Emotional Fatigue Quotes

Symptoms of Amor Deliria Nervosa PHASE ONE: -preoccupation; difficulty focusing -dry mouth -perspiration, sweaty palms -fits of dizziness and disorientation -reduced mental awareness; racing thoughts; impaired reasoning skills PHASE TWO: -periods of euphoria; hysterical laughter and heightened energy -periods of despair; lethargy -changes in appetite; rapid weight loss or weight gain -fixation; loss of other interests -compromised reasoning skills; distortion of reality -disruption of sleep patterns; insomnia or constant fatigue -obsessive thoughts and actions -paranoia; insecurity PHASE THREE (CRITICAL): -difficulty breathing -pain in the chest, throat or stomach -complete breakdown of rational faculties; erratic behavior; violent thoughts and fantasies; hallucinations and delusions PHASE FOUR (FATAL): -emotional or physical paralysis (partial or total) -death If you fear that you or someone you know may have contracted deliria, please call the emergency line toll-free at 1-800-PREVENT to discuss immediate intake and treatment.

Urja chakra is the chakra of strength and vitality. It removes the fatigue from overwork, blood deficiency, illness, emotional upset and insomnia. Shilajit is the key herb for this chakra.

Bodily haste and exertion usually leave our thoughts very much at the mercy of our feelings and imagination.

Call it dysphoric mania, agitated depression, or a mixed state: nobody will understand anyway. Mania and depression at once mean the will to die and the motivation to make it happen. This is why mixed states are the most dangerous periods of mood disorders. Tearfulness and racing thoughts happen. So do agitation and guilt, fatigue and morbidity and dread. Walking late at night, trying to get murdered, happens. Trying to explain a bipolar mixed state is like trying to explain the Holy Trinity, three persons in one God: you just have to take it on faith when I tell you that the poles bend, cross, never snapping.

While we can offer our guidance and a shoulder to cry on, our responsibility does not lie in fixing others and their problems. We need to draw the line when it comes to giving help and remember that other people must ultimately take responsibility for their happiness, not us.

The abstract intelligence produces a fatigue that's the worst of all fatigues. It doesn't weigh on us like bodily fatigue, nor disconcert like the fatigue of emotional experience. It's the weight of our consciousness of the world, a shortness of breath in our soul.

Your mind is not your friend, Mike. I hope you know that. You have to fight with your mind, control it, put it in its place. You have to control your emotions. Fatigue in the ring is ninety percent psychological. It’s just the excuse of a man who wants to quit.

The moments of silence are gone. We run from them into the rush of unimportant things, so filled is the quiet with the painful whispers of all that goes unspoken. Busy-ness is our drug of choice, numbing our minds just enough to keep us from dwelling on all that we fear we can’t change. A compilation of coping mechanisms, we have become our fatigue. Unwilling or unable to cut ourselves free of this modern machine we have built, we’re dragged in its wake all too quickly toward our end. The virtue of a society’s culture is reflected in the physical, mental, and emotional health of its people. The time has come to part ways with all that is toxic, and preserve our quality of life.

Yes; he had done it. She was in the carriage, and felt that he had placed her there, that his will and his hands had done it, that she owed it to his perception of her fatigue, and his resolution to give her rest. She was very much affected by the view of his disposition towards her, which all these things made apparent. This little circumstance seemed the completion of all that had gone before. She understood him. He could not forgive her, but he could not be unfeeling. Though condemning her for the past, and considering it with high and unjust resentment, though perfectly careless of her, and though becoming attached to another, still he could not see her suffer without the desire of giving her relief. It was a remainder of some former sentiment, it was an impulse of pure, though unacknowledged friendship; it was a proof of his own warm and amiable heart, which she could not contemplate without emotions so compounded of pleasure and pain, that she knew not which prevailed.

We, who had no designated safe havens where we could carry our vomit for other people to clean up for us — who were too urgently needed to afford to pause for occasional maintenance, too dignified to succumb to emotional fatigue — not for us the overpaid charlatans disguised as therapists, who would only poke at our scabs and suck our money. No. We, the unbreakable ones, we ourselves were all the therapy that we needed.

Mirror-touch synesthesia could very well scientifically explain why physical empaths seem to “catch” or absorb the illnesses of other people, and also why empaths, as a whole, find violence absolutely unbearable to watch.

After a lifetime of posting on blogs and videotaping his every move and emotion for social media, he was facing nothing less than identity fatigue.

