We might need 50 words for "tired".

In My Humble Opinion
1

Being tired is a major problem of our era, at least in the Western World. As the Inuit may have had 50 words for snow, so we may need 50 words for tiredness.
The problem is so vague, and may have so much separate causes, all interacting… And there are so much snake-oil remedies on the market, and so much possibly misdirected advice, ( herbal baths!). Or advice that is difficult (sleep more ! eat healthy! exercise! just relax! ) or impossible to follow… ( “work less! first try many sleep meds, then lose the sleep meds! exercise ! delegate chores and childcare !”)

Wikipedia lists some often identified causes of fatigue, and effective approaches. Fatigue - Wikipedia.

I’d like to know if you managed to do something about your fatigue, and also what you tried that didn’t help.

2

My main problem with being tired, as many of you know from my threads about my unhappiness with my marriage, was that I got cranky and resentful and unpleasant when my energy to do chores, ran out before the chores did.
And I resented the lack of help from my husband for turning me into this cranky buzzkill at family meals.

So what did I do about the problem?

  1. I divorced and got the kiddo 50 % of the time. I feel like that makes the division of work much more equal. I expected to find that my husband did a lot of chores I’d miss him doing; but that seems not to be the case.
  2. The kiddo grew up and that means that at 10 years old, he’s less work and more help. I found that with an only child, the cut-off point for exhaustion lies around 7 or 8.
  3. I got an official ADHD diagnosis. And meds to go with it. Methylphenidate and dexamphetamine in low doses mean that my energy level is now probably on a normal persons level. (I’m not quite sure what the meds do, exactly, yet).
  4. Now that I can and need no longer play the blame game with my ex, I was forced, as I hoped, to really find out what my own manual was for tiredness. One lesson is that I really, really need to be in bed by 10. If I don’t get eight hours, I have no psychological energy to be constructive and upbeat the next day, and my inner judge will work the inner whip, starting a vicious cycle. https://www.additudemag.com/?s=tired

I also really, really need to watch out around dinnertime. My blood sugar fluctuates with what and when I eat, leading to sudden tired spells that leave my thinking fuzzy.
Once I’m in such a fuzzy downspiral, I can no longer clearly, timely and pleasantly ask for what I need in the way of help, or to be excused. Once in such a funk, all I could do in the past was to just finish the damn chores in an irritated and almost autistic manner, and snap at anyone approaching me with help, advice or demands, simply because I was to tired to constructively plan, prioritize, or interact anymore.

Not too tired to feel guilty for behaving that way, though. :frowning: Sometimes both things happened in the same sentence. “Oh honey I’m so sorry I snapped at you but I’m so tired, and …NO the cat needs his damned meds in the morning, not now !! Why do I have to keep track of EVERYTHING in this damned household!”

This vicious cycle seems to have been stopped. If I take my meds in the late afternoon, and recognize the onset of such a mood early enough to debate with my loved ones how we’re going to do dinner, and who is going to do what, than all is well. Also my new partner (we see each other about 3 nights a week) is much better at doing chores and doing them well. We even cook as a team.
And if such a tired spell still hits, then I have instructed my partner to be stern and send me to crash on the couch, and worry about chores “later”.

I now also now trust that there usually IS a “later”. I used to think tiredness meant that my energy was done for that evening, and that meant that I had to keep going. Now I know that energy runs in time cycles of about 90 minutes for me. If I crash, I’ll be mostly fine again in 90 minutes, so I can crash.

I also know that I need time to relax in the evenings. What I do in that time, or how long it lasts really doesn’t matter all that much, contrary to what I thought before. What DOES matter is that I do not allow myself to spoil my own relaxation time by thinking that I should be doing something else in that time.

That is what I’ve learnt about battling my tiredness. I’ts maybe not much, but it is what works for me.

3

I’ve never found a good remedy for tiredness aside from ‘blow everything off to get some more sleep’, but I quite literally agree the English language could use some extra words, because there are so many different kinds of tired.

  • Up-too-late brain exhaustion, where you feel muzzyheaded and can drop off if you absentmindedly lean against a comfortabel surface for five seconds. And you will be very absentminded. Keep it up for long enough can you’ll be constantly blinking as your eyes try to shut on their own and you just have to keep opening them again.
  • Up-too-early brain exhaustion, where you’re still trying to get your circulation going and it would be so easy to just lie back down on your nice comfortable bed and you have full awareness of your surroundings but reacting to them is hard and your probably have a headache.
  • Out Of Spoons Error, where you’ve burnt through your executive function for the day doing mentally taxing things and complicated tasks like ‘get up from your chair, put on coat, walk outside’ just aren’t going to happen quite yet. I think this is what wikipedia is calling ‘Directed attention fatigue’.
  • Bored out of your skull, where your brain is just trying to go into screensaver mode because you can’t do anything useful and whatever is happening to you isn’t useful.

In the moment, working out which one is going on might be a start. Up-too-late can only be cured by sleep, up-too-early by walking around briskly, Out Of Spoons Error can sometimes be fought back by eating something, but eating something involves intermediate steps like ‘get up’ and ‘locate food’ …

4

It’s hard to beat sleeping more.

A couple of months ago, I had back to back weeks with cross country business trips, followed up by an immediate 3.5hr drive to a birthday dinner for my mom. I was worn out, made it to the hotel and felt sick as a dog, ready to vomit on the concierge’s shoes. Thankfully, we were early enough to town that I could say “I’m going to sleep, you go with the kid and walk around town, we’ll see if I can make the dinner when dinner time comes.” I got 3 hours of actual sleep and felt like myself again.

Now, maybe once a week, or once every couple of weeks, I say “the kid’s in bed, I’m going to bed too” rather than try to stay up with the wife.

5

When I learned to say “No” I’m more able to handle fatigue and adjust my activities to meet my needs. I’m still an insomniac, that causes problems. I’m working on it.

6

This article says that fatigue is like any emotion; a drive, a mechanism that compels us to do something that is good for our survival.
Like the emotion anger compels us to defend ourselves, and the emotion love compels us to care for our mate and ofspring, so the emotion of fatigue compels us to… stop doing what we’re doing and start doing something else.

It’s an interesting thought. Why work is exhausting even when it involves no physical labor - Vox