momneedsanap, I don't know how you do it with 3 kids, and I hand it to you for managing that. I truly understand what you mean about balancing things and sometimes not having the energy to do two things back-to-back or near each other, and you have to choose.
Sometimes this itself is the hardest thing for people to understand. ----"If you could do that, why not this, too?"
Another thing that is hard sometimes is for people to understand what kind of energy is required for different things, and how sometimes I have one kind of energy but not another. For instance, I am a very introverted person, so it takes more energy for me to go to a place where I need to interact with people and socialize than it takes for me to go for a walk, or even to my dance class because I don't have to walk fast or dance hard, and in those places I don't have to talk to anyone much.
This has been a serious struggle with the person I am partnered with these days, although things have improved a bit over the past year. I think fibro is a very difficult thing to manage because it's so capricious. It is easy for people to think you are using an excuse to get out of something because you sometimes can and sometimes cannot, and the fact that it is an invisible disability for the most part adds to the difficulty.
For me, it just has come down to this: I am no longer willing to apologize for the fact that I have this disability. I tell people how things are for me, and that there are times I may have to cancel plans, and that it is up to them if they want to believe me when I tell the truth about my condition or not. If they want to choose not to believe me, then whatever the relationship is or could be, it will not be sustained. I am an honorable person who doesn't lie or play games. I am as straightforward as they come, so if a person chooses not to see me for what I am they don't need to be in my life.
And that is part of balancing energy, too. Keeping out the people who make it worse! I was getting some grief from my partner about it a few times, and I finally just said, "Look, you don't have to take care of me. I won't ask you to do things for me. You don't have to do anything at all, in fact. But I will absolutely insist that you do NOT do things that make it worse!" And that includes having a bad attitude toward me because I cannot do something that I want to do just as much as they want me to.