The next real literary "rebels" in this country might well emerge as some weird bunch of anti-rebels, born oglers who dare somehow to back away from ironic watching, who have the childish gall actually to endorse and instantiate single-entendre principles. Who treat of plain old untrendy human troubles and emotions in U.S. life with reverence and conviction. Who eschew self-consciousness and hip fatigue. These anti-rebels would be outdated, of course, before they even started. Dead on the page. Too sincere. Clearly repressed. Backward, quaint, naive, anachronistic. Maybe that'll be the point. Maybe that's why they'll be the next real rebels. Real rebels, as far as I can see, risk disapproval. The old postmodern insurgents risked the gasp and squeal: shock, disgust, outrage, censorship, accusations of socialism, anarchism, nihilism. Today's risks are different. The new rebels might be artists willing to risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, the cool smile, the nudged ribs, the parody of gifted ironists, the "Oh how banal". To risk accusations of sentimentality, melodrama. Of overcredulity. Of softness. Of willingness to be suckered by a world of lurkers and starers who fear gaze and ridicule above imprisonment without law. Who knows

Parents aren't supposed to cry. They're not supposed to have emotions, apart from anger, disappointment and pride. And fatigue. But they're never supposed to cry. It seems like such a personal, private thing.

What happened is, we grew lonely 
living among the things,
 so we gave the clock a face,
 the chair a back,
 the table four stout legs
 which will never suffer fatigue. We fitted our shoes with tongues
 as smooth as our own
 and hung tongues inside bells
 so we could listen 
to their emotional language, and because we loved graceful profiles
 the pitcher received a lip,
 the bottle a long, slender neck. Even what was beyond us
 was recast in our image;
 we gave the country a heart,
 the storm an eye,
 the cave a mouth
 so we could pass into safety.

I read somewhere that grief is more than an emotion. It’s a physical experience, too. All kinds of nasty stress chemicals get released into the bloodstream when a person is grieving. Fatigue, nausea, headaches, dizziness, food aversion, insomnia… The list of side-effects is long.

There’s compelling research that shows that compassion fatigue occurs when caregivers focus on their own personal distress reaction rather than on the experience of the person they are caring for. Focusing on one’s own emotional reaction results in an inability to respond empathically to the person in need. In this view, the more appropriate term, rather than “compassion fatigue,” might be “empathic distress fatigue.” We’re not hearing the story, we’re inserting ourselves in the story.

it’s hard to be spiritually strong and mentally alert when you are emotionally stressed or physically fatigued.

What I am describing here is entirely realistic. It is possible to find out one’s own truth in the partial, non-neutral company of such a (therapeutic) companion. In that process one can shed one’s symptoms, free oneself of depression, regain joy in life, break out of the state of constant exhaustion, and experience a resurgence of energy, once that energy is no longer required for the repression of one’s own truth. The point is that the fatigue characteristic of such depression reasserts itself every time we repress strong emotions, play down the memories stored in the body, and refuse them the attention they clamor for. Why

The tension of human nerves during noise, danger, and fatigue, makes them prone to any violent emotion and it is only a question of guiding this susceptibility into the right channels.

In other words, fatigue isn’t a physical event but a sensation or emotion, invented by the brain to prevent catastrophic harm. They called the brain system that does this the “central governor.

Oftentimes, what we experience as mental fatigue or emotional distress is simply a signal from our body that we’re not getting enough of something we physically need: nutrients, exercise, or rest.

Life is short, even for those who live a long time, and we must live for the few who know and appreciate us, who judge and absolve us, and for whom we have the same affection and indulgence. The rest I look upon as a mere crowd, lively or sad, loyal or corrupt, from whom there is nothing to be expected but fleeting emotions, either pleasant or unpleasant, which leave no trace behind them. We ought to hate very rarely, as it is too fatiguing; remain indifferent to a great deal, forgive often and never forget.

