Blog Short #269: Why Am I Tired All The Time?

When I was 30, I got mono, which flattened me for a few months, but I eventually returned to work and normal life.

I was a single mom at the time and working full-time at a community mental health center as a psychotherapist. Although the mono had supposedly lifted and I’d recovered, I was tired all the time – so much so that after six months back at work, I had to quit my job and go home with my son to live with my parents for a year before getting back out on my own.

All my medical tests looked great. There seemed to be no reason for the extreme ongoing fatigue.

It turns out I had a significant, undetected case of the Epstein-Barr virus, and later had developed thyroid disease. It took about five years to get back to normal.

Feeling tired all the time feels like being stuck in quicksand.

You wake up tired.
Simple tasks feel heavy.
You keep waiting for motivation to return.
You wonder if this is just aging, weakness, burnout, or something worse.

The truth is, it’s rarely one thing. In my case, it appeared to start with a recognized medical issue, but there were underlying causes, including emotional exhaustion, high stress, depression, and financial anxiety.

It’s not always easy to figure out, and that alone is frustrating and, over time, debilitating.

A good place to start is to identify what’s draining you. Often, it’s a process of elimination to get the right answers.

Here’s a list you can review, along with some actions you can take to help.

Hidden Medical Conditions

We’ll start here because that’s the example I gave you in the introduction. In addition to an undetected virus, as I had, there are many other undetected medical conditions or issues that can cause chronic fatigue, such as:

Anemia
Diabetes
Thyroid disease
Heart problems
Autoimmune disorders (becoming more common)
Long-haul COVID or other lingering viruses
Hormone disturbances (low testosterone, menopause)

There are also nutritional deficiencies, such as B12, vitamin D, omega-3s, and magnesium, to name a few.

Poor Diet

The American diet is not conducive to good health. Fast food, overly processed foods, and the liberal use of hormones and toxic chemicals in farming and food production are not doing us any favors.

Sometimes you can resolve chronic tiredness simply by shifting your diet.

Choose a diet that suits you, but do some research to find out what’s best. Generally, a clean diet with adequate protein, plenty of fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and healthy fats can significantly improve how you feel.

You might also find that you have less anxiety and better mood once you regularly get more healthy food into your system.

Chronic Stress

Chronic stress is a vampire. It sucks the life out of you. Slowly, deviously, and brutally.

Worse, it’s almost impossible to avoid because of the heavy expectations we all labor under, and it’s only getting worse.

We’re a culture of more and faster. It’s harder to keep up. Our nervous systems are in a constant state of alertness, which is exhausting and diminishes our drive and hope.

It’s necessary to step back and assess the specific stressors you’re dealing with and what you can do to reduce them. A weekly review helps you stay on track with your progress.

Stress will fill any empty space you have if you don’t manage it diligently.

Areas to pay close attention to include:

Financial anxiety
Relationship tensions, especially with spouses, kids, and coworkers
Self-imposed stress (perfectionism, overcommitment)
Caretaking responsibilities
Decision fatigue (What can you delegate or cut out?)

Anxiety

Anxiety is both a reaction to other stressors and a source of stress in its own right.

In the former case, anxiety decreases when the causative stressors are reduced. But in the latter case, anxiety itself is the stressor. This type of anxiety comes from:

Catastrophic thinking
Obsessive-compulsive tension
Triggers from historical traumatic experiences
Panic attacks with no obvious cause

When the cause is obvious, you can address the situations that give rise to it. But the second kind of anxiety that comes from within you requires some help. In those cases, seek therapy and consider medication until you have enough tools to manage it.

Depression

Depression, like anxiety, is a chicken-or-egg situation. Do you feel depressed for no apparent reason, or are you depressed because of your current situation? Or maybe some of both?

Depression can leave you feeling emotionally flat, tired, unmotivated, hopeless, irritable, and overwhelmed. You want to withdraw from everything and numb your mind to avoid ruminating.

A major source of depression is feeling helpless.

You may feel unable to solve problems weighing on you, unable to access your basic needs, or stuck in toxic or abusive relationships.

Any of the stressors we’ve covered so far can make you feel depressed.

Whereas anxiety overly energizes you, depression feels heavy and puts everything in slow motion.

