The Reality of Calculating Exposure and Energy: Geasa and Tynged

This is the second of seven realities in this series on living with chronic conditions and dynamic disability, explored through language, concepts and images from Celtic folklore.

Many chronic conditions¹ require constant calculation to get through the day. You can’t just go about ordinary activities without thinking about the costs of sensory stimulation, physical exertion, cognitive activity, emotional experience and social interaction. Exposure and energy have to be rationed and budgeted, insofar as this is possible. The ‘mundane’ becomes a web of obligations and constraints involving continuous and deliberate planning, judgement and decision making.

For energy-limiting conditions² such as ME/CFS³, Long Covid, and Fibromyalgia, ‘pacing‘⁴ is the typically recommended approach to energy management. Pacing helps to balance activity and energy to stay within available energy limits, and prevent or mitigate energy crashes and other symptoms, including subsequent post-exertional malaise (PEM)⁵ for some conditions. Practically, pacing means scheduling regular breaks and rest, prioritising and breaking down tasks, and tracking symptoms and indications (e.g., heart rate) to avoid overexertion.

Pacing requires discipline, and for several chronic conditions, it is not optional. Breaking limits has consequences that can be temporary or more permanent. Temporary effects might include PEM that lasts several days. But there can also be a reduction in baseline capability, lasting weeks, months or years, initiating a more severe form of the condition.

People with energy-limiting chronic conditions and dynamic disabilities can struggle with pacing. There can be an element of denial⁶ when making sense of a condition, or trying to manage it. And getting pacing right is not straightforward. It’s easy to lose track of what you’ve done, or to plan more than you can do, and thus exceed your capacity (which is not fully knowable).

For autism and other conditions, it can be necessary to limit time in highly stimulating sensory environments⁷, or to mask or camouflage⁸, suppressing and changing certain behaviours as a survival strategy. Exposure and masking comes at cost, which may be transient (sensory pain, fatigue, distress) or long-lasting (autistic burnout). Some use a calculation and budgeting approach as a way of managing exposure and energy through the day. Spoon theory⁹, originally proposed in the context of lupus by Christine Miserandino¹⁰, is often by autistic people and others for this purpose.

Folklore might help to illuminate the complexities of the need to manage exposure and energy. Geasa and Tynged are two Celtic concepts that may provide useful metaphors.

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A geis¹¹ or geas (plural: geasa) is, in Irish and Scottish folklore, a personal taboo or obligation that must be honoured. Geasa are often placed upon people and may be seen as both a curse and a gift or promise. Observing one’s geis can bring protection or power, while infraction will bring unpleasant consequences, even death. Violation may be deliberate, accidental, or inevitable when multiple geasa come into conflict, causing one to be infringed. While geasa must be followed as active obligations, they are not necessarily fair or reasonable.

Cú Chulainn¹² was an Irish warrior hero who was bound by multiple geasa. His immense power was sustained by rigid behavioural rules. His two most famous geasa were a prohibition against eating dog meat and a rule to never refuse hospitality. While travelling to battle, Cú Chulainn was deliberately offered a meal of roasted dog meat, and forced into an impossible double bind: to accept the hospitality would violate one geis, but to refuse it would violate another.

Tynged¹³ (Welsh; plural tynghedau) means fate or destiny. It is a life-shaping condition and obligation, with terms and limits that must be honoured and respected. A tynged is often pronounced onto someone. It cannot be broken or annulled, but may sometimes be bypassed via lateral thinking, often involving loopholes during liminal periods or situations, depending on the exact original wording of the tynged.

The most famous example is the myth of Lleu Llaw Gyffes¹⁴ in the stories of the Mabinogion¹⁵, a collection of mythical Welsh tales from the 12th-13th centuries, from earlier oral traditions. Tynghedau were placed upon Lleu Llaw Gyffes by his mother Arianrhod, which would deny him a name (identity), arms (social power) and a wife (and therefore children and lineage). He overcame the tynghedau with the help of his uncle Gwydion, and Lleu’s progression through life became a battle against a predetermined, restrictive destiny.

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For those with energy-limiting conditions, pacing may be seen as a sort of geis: an obligation that is both a promise (because it gives some stability and helps prevent PEM), and a curse (because it requires continuous discipline and limits one’s possibilities, and identity). The terms of pacing become clearer over time, but contraventions have consequences, whether or not you understand and accept the rules (there is no ‘just culture‘¹⁶ for chronic conditions, and you will make many mistakes).

Similarly, the need to work, socialise and take care of others means that people with chronic conditions need to mask or camouflage (e.g., in the case of autism), or ‘push through’. If you do this, then you will suffer health consequences. If you don’t, you will suffer social, employment, or financial consequences. Unfortunately, the health consequences of masking or pushing through can themselves lead, eventually, to social, employment, or financial consequences. It is often a matter of timing.

The traps and double binds of living with chronic conditions and dynamic disabilities extend to the healthcare system. Attending necessary appointments may be impossible for those who are bedbound, but for whom healthcare workers will not travel. An exercise physiology test may be enough to trigger a crash even for someone with a mild form of ME/CFS, for instance. And there are very many appointments. It can feel like you’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t. You may have to sacrifice your health now, for the possibility of support – sometime in the future – for an incurable condition.