Doctors, soldiers, and mothers encounter it routinely; I had, any number of times. Unable to respond to an immediate emergency while clouded by fatigue, the mind simply withdraws a little, separating itself fastidiously from the body’s overwhelming self-centered needs. From this clinical distance, it can direct things, bypassing emotions, pain, and tiredness, making necessary decisions, cold-bloodedly overruling the mindless body’s needs for food, water, sleep, love, grief, pushing it past its fail-safe points.

the healthier our heart rhythm is, the healthier our body is. Studies have shown that a coherent or harmonious heart, which is produced when we center on positive emotion and spiritual truths, can prevent infection, improve arrhythmia, and help heal mitral-valve prolapse, congestive heart failure, asthma, diabetes, fatigue, autoimmune disorders, anxiety, depression, AIDS, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).[12]

Narcissists are manipulative and masterful at twisting the situation and working the rules to get what they want. Even more frustrating, they will turn things around in such a way that you may ultimately give them what they want and exhaust yourself in the process. Early in a relationship, the manipulation is most often emotional (“I had a tough childhood, so sometimes I say things I do not mean” or “I am under a lot of stress, so I blew up—I didn’t really mean it”) and financial (masterfully getting you to take on disproportionately more financial responsibility, finding yourself spending money you do not have to keep your relationship going and your partner happy.

An energy vampire can never “steal” energy from us unless we consciously or unconsciously permit them to.

Are you angry at me?” “Anger is in line right now,” Tress said. “It’s seventh down. Sandwiched between confusion and fatigue.

The tension of human nerves during noise, danger, and fatigue, makes them prone to any violent emotion

The symptoms of intense grief—memory loss, attention deficit, emotional fragility, incapacitating fatigue—are surprisingly similar to those resulting from traumatic brain injury.

Not only can you expect your narcissistic friends, lovers, and family members to want you to be perfect, but you can anticipate that they’ll externalize their own feelings of weakness by laying them onto you. If your partner is concerned that he or she looks tired, stressed, or messy, these concerns will translate into criticisms of how unkempt and fatigued you look.”21

when it was first coined as a technical term by Herbert Freudenberger in 1975, “burnout” was defined by three components: 1. emotional exhaustion—the fatigue that comes from caring too much, for too long; 2. depersonalization—the depletion of empathy, caring, and compassion; and 3. decreased sense of accomplishment—an unconquerable sense of futility: feeling that nothing you do makes any difference.

Big feelings. HSPs process information more deeply, including emotional information. For example, listening to a girlfriend share her troubles can make nonsensitive friends feel just fine but can be completely overwhelming for HSPs. And HSPs can feel overwhelmed by their own emotions. Sorrow, joy, fatigue, anxiety—there’s no such thing as a little bit sad or a little bit happy or a little bit tired. HSPs don’t feel things halfway.

He’s wrong about me not having feelings. I have all kinds of feelings. Anxiety. Fatigue. Low-level depression. An unshakeable melancholy paired with gentle despair. See? I’m not the emotional iceberg I get accused of being.

If emotion and fatigue lowered the potency of thought, what raised it? I began to reconsider my moments of delight in terms of this statement of the problem, moments whose essential quality had been a fusing of experience, a flash of significance uniting the meaningless and separate. If one assumed that thinking was a process involving some form of energy, it seemed quite appropriate to imagine my gesture of holding back from mental action as causing an accumulation of energy which automatically raised the potency. By preventing energy from continually flowing away in a noisy stream of efforts and purposes I could make it fill up into a silent pool of clearness.

That’s one of the maddening things about depression. The fatigue and emotional lows become “normal” until I forget that I ever could feel any other way. When the fog clears, I’m always astounded by how much I’ve been struggling.

Over the course of discussions with Tania and her collaborators, we noted that compassion and altruistic love were associated with positive emotions. So we arrived at the idea that burnout was in fact a kind of “empathy fatigue” and not “compassion fatigue.

Focus less on your own importance and more on those around you. Compassion helps us become resilient: it improves our immune response, reduces our stress levels, and is associated with the pleasure networks in our brains. One way to practice compassion is to ask a colleague, “What’s on your mind and how can I help?” Of course, if you consistently put someone else’s needs ahead of your own, you’ll eventually be utterly drained and resentful. Make sure you’re aware of your emotional limits to avoid compassion fatigue.

