Psychiatrist Explains Why You Feel Tired All The Time (No Matter What You Do...)

I have two types of tiredness. The good tired. When you worked hard, exercised, whatever and it makes sense to be/feel tired. The bad tired, that doesn't seem to make sense. When you did little, had a good meal, good night's rest and you should just feel ok, but for some reason you feel/are tired.

The most relaxed I've felt in years was when I was admitted for 10 days for severe COVID so my boss and coworkers stopped bothering me for a while. There is something seriously wrong about how we live our lives today.

My psychiatrist just recommended me for a sleep study. I hear people talking about jumping out of bed in the morning, full of joy and ready to take on the world.  I have no idea what that feels like.  I can't remember ever feeling that way, even as a child.  My parents constantly called me "lazy", like it was a conscious choice.  I don't choose to feel tired, it's just my everyday state of being.

An important point that i think should have been mentioned is that this is how depression works, your mind will gradually increase the expacting amount of energy needed for simple tasks and make you feel constantly tired just by the thought of answering your phone, opening the door, ordering food. If you let the tiredness controll you and fall into this spiral you may eventually become a shut-in.

I have heard many people talk about what their psychiatrists tell them to do but this video clearly and simply explain why you should do them and why your brain is acting the way it is. Really good job!

Fair warning: my girlfriend was exhausted for years. She was depressed and the doctors explained that her exhaustion was caused by the depression. About 6 months into our relationship I said, "It's wild how you don't have narcolepsy." She was like, "what?" She had no idea what narcolepsy was. I assumed the first thing they would have done was sleep testing, but the doctor never did. They just said you're probably depressed and didn't help her for years. She didn't even have to finish the sleep test. It was so clear she had narcolepsy, they let her leave early. Turns out she hadn't ever received a full night of sleep. Her brain wouldn't shut down enough during sleep. My point is, if you are really, reallly tired. Try to see a sleep specialist.

I have ADHD and this is really how my brain functioned when I was depressed and was in college. My brain perceived any task as a big task, be it washing dishes or writing a paper. All my tasks became a giant pile of rocks on my back, and even thinking about having to complete 1 or 2 of them to make the load lighter was tiring. I felt tired all the time.

I've been saying for a while that the reason we're all so tapped out all the time is because life has moved into a pace that is unsustainable. Humans used to live by an incredibly different and less intense schedule, something that's only really changed in the last hundred and fifty years. Our bodies and minds can't adapt as quickly as society does, but because of societal conditioning we think we have/should have. So in essence every day you ask your body for a level of energy it wasn't made to regularly output for work and family and all your interests and all that...but we don't rest enough to recharge it. This is something that's compounded if you have any sort of mental health condition but especially depression. And yet we all expect each other to go on like none of that is happening. Its not a mystery why we would then all constantly feel exhausted. The feeling of being tired is there to tell you you need to slow down. Our society forcing us to ignore that leads to exhaustion, and I don't know about y’all but being exhausted and barely making headway in the world despite that? Pretty depressing to me. Its a cycle and until we change it on a larger scale, its not one we're breaking out of any time soon.

You hit the nail exactly on the head when it comes to ADHD. Start nothing. The "reward centre" is broken, so I checked 15 tasks, some of them difficult, off my to-do list today... and it's just... on to the next one. There's no "ding!" of feeling good, feeling accomplished. It's just. Done. And So Many Things are just exhausting.

THAT is why ADHD can be a disability. No, it can't just be "gotten over." If that was a real thing, I'd have done it already. But meds to help have been in worldwide shortage for a couple years now AND docs act like the idea of treating ADHD with actual medicine is like giving someone heroin. I spent years not knowing why my life was just... ruined. All the time. No matter how hard I tried. I got counselled for ANXIETY (a baseless belief or expectation) because of the very tangible, provable instances that kept happening. Because why would you medicate someone with a dopamine disorder. Feeling tired allll the time isn't always just depression. There's just no reward. Apparently people really DO feel good about doing things sometimes? They're not just bragging or faking it for accolades? .............. weird. I get exhausted looking at having to do dishes. There will just be dishes tomorrow. I will expend a tonne of energy (especially compared to what I have) and then in 24 hours, it's meaningless. No reward. Tired.