Little of this is visible to most people. To outsiders, Cú Chulainn looked healthy and even invincible right up until he took the bite of the meat. A person with lupus or autism may look fine, masking their internal struggle, until limits are broken (e.g., pushing through), or requests that would result in this are refused (e.g., high-demand social events). At this point, symptoms or safeguards may become visible, but are not necessarily understood as such.

While geasa might be framed as “these are the sacred rules that bind you”, tynged may be seen as “this is the fate that awaits you.” But geasa can become destiny, and a tynged can take the form of a binding obligation or prohibition, so the two overlap substantially. The requirements for living with chronic conditions create life-shaping conditions for living that nobody asked for, and feel ‘put upon’. We all have to live life on life’s terms, but for some, those terms can be unusually restrictive and unforgiving. If you’re living with a chronic condition, this requires acceptance.

Finally, just as a tynged might be bypassed via a liminal loophole (depending on the terms of the tynged), for people with chronic conditions, the wait for a cure or remission is a psychological liminal space. You are stuck in a perpetual state between the ‘healthy life’ of the past and a hopefully-healed future: a waiting room where life goals are put on hold until you ‘get better’. Every new medical appointment or treatment, every clinical trial or medical breakthrough, feels like a potential exit door. Your destiny seems to be in others’ hands. In this liminal space, you’re carrying an invisible burden.

Previous post in the series

The Reality of Fluctuation and Unpredictability: Aos Sí and Awen

Next post in the series

The Reality of Invisible Burden: coming soon

References

1. Wikipedia. (2026). Chronic condition. Wikimedia Foundation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_condition
2. Business Disability Forum. (2024, September 11). Factsheet – Energy-limiting conditions. Business Disability Forum. https://businessdisabilityforum.org.uk/resource/factsheet-energy-limiting-conditions/
3. Shorrock, S. (2026, May 17). I crash: Texts from M.E. Humanistic Systems. https://humanisticsystems.com/2026/05/17/i-crash-texts-from-m-e/
4. The ME Association. (2023). Pacing: Activity and energy management for people with ME/CFS and Long Covid. https://meassociation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Pacing-V3.pdf
5. Stussman, B., Williams, A., Snow, J., Gavin, A., Scott, R., Nath, A., & Walitt, B. (2020). Characterization of post–exertional malaise in patients with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome. Frontiers in Neurology, 11. https://doi.org/10.3389/fneur.2020.01025
6. McAlearney, A. S., Eiterman, L. P., Mayers, E., Eramo, J. L., & MacEwan, S. R. (2024). A journey through grief: Experiences of loss among patients with long COVID. Journal of Patient Experience, 11. https://doi.org/10.1177/23743735241272267
7. National Autistic Society. (2026). Autism and sensory processing. https://www.autism.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/about-autism/sensory-processing
8. Pearson, A., & Rose, K. (2021). A conceptual analysis of autistic masking: Understanding the narrative of stigma and the illusion of choice. Autism in Adulthood, 3(1), 52–60. https://doi.org/10.1089/aut.2020.0043
9. Wikipedia. (2026). Spoon theory. Wikimedia Foundation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoon_theory
10. Miserandino, C. (2019, November 17). The spoon theory. Web Archive. https://web.archive.org/web/20191117210039/https://butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/written-by-christine/the-spoon-theory/
11. Wikipedia. (2026). Geas. Wikimedia Foundation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geas
12. Wikipedia. (2026). Cú Chulainn. Wikimedia Foundation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cú_Chulainn
13. Wikipedia. (2026). Tynged. Wikimedia Foundation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tynged
14. Wikipedia. (2026). Lleu Llaw Gyffes. Wikimedia Foundation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lleu_Llaw_Gyffes
15. Wikipedia. (2026). Mabinogion. Wikimedia Foundation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mabinogion
16. Shorrock, S. (2023). Just culture (EP). Humanistic Systems. https://humanisticsystems.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/ep5-just-culture.pdf

Other Sources and Notes

• A spoken explanation of Geis/Geas can be found in ‘Irish Curse – “Geas”’ at https://youtu.be/jCZnFPB9oy4?si=npOFsUA_lOt8ZhkB

How to cite

Shorrock, S. (2026, 3 June). The reality of calculating exposure and energy: Geasa and tynged. Humanistic Systems. https://humanisticsystems.com/2026/06/03/the-reality-of-calculating-exposure-and-energy-geasa-and-tynged/

One last thing…

My brother Gary Shorrock is taking on one of Britain’s most demanding endurance challenges: the Bob Graham Round in the Lake District on 27 June 2026. The funds raised through this challenge will go to ME Research UK, a charity that commissions and funds high-quality biomedical research into the causes, consequences, and treatment of ME/CFS.

Gary must cover around 66 miles, summit 42 fells, and climb more than 8,200 metres – approximately 26,900 feet of ascent – all within 24 hours. That means steep, rocky, boggy terrain, long hours on the move, and likely sections in darkness and harsh weather. The Bob Graham Round is an exceptional test of endurance, preparation, judgement, and determination. Only around 3,000 people have ever achieved it.

Gary has previously undertaken major endurance events and fundraising challenges, raising over £20,000 for a children’s hospital charity. Support for this fundraiser will help contribute to urgently needed research into ME/CFS – a devastating and neglected illness. Any donation would be greatly appreciated, and sharing the page would also make a big difference. Please see:

https://www.justgiving.com/page/gary-shorrock, or

bit.ly/gary66

Thank you for getting this far, and thank you for your support.

Steven and Gary Shorrock