Why Am I So Tired? It’s Not Always Sleep
There was a time in college when I decided I was eating too much red meat and needed to cut back. As I stopped eating red meat, I became increasingly fatigued; no matter how much I slept, I always felt like I needed more. After a week of exhaustion, I cooked a steak over the weekend–as we Texans like to do. The next day I awoke feeling revitalized. This experience had me reconsider my overall dietary iron intake and forced me to make a lifestyle change. It was a good reminder that sleep is not a cure-all for feeling tired; sometimes there are other underlying causes, like a family history of anemia in my case. What's going on within our nervous system on a daily basis can also be one of those underlying causes, slowly siphoning our energy until one day we find ourselves wanting to stay in bed longer and longer, unable to find rejuvenation from what we traditionally consider “rest.”
🌷🌷🌷
The Survival System
Chronic stress forces the body into a constant “working mode,” keeping our primal survival responses on overdrive. We usually call this the fight-or-flight response—or, more accurately, the fight/flight/fawn/freeze response. During these states, the sympathetic nervous system becomes activated, flooding the body with the chemicals needed to survive danger. An acute stressor—a dog lunging at a fence, a car swerving—briefly spikes adrenaline. Once the brain registers we’re safe, it sends the “all clear,” and the body returns to a calmer, connected state, the one mammals are meant to inhabit most of the time.
A chronic stressor–something that spikes our adrenaline on a more regular basis–will have a different effect on our body. When adrenaline isn’t enough to sustain the ongoing alertness required, the brain recruits cortisol, preparing the body for long-term vigilance. While cortisol is incredibly adaptive in the short-term, long-term elevation begins to impact every body system. What once protected us becomes the very thing wearing us down.
The Real Villain Origin Story
Ultimately, what causes chronic cortisol release (or chronic stress) originates from our original roots: our earliest environments. When a child grows up in an environment that overwhelms their nervous system—emotionally unpredictable, neglectful, or chaotic—they must adapt to survive. As animals, we have an evolutionary instinct to adapt in environments that are dangerous to us so that we can overcome the danger. Sometimes that danger is to our physical wellbeing, but other times it is to our emotional wellbeing. We need food, water, and physical safety—but we also need connection, attunement, and emotional nurturing; much like a garden, we need to be nurtured in order to thrive. A chronic lack of those needs being met becomes a stressor in its own right, one that often goes unnamed until adulthood.
When children cannot fight or flee, they turn to other survival strategies. Some become peacekeepers. Some try to manage their caretaker’s emotions. Some disappear into their rooms and disconnect from the chaos around them. These responses protect the child from acting on unbearable thoughts, even though the long-term cost to the nervous system is significant.
As we move into adolescence and adulthood, having learned to tolerate dysfunction, we unknowingly recreate or expect it. This is where perceived danger gets tricky: when dysfunction is familiar, it becomes the lens through which we interpret the world. The brain begins to fall into confirmation bias, misreading neutral or benign cues as threats. For example, some people have an intolerance of silence in the room with their romantic partner, because in their childhood a caretaker may have often weaponized the “silent treatment” against them. Therefore, silence is misread as a perceived danger, rather than the partner just simply not feeling like talking in that moment. And from that come the coping behaviors: repeatedly asking, “Are you mad at me?”, picking a fight to break the tension, or suffering in silence while anxiety spirals. The thought processes behind all of this take a toll on us biologically and become draining; what was once an intelligent survival mechanism has now become the tool of our very destruction. Things continue to feel worse over time despite trying to connect with others, and the exhaustion becomes an anchor around us.
But How Will I Know What It Is?
It can be difficult for us to recognize this exhaustion for what it is, but there are clear signs once you know what to look for. Waking up “tired” is the first indicator that something is wrong, because sleep is supposed to be restful. Waking up tired—despite “enough” sleep—is often the first red flag. You may find yourself crashing on weekends, unable to make plans or complete tasks because you’re constantly trying to “catch up” on rest. If these symptoms appeared recently, the cause may be burnout, which we often associate with work. But when this state has lasted months or years, especially if accompanied by feeling shut down, constantly on edge, emotionally disconnected from your body, or chronically overwhelmed, the issue likely runs deeper than job-related stress. Trauma fatigue feels like carrying a boulder on your back your entire life and never getting stronger—only more tired.
When the ocean is always storming, sailors cannot practice their navigation skills. Similarly, when the nervous system is thrown into chaos without pause, we lose the capacity to explore ourselves, our emotions, or our relationships with clarity and curiosity.
What You Can Do
Healing ourselves from this exhaustion, truly resting like our body requires, is not something that will be accomplished with bath bombs and spa days (as much as I love both). I appreciate Tricia Hersey’s philosophy on rest, which she discusses in depth in her book Rest Is Resistance. To paraphrase, rest is something the powers that be do not want us to have, especially Black women. The goal of Capitalist’s is to make as much profit as possible, at the expense of Other’s well-being. So, if “the man,” does not want us to rest, then it is an act of liberation and protest to rest. It is radical to set boundaries against being treated like an expenditure rather than a person of value. Saying no, doing less, and reconnecting with the Earth sound simple, but they require emotional labor. They require unlearning the belief that your worth is tied to productivity or pleasing others.
When we have trauma buried within us, down at the very root of our origin, we have to lean on the help of others. Healing does not happen in isolation, however, it is possible to grow a life with the nourishing soil of community and love that branches into compassion for ourselves and the world around us. And while this is a blog written by a therapist, “therapeutic space” is a broad concept, and by no means do I think therapy with someone like me is the only space where we can heal from trauma and economic exploitation. For you, that space might look like Yoga, martial arts, Tai Chi, dance, community gatherings, group backpacking, meditation traditions, or creative practices that ground the body. That being said, trauma therapy can be used to hone in on specific unresolved stories from the past and address behaviors that someone wants to concretely focus on changing. What is important is finding a therapeutic space you feel comfortable enough doing the work in consistently so that the change can take shape for you over time. Without consistency, the flower that is your changed life will struggle to bloom.
Chronic fatigue and exhaustion is not a moral issue or a character flaw; it’s not the end either. This unique type of tiredness is a signal from your body: a warning that you need to slow down and reexamine things. Some of us cannot imagine what a rested body feels like because we’ve never had that experience. The aim isn’t to transform into someone else; it’s to learn what your own baseline of neutrality feels like. Once you can recognize that state, it becomes easier to find your way back to it. We can cultivate a thought pattern that reaffirms for ourselves that rest is not just a “good” thing, but necessary for our peace and sanity. And while the exhaustion within you may feel like a faucet you cannot turn off, you do have the capacity to reach for the spigot. One steady, supported step at a time.
This blog is not a diagnostic tool and is meant to be an informative resource only. If you are curious about anything I explore in my blog, contact me for a free 20 minute consultation.