My Mom has often said to me that Depression isn't when you're too sad, it's when everything is too *hard*. I find, for the reasons this video explains incredibly well, that Depression is just being tired *all the time*.

I feel like my tiredness comes from overthinking and/or thinking too many steps ahead. I'm unable to chop big tasks into smaller ones and that leads to feeling that every task is overwhelming. I always start learning things with motivation, but as soon as I get deeper into it and know much more about it - I know how much more I don't know yet. Thinking about that causes tiredness indeed. So as usual - I leave things unfinished. And I blame myself for it. It's like broken loop I can't get out of.

Fatigue can be a symptom of many physical illnesses as well. I have been exhausted for years. Come to find out I had hypothyroidism/Hashimoto’s disease, extremely low vitamin D, thyroid cancer, fibromyalgia and a bunch of other things. I thought I was burnt out at first. I knew I was sick cuz I felt like something was wrong but the doctors kept telling me it was anxiety and depression since I suffered from those in the past. Listen to your body, you know yourself best.

I used to work at a tire factory, but I quit that job since I felt tired all the time. So I started working for an exhaust factory instead, and I ended up quitting that one since I was so exhausted. Then I switched fields and went into banking, but that job did not last since I lost interest. Next, I worked for the IRS but quit that job too since it was too taxing. I then got hired at a crematory, but I got burnt out. But after all of this, I finally found a job that I can really see myself doing at a mirror factory.

As a kid I was told “once begun, half done”. That is so true. A game I play with myself when I’m felling overwhelmed is to set the timer for 15 minutes and hit it like a hand grenade. Work my ass off for 15 minutes with intense focus. At the end of the time I very often feel inspired to continue and the next thing I know, the foundation is in place and it’s much easier to consistently work on the project.

As a sleep researcher, we distinguish between sleepiness (propensity to fall asleep) and fatigue (perceiving a lack of resources to manage the current stress level) which I find useful in this scenario

Life hack for y'all: As an adult, you don't have to go "home" for the holidays. You could just not. That is an option. If the very idea of going there gives you existential dread, then quite frankly, it's not even "home" anymore. Just stay in your actual home and hang out with the people you actually want to hang out with. You don't owe anybody anything, you're a grown-up.

You nailed it. I had a job cleaning at events, emptying bins. The problem was we were over staffed and there was no work to be done, yet i was expected to look busy by management. This was exhausting for me because i grew bored real quick just walking around in circles at the event occasoinally picking up tiny pieces of litter . I had to quit that job because it wasn't worth standing up for 8 hours a day. If there was more work to be done i would have felt less exhausted. My brain told me this by giving me the sensation of being tired.

The worst type of tiredness I've experienced in my life was after a day of overthinking about things I need to do and not actually doing any of them. Feeling tired and guilty, a great combo. But I also noticed that chunking a huge task into pieces also takes a lot of mental effort which also kind of exhausts me. Especially if I'm supposed to plan out activities for both me and others or explain to someone how to do something. Mental load is exhausting. Women everywhere have been telling you this for ages. It's not the activities themselves that tire us, it's the overwhelming tasks and either delegating or bearing the entire invisible workload.

If you have ADHD (or depression), you might not even feel good when you actually worked on a task. What helps me is to split into micro tasks : if instead of "write my dissertation", you convince yourself that what you have to do is "read two pages of this article" or "make a very imperfect first draft of this part in 10 minutes", then it's a bit easier to unlock an achievement.

Visiting my grandmother always made me tired. Then she had a stroke, had to live with us& and I started caregiving for her. I am constantly exhausted.

I’m a medical student and the exams is very hard no matter how much I study I still get bad grades that’s why through the years I developed chronic fatigue whenever I have to study I feel very tired and depressed because I didn’t see any point of studying anymore. You explained everything I’m going through