If the sleep disruption is repeated night after night, the actual measured impairments do not remain constant. Instead, there is an escalating accumulation of sleepiness that produces in adults continuing increases in headaches, gastrointestinal complaints, forgetfulness, reduced concentration, fatigue, emotional ups and downs, difficulty in staying awake during the daytime, irritability, and difficulty awakening. Not only do the adults describe themselves as more sleepy and mentally exhausted, they also feel more stressed. The stress may be a direct consequence of partial sleep deprivation or it may result from the challenge of coping with increasing amounts of daytime sleepiness. Think how hard it would be to concentrate or be motivated if you were struggling every day to stay awake. If children have

Take Lucy as an example. Yes, she has an illness, and fools may claim that makes her weak, yet she is the furthest thing from weak I’ve ever known. She deals with everything I do—the grief of losing our parents, the fear of the unknown, even the days of hunger when we can’t afford meals—and then a whole array of things I don’t. Physical pain, eating restrictions, fatigue, not to mention the emotional weight of living in a world that refuses to accommodate her. As far as I’m concerned, I may be the one with magic, but she’s the truly powerful one. Because she’s fought where I have never had to.” I lean forward. “And if anyone ever even insinuated that her illness needed to be cured in order for to amount to anything, well…” My jaw tightened. “Let’s say I would have some very choice words for those people.

Even without world wars, revolutions and emigration, siblings growing up in the same home almost never share the same environment. More accurately, brothers and sisters share some environments — usually the less important ones — but they rarely share the one single environment that has the most powerful impact on personality formation. They may live in the same house, eat the same kinds of food, partake in many of the same activities. These are environments of secondary importance. Of all environments, the one that most profoundly shapes the human personality is the invisible one: the emotional atmosphere in which the child lives during the critical early years of brain development. The invisible environment has little to do with parenting philosophies or parenting style. It is a matter of intangibles, foremost among them being the parents’ relationship with each other and their emotional balance as individuals. These, too, can vary significantly from the birth of one child to the arrival of another. Psychological tension in the parents’ lives during the child’s infancy is, I am convinced, a major and universal influence on the subsequent emergence of ADD. A hidden factor of great importance is a parent’s unconscious attitude toward a child: what, or whom, on the deepest level, the child represents for the parents; the degree to which the parents see themselves in the child; the needs parents may have that they subliminally hope the child will meet. For the infant there exists no abstract, “out-there” reality. The emotional milieu with which we surround the child is the world as he experiences it. In the words of the child psychiatrist and researcher Margaret Mahler, for the newborn, the parent is “the principal representative of the world.” To the infant and toddler, the world reveals itself in the image of the parent: in eye contact, intensity of glance, body language, tone of voice and, above all, in the day-today joy or emotional fatigue exhibited in the presence of the child. Whatever a parent’s intention, these are the means by which the child receives his or her most formative communications. Although they will be of paramount importance for development of the child’s personality, these subtle and often unconscious influences will be missed on psychological questionnaires or observations of parents in clinical settings. There is no way to measure a softening or an edge of anxiety in the voice, the warmth of a smile or the depth of furrows on a brow. We have no instruments to gauge the tension in a father’s body as he holds his infant or to record whether a mother’s gaze is clouded by worry or clear with calm anticipation. It may be said that no two children have exactly the same parents, in that the parenting they each receive may vary in highly significant ways. Whatever the hopes, wishes or intentions of the parent, the child does not experience the parent directly: the child experiences the parenting. I have known two siblings to disagree vehemently about their father’s personality during their childhood. Neither has to be wrong if we understand that they did not receive the same fathering, which is what formed their experience of the father. I have even seen subtly but significantly different mothering given to a pair of identical twins.

1. emotional exhaustion—the fatigue that comes from caring too much, for too long; 2. depersonalization—the depletion of empathy, caring, and compassion; and 3. decreased sense of accomplishment—an unconquerable sense of futility: feeling that nothing you do makes any difference.1

There are several attitudes towards Christmas, Some of which we may disregard: The social, the torpid, the patently commercial, The rowdy (the pubs being open till midnight), And the childish — which is not that of the child For whom the candle is a star, and the gilded angel Spreading its wings at the summit of the tree Is not only a decoration, but an angel. The child wonders at the Christmas Tree: Let him continue in the spirit of wonder At the Feast as an event not accepted as a pretext; So that the glittering rapture, the amazement Of the first-remembered Christmas Tree, So that the surprises, delight in new possessions (Each one with its peculiar and exciting smell), The expectation of the goose or turkey And the expected awe on its appearance, So that the reverence and the gaiety May not be forgotten in later experience, In the bored habituation, the fatigue, the tedium, The awareness of death, the consciousness of failure, Or in the piety of the convert Which may be tainted with a self-conceit Displeasing to God and disrespectful to children (And here I remember also with gratitude St. Lucy, her carol, and her crown of fire): So that before the end, the eightieth Christmas (By “eightieth” meaning whichever is last) The accumulated memories of annual emotion May be concentrated into a great joy Which shall be also a great fear, as on the occasion When fear came upon every soul: Because the beginning shall remind us of the end And the first coming of the second coming.

