Feeling tired? That tiredness you feel might be anxiety.
I know it’s not just me, since I am aware that many of my friends and clients are tired. Or fatigued. Or even exhausted.
Is it the change of season? The ongoing pandemic? The general state of the world?
Or have you taken on too many things without putting anything down?
I’d like you to consider that ALL of those things are probably true, along with with dealing with transitions—people going back to offices, kids going back to school or schools shutting down due to COVID, etc. And the other things is the vast amount of supply chain issues, from new cars (not available because of a lack of computer chips) to building supplies and paint (missing elements or ingredients due to supply chain issues) to certain food supply issues (some things out of stock or delayed).
And that is before we factor in the upcoming issues with ALL THE THINGS for the holidays (it’s not just books, it’s toys and clothing and more . . . there have been massive shipping disruptions for everything from China, and also operating disruptions at many plants and shipping centers in the USA. If you haven’t already read about these elsewhere, this is your notice to SHOP NOW for the holidays this year, because by November, it will be impossible to get some of the things you may want.
Yeah. It’s fucking exhausting.
My thanks to Dr. Kelly Vincent for allowing me to share her graphic from Instagram with you. You can follow her on IG here.
That tiredness you feel might be anxiety.
On an average day, people who identify as female tend to carry quite a lot of weight around with them. It could be literal, in the form of heavy pocketbooks, bags of groceries, or even children or others for whom they are caring, but it can also be invisible.
The weight of other people’s expectations. The effort to do it all and not complain. Any invisible health issues you might have (like my fibromyalgia and arthritis or my friends who have ME/CFS or slipped discs or endometriosis or ulcerative colitis or something else).
The exertion involved in keeping all those plates spinning, hoping that none fall or break.
As Dr. Vincent’s graphic shows, you could be tired from:
sleep disruption or lack of sleep
managing physical symptoms of stress or anxiety daily
muscle tension, which leads to physical fatigue
the effort spent putting on a false front so that everyone thinks you’re “fine”
a burnt-out sympathetic nervous system that is stuck in fight or flight
the massive amount of stress hormones racing through your system and affecting your physical body, including your mental processes
the inability to think clearly due to obsessive worry (see also: sleep disruption and stress hormones)
the concern about sharing your thoughts and feelings with others, and worrying that they might not “get” it
Anxiety can be a monster, and it can cleverly (some might say sneakily) take a number of forms. Including tiredness or exhaustion.
If you have been feeling tired in ways that worry you, or in ways that you struggle to explain, the cause could be anxiety, or at least anxiousness. Studies are already starting to show that anxiety and its sometime companion depression have been on the rise during the pandemic, across all demographics.
It is both completely understandable and logical that this is the case, and completely unacceptable that we feel we have to put on a happy face and pretend it isn’t so.
If you are feeling stressed or anxious, I hope that knowing you aren’t alone helps.
I invite you to read some of my prior posts on the subject, starting with this one: “Feeling as anxious as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs?” If you begin with that post, you will find another dozen or more that you can scroll through for tips on how to deal with anxiousness. Or if you prefer, you can scoop up a sale copy of Lower your anxiety, the e-book I compiled from all of the posts, complete with bonuses like journaling pages, a hydration tracker, and a self-coaching exercise.
