and also try new things. And we have to accept help. People do want to help—like your husband said. They don’t want to see us in pain.

One of my daughters has Lyme disease, and I would honestly rather have chronic fatigue than Lyme. Some days she can’t get out of bed. It causes so many problems. When I help her, she’s grateful because there are things she can’t do when she’s that tired or in that much pain. And she has more sensitivity to me now too—she understands what my chronic fatigue has been like all these years.

So: help people without chronic pain understand what it might feel like… and also give them specific ways they can help. “Unload the dishwasher,” because bending hurts my lower back. “Move the laundry from here to there.” Specific tasks.

April Aramanda: That’s what I do with my husband. The up and down becomes hard for me—it makes my heart rate race. So I’ll ask him to bring the basket into the laundry room, and then he takes it back so we can fold it.

Also—what works for one person doesn’t work for another. I wish I could take a hot bath like you’re suggesting, but a hot bath sends my heart rate and my hot flashes into a rage. I’d be in there five seconds like, “Give me a fan.” So there are different tools for different bodies.

You told me there was a time with mono when you prayed for half an hour to get out of bed. Can you take us back to that moment?

Belinda Terro Mooney: That was the first case of mono. I didn’t know what was happening to my body. I was a social worker—program director of a long-term facility for adolescents. I’d been getting more and more tired. I thought it was the pace of life. I had children and a husband at the time. I’m a widow now, but all seven of my children are living.

I had responsibilities at home and huge responsibilities at work. I thought I was overwhelmed. I couldn’t get out of bed. I checked my depression symptoms—no, I don’t have depression. So why can’t I get out of bed?

I would pray and pray and pray. It took me half an hour of prayer to get out of bed. I’d start trying at 6:30, get up around 7, drag through the day, and by 10 or 10:30 at night I’d throw myself back into bed and do it all again.

Finally, I listened to the “please go to the doctor,” and I did. The doctor looked at my blood work and said, “You have had a recent case of mono.” I was dragging myself through life when most people sleep for two months with mono. I was the breadwinner then, so I kept going—on a beeper, always on call.

And I’m finally, after all this time, learning the lesson I started learning back then: what it looks like to live in chaos because you’re over-responsible and doing too much. You’d think I would have learned it then. I needed another dose and another dose.

April Aramanda: Most women do that. We feel like we have to carry on and do all these things for everybody. Sometimes we learn the hard way.

Because faith is so important to us—what does faith look like on the days your body feels unmanageable? You can’t get out of bed, can hardly move.

Belinda Terro Mooney: The part I didn’t tell you about that half-hour is—I really believe my guardian angel got me out of bed and stood me up. Honestly, I couldn’t do it.

I know God as gentle and merciful. When I can’t do things, I’ll say, “Lord, I wish I could do all the things I wanted to do today, but I can’t. I’m going to let this go, and I know you’ll help me when I’m able, if it’s even something I’m supposed to do.”

That’s what I’ve been doing this past month: asking, “Did God tell me to do this, or did it look good to me?” Because I love people and I love doing good things—so I add one more thing, and one more thing. Nothing sends me into overwhelm like packing too much in. Then when I don’t feel well, I feel guilty—because I have to put people off.

One day someone texted or emailed, “I’ve been sitting in the room for ten minutes. Where are you?” I never miss a Zoom meeting. I had packed too many things. I didn’t even remember I had it. My brain was fried. I couldn’t do one more thing. I didn’t even think to check my calendar.

So we rescheduled, had a wonderful meeting. After that, I put everything else off. It was going to wait. It waited until January, and now I’m not packing January too full either. I’m pushing things out into late January and February—things will get done when they can.

There are still days I don’t feel well and I don’t know why. I’ve done my walk, I’ve done what I know to do—and I still don’t feel right. So I give myself grace. If it were anyone else, I’d say, “Relax. Rest for a while.”

