Extreme fatigue and inability to feel like a human

I'm a 21 year old male, 5'10'', 145 lbs.

For the last 9 months, I’ve been getting extreme, debilitating fatigue that completely prevents me from doing work.

It is scary how bad the fatigue can get. When the fatigue is severe, my whole body feels heavy, but especially my head. It’s like my mind is in a dense haze. When I try to do anything, it’s like I’m struggling against a wall of brain fog and confusion. It feels strenuous to even form thoughts about anything. I remember that when I was sitting in the shower, it felt like too much effort to even think with words, so I just sat with my mind completely silent. I would literally forget what I was doing in the middle of doing it. It was like my mind was resisting everything I tried to do; I would make a little bit of progress on a task, but then my brain would stop letting me focus, and then I would have to spend the next few minutes struggling to get back to it. (I know that a lot of this sounds like depression, but trust me, it’s not). It feels so unpleasant to have this fatigue. It causes extreme anxiety and irritability; it’s like my brain won’t just let me be calm. I don’t feel like myself at all when I have this.

When the fatigue is mild, it is still almost completely debilitating; it feels like I’m energetic and excited and motivated to do programming (I’m a game programmer), but when I try to get started, my brain won’t let me do it. There is a feeling of “resistance” whenever I try to focus and do mental tasks. It feels like my brain is constantly trying to get out of doing it. I WANT to do it, but every action I do on the computer feels strenuous and hard to do. Eventually the “resistance” just keeps building up until it feels impossible to keep going. I can spend 30 minutes vigorously thinking about what I want to do in my game, but actually doing it feels nearly impossible.

The fatigue makes everything feel different; it makes me feel less like a human:

For example, a regular person gets “feelings” from almost everything. I’m not talking about emotions; I mean the feelings that you get from any situation, that you can’t really put into words. Imagine that you’re on a coast, looking at the ocean, and there’s a sunset; or you’re in a cozy chair, drinking a cup of tea. You can explain what gives you a feeling, but you can’t really describe the feeling itself. I think these feelings are important for feeling like a human and having a personality.

The fatigue makes it literally impossible for me to feel these things. Everything is just objects. It makes me feel so cold and serious and empty.

I was on Prednisone for 2 weeks (no time to explain why).

Prednisone works almost perfectly to stop this fatigue;

When I’m on Prednisone, I’m getting feelings from literally everything. I feel almost identical to how I felt before the fatigue started. When I’m programming, it feels so soothing instead of stressful. I’m genuinely content with what I’m doing; everything feels so warm and cozy. I feel intense calmness all the time (Imagine Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter. That is what I feel like).

I’m sure that what I’m describing is what a normal person feels like. Prednisone makes me feel back to normal. I don’t know yet if I can feel this way without it.

The fatigue never truly 100% goes away. I get “attacks” of fatigue that happen suddenly, and the severity fluctuates a lot when I have them. Sometimes it goes away suddenly, and other times it goes away gradually, or gets worse and then gets better.

Even on my best days the fatigue makes me literally 10 times slower than I remember being before I had it.

When I’m on Prednisone, at some points I literally feel exactly the same as when I was 12; it’s not just that I have more energy, it makes everything feel different. I get feelings that I can’t get without it.

When the fatigue is very mild, I can tell that I still have it because it feels different when I think about anything, or do mental tasks. My mind feels like a coat hanger. My thinking feels thin and cold and rigid. It feels completely inhuman.

When the fatigue is severe, sometimes there’s a physical feeling of “tightness” and “tugging” in my head.

This image is from a song on YouTube called Lost on the Moon:

I was listening to it yesterday for the nostalgia (I used to be a brony), but I think using this image could be a perfect way to explain what my fatigue feels like: what I mean when I say I can’t feel anything.

I’m definitely still having emotions. When I listen to this song and look at this image, it’s fun to listen to, and the image is fun to look at, but fun is the only thing I feel. I’m having no feelings other than that. Nothing has a “feel”. The best thing I can do is just name objects in an image (“Let’s see, that’s princess Luna, and the moon under her, and stars in the background…”). I’m not having abstract feelings, like what it would feel like to be there with her, or the feel of this song being a part of the fandom in general, or the atmosphere of the creators of this song making this. I can imagine what it’s like to feel these things, but I can’t actually feel them.

This effect strongly correlates with the amount of fatigue I have: when my fatigue is severe, my inability to feel things is severe; when my fatigue is mild, my inability to feel things is less noticeable.

It’s possible that this effect isn’t just a symptom of the fatigue: It could be the whole thing.

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