Lack of Meaning or Engagement

You’re just existing. Going through the motions. You feel stuck and have no incentive to get unstuck.

This is different from depression. It’s a lack of meaning or purpose in your life.

The upside is that you can change this situation by giving focused thought and consideration to what you could pursue to restore your sense of purpose.

Start small. Take one action that brings you personal satisfaction.

After succeeding, move on to another and another until you begin rebuilding.

The key is to choose actions that speak to you, not just keep you busy. Building purpose isn’t an all-or-nothing activity. It consists of small, continuous steps.

By the way, age doesn’t matter in these cases. You can find purpose at any age, regardless of how many years you think you have left. Broaden your definition.

Unsolved Emotional Issues

The past is in the past unless it’s in your present.

If you’re struggling with something from your history in your current life, it’s time to face and resolve it.

If you’ve already done that, great! Let it go! But if you often ruminate on something, keep shoving it down, or have suppressed it so much that you don’t know the toll it’s taking, you need to address it.

Repetitive or unresolved emotional conflict is draining. It will continue to drain you until you deal with it and find closure.

Therapy is often an effective way to work through it, especially when combined with journaling or targeted psychological exercises that address the issue.

Don’t let painful experiences define you.

Social and Environmental Energy Drain

Up to now, we’ve been talking about internal sources of tiredness. Now it’s time to address environmental sources. These include toxic relationships, negative workplaces, clutter, overstimulation, and intrusive noise.

Take a quick survey and list the sources of environmental drain in your life.

You’re likely aware of some of them off the top of your head because you think about them often. But I’ll bet there are some sneaky ones you don’t consider much.

Like the colleague at work who’s super nice but talks your ear off without considering how it affects you.

Or the neighbor who leaves his barking dog outside every morning when you’re trying to have your coffee and relax before you start the day.

Write them all down, then decide how you can eliminate them.

I lived with a barking dog for years until that neighbor finally moved. I was astounded to realize how much it had affected me until the barking stopped. Don’t underestimate.

Too Little or Poor Quality Sleep

This one is well known. It’s the first thing you think of when you feel overly tired. And it’s one of the most common causes of tiredness.

Not everyone needs exactly 8 hours of sleep each night, but most need at least 7.

Just as important is the quality of sleep. A night of fretful sleep, with frequent trips to the bathroom or waking up and going back to sleep many times, means too little deep sleep.

You need enough quality sleep to let your brain run its nightly wash cycle to remove “brain trash.”

Brain trash consists of toxic proteins such as beta-amyloid, tau protein, and Lewy bodies. These abnormally shaped proteins cause cell death. Our brain efficiently removes them during sleep. Otherwise, they build up and cause damage.

I’ve listed some articles below to help you improve your sleep patterns.

A Sedentary Life

It’s too easy to be sedentary. If you work at a desk or spend most of the day on your computer, you’re sitting too much.

Sitting for too long reduces blood flow to your brain, impairs your memory, taxes your joints, and leaves you sluggish.

You need to get up and move around at least once an hour and preferably every 30 minutes.

Regular exercise is also important for counteracting the effects of sedentary behavior.

Walking works fine. But if you want to keep yourself in the best shape, add some weight training to your routine to keep your muscles strong. This is especially important as you age.

Overstimulation From Technology

We can’t finish without mentioning this one. The intrusiveness of technology is like someone ringing your doorbell all day long. The worst offenders are:

Constant notifications (Leave me alone!)
Doomscrolling (No more bad news, please!)
Information overload (My head’s swimming. Stop!)
Fractured attention (Now, where was I?)
Never shutting down (Where’s my off switch??)

Enough said on this one. You know what to do.

Solve One Problem

Chronic tiredness is rarely due to a single issue. There’s a lot of overlap among the factors we’ve discussed.

For example, if you find more meaning and purpose, you might also resolve your depression or let go of a toxic relationship.

Think of tiredness as a knot of tangled strings. Untangle one string, and the others start to loosen.

The knot is a state of energy depletion. When you untangle the knot, your energy flow is restored.

That’s all for today! Have a great two weeks!

All my best,

Barbara

Sleep articles:
Strategies to Promote Better Sleep in These Uncertain Times
Why You Gotta Get Your Sleep

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