I can take a nap only if it won’t damage my sleep later, because for me it usually does. I already have trouble sleeping that I’m trying to manage. It’s not only pain—it’s also trauma in my past and other things that contribute to sleep. So I’m working hard on that. I don’t want anything to complicate it.

April Aramanda: You answered that. I want to shift to hope and optimism. You have a distinction you like to share—could you explain it?

Belinda Terro Mooney: Yes. As a therapist and coach, I correct language around “I feel” and “I think.” If it’s your opinion, say “I think.” If it’s an actual emotion—sad, lonely, tired—say “I feel.”

I think optimism has gotten a bad reputation lately—like pie-in-the-sky. So instead of “think optimistically,” I say, “think hopefully.” Have hopeful thoughts, not “positive thinking.” What does that even mean?

A hopeful thought is a thought that leads you to feel hope. So when we’re feeling bad, instead of “I feel terrible,” it’s: “Today is a hard day.

Tomorrow could be better. I’m going to do everything I know I’m supposed to do. And after I’ve done everything, I’m going to rely on God to keep me strong through this hard time. I’m going to unite my sufferings to Jesus on the cross, and I’m going to know it’s going to be okay. I’ll feel better eventually. Everything passes.”

We’re not always at the same level of pain or discomfort. We do what we can, we follow our plan for what to do when we don’t feel well, and then we rely on God for the rest. Hopeful thinking shifts the thought from unhelpful to “It’s going to get better. It always does. This is a bad patch. I’m doing what I can.”

April Aramanda: Can you give a practical look at a day in your life where hope carried you through something small?

Belinda Terro Mooney: These days are full of that. Being obedient to what I heard God say—“slow down and be well”—has resulted in hope everywhere. I hope our talk helps people grab a nugget, feel hopeful—like, “If she can feel better, there’s hope for me.”

When something doesn’t feel great, I pause and ask, “What am I supposed to do about that?” I listen for what God is telling me about how to handle it, then I do what I think I’m supposed to do.

For example: a woman texted me this morning and said they had a birthday luncheon for widows and I wasn’t added. She had me on the list. Whether she meant it that way or not, I felt pressured.

This was one of the groups I let go of today. So I asked, “How can I respond graciously?” That gives me hope that I never have to react to someone else’s ungraciousness in a negative way. I can hold to my integrity. I don’t have to respond right away. I can take a moment and go to God: “Lord, what do I need to say?”

So I responded: I wasn’t there because I was seeing clients. I didn’t even know they were meeting for my birthday until someone texted me.

Thank you for the prayers and well wishes. And because of my work, I’m not going to be able to be part of this—please take me off the list. Keep praying for me. I love everybody.

She responded graciously back—thanking God my work is going well. I removed myself from the WhatsApp groups, and it ended well. That gives me hope: no matter what happens, if I ask God how to respond with integrity, I can do it. And it reinforces: I’m not supposed to be in that group anyway, so there’s no pressure.

Today gave me the opportunity to clear it up in a peaceful way.

April Aramanda: I like that you gave it a beat and waited. Sometimes our gut response is, “Goodness gracious, one more person asking me to do something.” And we respond less graciously. Creating margin helps.

Belinda Terro Mooney: Exactly. Margin gives you time to think it through. You’re not rushing from one thing to the next thinking, “I have to respond right away,” and then sending something you regret. You can wait and make it right.

April Aramanda: When you look at where you started and where you are now in the chronic fatigue journey—from that first mono experience to now—what feels most different?

Belinda Terro Mooney: Number one, confidence level.

I feel different in my body because I’m doing everything I reasonably can right now. There are a few more things I want to add back in—like getting back into the gym routine with sauna. I was out of town a lot in December.

Compared to what it was then, it’s nothing now. I still have neck pain, and I still have some fatigue, but compared to what I’ve been through, it’s manageable—because I’m doing what I’m supposed to do, including my mindset.

