The Sinkhole After the Storm: The Brutal, Unsexy Reality of Recovering from a Flare

By Antonia at Unremarkable Me Published: May 2025

I’ve been here more times than I care to admit.Lying in bed post-flare, the world still spinning, wondering how on earth something that’s technically over can still feel like it’s swallowing me whole.

I used to think the worst part of a flare was the flare itself—the intense pain, the hospital trips, the loss of control. But honestly? That’s not where it gets me. The real gut-punch comes after, when you’re left to crawl back into a life that’s moved on without you, while you’re still picking yourself out of the mud. That’s when the cracks show. When the plans you made in your head feel like a distant, ridiculous fantasy because your body is still at war and your brain has already packed its bags and moved on.

And no one talks about that .No one tells you how hard it is to climb out of the hole when, in your head, you already should be out of it.

This article is for that part. The part no one wants to talk about because it’s messy, unfair, and exhausting even to think about .It’s not going to be pretty. It’s going to be honest.Because that’s the only way I know how to tell it.

Not All Flares Are Created Equal (And That Matters)

First, let’s call out the thing even some chronically ill folks don’t always say aloud:Not all flares are the same beast. And when we talk about flares like they’re interchangeable, we do ourselves a cruel disservice.

The Levels of Flare:

Level 1: The Speed Bump

The classic ‘ugh’ days. Fatigue, brain fog, that creeping ‘I’m not okay, but I can sort-of fake it’ vibe .Life limps along. You slow down, you hydrate, you snark at your own body and move on.

Level 2: The Detour Sign

Now we’re in 'cancel your plans' territory. Pain spikes. Mobility nosedives. Recovery takes days or weeks and comes with hefty doses of guilt, frustration, and bargaining with your body like a hostage negotiator. Research from Pain Concern UK highlights that flare-ups can trigger not only increased pain but also significant emotional distress, often leading to social withdrawal and isolation (Pain Concern).

Level 3: The Sinkhole

This is the big one. Hospital beds. Crisis interventions. The world stops. You’re no longer a person—you’re a patient. Recovery from these monsters is like rebuilding after a landslide. And it comes with emotional fallout that can rival the physical toll: trauma, grief, terror of the 'next time.' As noted by The Mighty, many people experience what they describe as "chronic illness grief"—a complex, layered mourning not only for your body but also for your imagined future self (The Mighty).

The War Between Mind and Body

Here’s where it gets really vicious.Your mind? Already sprinting toward recovery. You’ve got the checklist. The 17-point plan. You’ve visualized your comeback tour, complete with fresh laundry and passive-aggressive productivity.

But your body? Still face down in the mud, using all available energy just to blink.

This disconnect is not just frustrating—it’s a well-documented challenge in chronic illness recovery. According to the ME Association, pacing is widely recommended as the most sustainable approach to energy management, but even seasoned patients struggle to emotionally accept the slowness (ME Association Pacing Guide).

The Fear That Sticks to Your Skin

And even if you claw your way through this flare, there’s always the next one waiting. You don’t just recover from a flare. You recover into fear.

Because now you know—deep in your bones—that your body is a landmine. And that terror? It haunts every tiny victory, whispering, “Enjoy it while you can.”

A 2022 study published in Frontiers in Psychology on pain-related fear confirms that this constant hypervigilance can become a debilitating loop, impacting both physical rehabilitation and mental health recovery (Frontiers in Psychology).

This is the invisible tax of chronic illness. You’re never just healing your body. You’re managing the fear of when the next betrayal will come.

The Unsexy Art of Sinkhole Recovery

Let’s strip the fluff. This isn’t about wellness influencers and their 'gentle stretches and journaling' aesthetic. This is the ugly, gritted-teeth, goblin-mode kind of recovery.

How to survive (badly, imperfectly, and still valid):

• Name your flare level. If it’s a Level 3 sinkhole, stop expecting a Level 1 recovery. You need permission to pace your pacing (Pain Toolkit).

• Make insulting micro-goals.'Put on clean pants .' 'Move cup from kitchen to sofa. It feels pathetic. Do it anyway. Small wins are still wins.

• Accept the rage at your own limits. Resent your body. Hate the slowness. You don’t have to be graceful about it.

• Don’t make it pretty. Crackers in the shower still count as dinner. Grunting at the postman from under a blanket fort? Still counts as socializing.

• Call in the 'sit-with-you' people. Not the 'positive vibes only' brigade. The ones who say, “This sucks. I’ll sit with you in the suck.”

• Acknowledge the fear without letting it drive. Let it exist, but don’t let it shrink your world. Pain Concern UK suggests techniques like exposure therapy and mindfulness for fear of flare-ups—but the key is not to expect perfection (Pain Concern).

  
  

The Aftermath No One Prepares You For

This isn’t the pretty part. It’s the messy middle.The space where you:

• Grieve the person you were before the flare.

• Grieve the person you could have been if it hadn’t happened.

• Grieve how hard the easy things have become.

• Grieve the future you fear is already written.

And through all that? You still get to count yourself as surviving. Even if that survival looks like crawling. Even if you hate every second of it. Even if you whisper, “I can’t do this again,” knowing you probably will.

That is still resilience. That is still victory. And frankly, it deserves a damn medal. Or at least a biscuit.

Support Links (Because Sometimes the Sinkhole’s Just Too Deep)

• Pacing for Chronic Illness – ME Association

• Managing Flare Ups – Pain Toolkit

• Grieving Old Life with Chronic Illness – The Mighty

• Managing Fear of Flare-Ups – Pain Concern

• Fear of Pain and Chronic Illness (Research Article, Frontiers in Psychology)

Closing Affirmation (Goblin-Approved)

I’m not going to lie to you. Writing this article hit a little too close to home. Because even as I sit here typing this Im still recovering from my last flare/body in crisis mode, I’m in that space. That middle ground where I should be getting back on track but I’m still sitting on the sofa, using a hot water bottle as a personality trait, and wondering if staying awake longer than 4 hrs counts as a life win.

But I’ll tell you this: If you’re reading this from inside the sinkhole, you’re not broken .You’re not failing. You’re surviving in a body that doesn’t play fair.And if today all you did was breathe, rage, cry, or laugh bitterly at a stupid meme? You still did it. That’s still a win.

So no, this isn’t the comeback story yet. This is the part where we sit in the mess, eat biscuits for dinner, and give ourselves permission to be gloriously, stubbornly, unremarkably human.

That, my friend, is enough.