Captain Wentworth, without saying a word, turned to her, and quietly obliged her to be assisted into the carriage. Yes; he had done it. She was in the carriage, and felt that he had placed her there, that his will and his hands had done it, that she owed it to his perception of her fatigue, and his resolution to give her rest. She was very much affected by the view of his disposition towards her, which all these things made apparent. This little circumstance seemed the completion of all that had gone before. She understood him. He could not forgive her, but he could not be unfeeling. Though condemning her for the past, and considering it with high and unjust resentment, though perfectly careless of her, and though becoming attached to another, still he could not see her suffer, without the desire of giving her relief. It was a remainder of former sentiment; it was an impulse of pure, though unacknowledged friendship; it was a proof of his own warm and amiable heart, which she could not contemplate without emotions so compounded of pleasure and pain, that she knew not which prevailed.

I continued to be confronted with suffering, but love and compassion conferred a constructive quality to my way of approaching others’ sufferings, and amplified my inclination and determination to come to their aid. So it was clear, from my perspective, that if there was an “empathy fatigue” leading to the syndrome of emotional exhaustion, there was no fatigue of love and compassion.

The midgets acted all of the tragedies and many of the comedies. They acted them all at once, and it was fortunate that Tetrahedron had so many faces, otherwise he might have died of fatigue. They acted them all at once, and the emperor, walking round his theatre, could see them all at once, if he wished. Round and round he walked, and so learned a very valuable thing: that no emotion is the final one.

Before one realizes it, the true face is ravaged by anxiety and emotion; one does not perceive that it drags last night’s fatigue like a heavy chain, nor does one realize the boorishness of exposing such a face to the sun. It is thus that men lose their manliness. The reason is that once it has lost the natural bright- ness of youth, the manly face of the warrior must needs be a false face; it must be manufactured as a matter of policy.

The alternative to soul-acceptance is soul-fatigue. There is a kind of fatigue that attacks the body. When we stay up too late and rise too early; when we try to fuel ourselves for the day with coffee and a donut in the morning and Red Bull in the afternoon; when we refuse to take the time to exercise and we eat foods that clog our brains and arteries; when we constantly try to guess which line at the grocery store will move faster and which car in which lane at the stoplight will move faster and which parking space is closest to the mall, our bodies grow weary. There is a kind of fatigue that attacks the mind. When we are bombarded by information all day at work . . . When multiple screens are always clamoring for our attention . . . When we carry around mental lists of errands not yet done and bills not yet paid and emails not yet replied to . . . When we try to push unpleasant emotions under the surface like holding beach balls under the water at a swimming pool . . . our minds grow weary. There is a kind of fatigue that attacks the will. We have so many decisions to make. When we are trying to decide what clothes will create the best possible impression, which foods will bring us the most pleasure, which tasks at work will bring us the most success, which entertainment options will make us the most happy, which people we dare to disappoint, which events we must attend, even what vacation destination will be most enjoyable, the need to make decisions overwhelms us. The sheer length of the menu at Cheesecake Factory oppresses us. Sometimes college students choose double majors, not because they want to study two fields, but simply because they cannot make the decision to say “no” to either one. Our wills grow weary with so many choices.

In 1990, when the insurgency first erupted, only 1,762 people were diagnosed with mental disorders. After a decade of inexorable violence, those numbers shot up to 38,696. Behind these figures was the fatigue, mental and emotional, of a people both battered and bruised. This was their private hell, one that remained invisible to the cameras and the public gaze, this was the loneliness that came with the feeling that you were losing your mind.

An Echo in the Bone. It was a familiar phenomenon. Doctors, soldiers, and mothers encounter it routinely; I had, any number of times. Unable to respond to an immediate emergency while clouded by fatigue, the mind simply withdraws a little, separating itself fastidiously from the body's overwhelming self-centered needs. From this clinical distance, it can direct things, bypassing emotions, pain, and tiredness, making necessary decisions, cold-bloodedly overruling the mindless body's needs for food, water, sleep, love, grief, pushing it past its fail-safe points. Why emotions? I wondered dimly. Surely emotion was a function of the mind. And yet it seemed so deeply rooted in the flesh and this abdication of the mind always suppressed emotion, too. They body resents this abdication, I think. Ignored and abused, it will not easily let the mind return. Often, the separation persists until one if finally allowed to sleep. With the body absorbed in its quiet intensities of regeneration, the mind settles cautiously back into the turbulent flesh, feeling its delicate way through the twisting passages of dreams, making peace. And you wake once more whole.