Whatever fatigue is still there—it’s nothing God and I can’t manage. The amount of fatigue has lessened because of the strategies. And my confidence is higher because I know what to do when this happens.

Back then, I didn’t even know what I had—it took the doctor to tell me. I was checking depression symptoms and I didn’t have depression. The doctor said, “It’s physical. It’s a virus.” So now my confidence is up. My belief that things will get better is stronger: today might be hard, tomorrow could be different.

April Aramanda: What do you hope a woman listening—exhausted and discouraged—hears from your story?

Belinda Terro Mooney: I want women to listen to their bodies. Listen to what you need. Go beyond “I shouldn’t ask for help” and stop that.

When we don’t build a team around us—people who can bring the laundry basket from here to there so we can do the work we actually can do—we suffer more.

You have people in your life who are willing to help: make food, do chores, get you to the doctor. They are willing. What can each person do that would help you?

Stop thinking the people helping you are being put upon. You are giving back in ways you may never know—because you’re helping them become a better version of themselves. Any service a person gives us in our weakness is a good thing.

We pray for those people. We help them when we can. We listen. We do things for them we don’t even see. And I believe what goes around comes around—any service they give us, we’ll give back tenfold in some way. We don’t have to worry about that.

Stop feeling less-than because you have an illness. If it’s continuing, and you’ve asked God to heal you, and you’ve done what you can, and it’s still there—this is a cross we’re bearing. It builds character. It builds empathy. We’re not going to look down on other people with chronic illness because we know what it’s like.

On good days, we may be the one helping someone else. Whatever we ask others to do for us, we’ll do for them or someone else when we can.

God never said we have to be well to do our work. We have to do what we’re supposed to do in the best way we can. If we need help, we get it. If others need help, when we feel good, we give it.

Think interdependence. Stop being so self-reliant that you can’t ask for what you need. Build your team—not only health professionals, but your whole support system. Then go forward in peace knowing whatever they give you, you’re going to give something valuable in return.

April Aramanda: I think that was partly a word for me today. It’s funny—you go through something, then someone says exactly what you needed to hear. It happens with church services, and with people I interview.

This week, my brother-in-law was laughing at me. We’re living with them right now, and I needed something, and I said, “I’ll wait until my husband comes in and gets it.” It wasn’t a big deal. I didn’t want to put it on anyone else. I had a fork—I didn’t need chopsticks. And he said, “I would have done it for you if you’d asked. Next time you need something, ask me.” And I was like, “Okay… I’m so bad at that.”

Belinda Terro Mooney: That’s the voice of God—someone saying, “I want to serve. Would you help me have an opportunity to serve? I’m willing.”

April Aramanda: People, please hear that part if you don’t hear anything else.

Belinda, thank you for coming on today. Is there anything else you want to tell anyone before we go?

Belinda Terro Mooney: I wrote a book—Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes Workbook, subtitled Creating a Comprehensive Plan for a Calm, Ordered Life. I’ll give you the details so you can put it in the show notes.

If people want to set up a comprehensive plan—putting wellness areas into place to help their chronic illness—that’s a great place to start.

And if anyone would like to work with me, I’m a life coach. I love working with people through the TLCs or whatever life goals they’re dealing with. I’m not doing therapy in that session. If people need therapy, as a past therapist I can recommend excellent therapists.

Right now I’m doing life coaching. Whatever goals you want to set—TLCs, or other life issues—I’ve helped hundreds of students through those wellness areas, and I’d be happy to help.

You can reach me through my website, belinda.com, or by email. (Spoken as: “belinda… belindaoney.com” — likely intended as belinda@belindaoney.com.)

We can set up a complimentary session to talk about what you want from coaching and whether we’re a good fit, and then go from there.

April Aramanda: Awesome. I’ll put all her links in the show notes. Thank you so much, Belinda.

Belinda Terro Mooney: God bless you. Thank you. I’m praying for everyone listening, and I’m here for you if you need me