How can you tell it's stress making you feel badly?

I keep reading about people who feel awful and then realize it's because of something they ate or drank, or a stressor in their lives. I'm asking for your experiences because I'm no good at it. I felt not horrible on Monday, a little worse on Tuesday, rough yesterday and flattened today. On Monday I  picked up my husband's birthday gift after driving myself to the shopping center and doing a little browsing myself. It went better than I expected. Then on Tuesday, tried to make my husband's birthday special; took him to lunch with another couple, made sure he had a special dinner and that he was happy with his presents. On Wednesday we cleaned the house during the day and had company last night. Now, today, Thursday, I was hoping for a good day but instead can hardly got off the sofa.

The mental stuff is also worse when you're not busy, you know? I'm eight months post-jump and am so disappointed in myself for giving in to not feeling well. I feel like I should be pushing myself to complete things on my chore list, because I always feel better when I've accomplished something. But here I am, sitting outside with my laptop. pausing my TV watching only to come on this site. I know I should get up, put Sluggo under the ground cover or at least put some of my plants in. I've been laying around all day. So I'm mad at me. And also just tired; I get up and do something for 10 minutes and quickly just go back and sit down; I can't stand being alone with my thoughts. TV stops my thinking. I wish I cared enough to push myself but I just can't dredge up the motivation. My grandson is coming over later and I want to be 'up' for him.

So! I feel like a lazy, self-pitying worm. Should I be looking at foods I ate, activities etc?

Sometimes it happens randomly, I think in this case maybe you overdid yourself trying to make sure everything was nice for your husband and pushed your limits? It seems like we even more than healthy people need to learn our boundaries and practice self care. I get very much worse from stress when I feel attacked by people calling me a dramaqueen or making silly comments. I immediately feel worse. Or people calling me psychotic because I dismiss certain doctors as incompetent.

When I was in an easier withdrawal before from cortisone and had smaller waves, they were not triggered by stressal at work or eating certain things, either randomly or because of comments people said as well. Like how rude people could be, how confused I got by all these kinds of statements.

Gosh, I hope I can put two words together right now.

If I overexert myself physically, mentally, or emotionally, that's it for a day or so (PEM: Post exertional malaise).

If that's what happened to you, maybe you really need to take it easy today and give yourself a break.

I can't tolerate much sugar, but before, I could tolerate if fine.  Now it causes depression, irritability, anhedonia, major brain fog, etc.

Having my electrolytes imbalanced makes me feel irritable and anxious.

I hope you find out what's causing you to feel that way.