Screw all mental illness stigma. Having the courage to admit yourself for psychiatric care to heal is phenomenal. Shrugging off a panic attack is badass. Battling through intense spells of fatigue and demotivation is incredible. Going to the psychologist to attend to your mental health is a boss move. Achieving things despite having little to no interest or pleasure is impressive. Frequently practicing self-care is fantastic. Picking yourself up after hitting rock bottom is exceptional. Openly talking about your mental health struggles is courageous. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

There are mornings when all men experience with fatigue a flush of tenderness that makes them horny. One day at dawn I found myself placing my lips lovingly, though for no reason at all, on the icy banister of the Rue Berthe; another time, kissing my hand; still another time, bursting with emotion, I wanted to swallow myself by opening my mouth very wide and turning it over my head so that it would take in my whole body, and then the Universe, until all that would remain of me would be a ball of eaten thing which little by little would be annihilated: that is how I see the end of the world.

You think you know the difference between a hero and a coward, Mike? Well, there is no difference between a hero and a coward in what they feel. It’s what they do that makes them different. The hero and the coward feel exactly the same but you have to have the discipline to do what a hero does and to keep yourself from doing what the coward does. “Your mind is not your friend, Mike. I hope you know that. You have to fight with your mind, control it, put it in its place. You have to control your emotions. Fatigue in the ring is ninety percent psychological. It’s just the excuse of a man who wants to quit.

Still, self-giving is not always so simple in practice. People sometimes give generously of themselves, without experiencing the happiness promised by the Gospel. Instead they encounter sorrow, fatigue, and frustration. Their own needs are forgotten; they themselves are ignored. We have all heard a generous person explode with anger and exclaim. “I’m fed up with waiting on everyone else, with having to do all the dirty work, with being taken for granted and never so much as hearing ‘thank you’!” Self-giving can end like that when it is not freely chosen or when it is chosen out of some motive other than disinterested love—fear of saying no and not being accepted, emotional dependence, a perfectionist streak rooted in pride, a sense of indebtedness, the notion that to save others we need to please them, or else the desire to teach others a lesson by shaming them. There is even such a thing as calculated generosity that resembles a kind of unconscious bargaining: I will give myself to you, provided you give me the emotional gratification or the ego boost that I crave. It is important to examine our motives and rid ourselves of such imperfect ones, so that our self-giving can become truly free and disinterested.

I’m more than my anxiety, more than my depression, more than the things that cause my aggression. I’m more than my guilt, more than my desperation, more than the things that provide me frustration. I’m more than my resentment, more than the emotions I try to hide, more than the things that eat me up inside. I’m more than my indecision, more than my doubt, more than the things that make me want out. I’m more than my setbacks, more than my fatigue, more than the things that harm my physique. I’m more than my loneliness, more than my annoyance, more than the things that cause my avoidance. I’m more than my failures, more than my profanity, more than the things that cause my insanity. I’m more than my sadness, more than my irritability, more than the things that cause my fragility. I’m more than my sweaty palms, more than my shortness of breath, more than the things that drive me to death. I’m more than my pain, more than my blues, more than the alcohol I abuse. I’m more than my trembling, more than my shaky voice, more than the things that provide me such noise. I’m more than my restlessness, more than my tears, more than the insecurities that have plagued me for years. I’m more than the ear can hear, more than the heart can feel, more than the eye can see, I’m beautifully me.

ME/CFS has a greater negative impact on functional status and well-being than other chronic diseases, e.g., cancer or lung diseases[8], and is associated with a drastic decrement in physical functioning[9]. In a comparison study[10] ME/CFS patients scored significantly lower than patients with hypertension, congestive heart failure, acute myocardial infarction, and multiple sclerosis (MS), on all of the eight Short Form Health Survey (SF-36)[11] subscales. As compared to patients with depression, ME/CFS patients scored significantly lower on all the scales, except for scales measuring mental health and role disability due to emotional problems, on which they scored significantly higher.

The point is that the fatigue characteristic of such depression reasserts itself every time we repress strong emotions, play down the memories stored in the body, and refuse them the attention they clamor for. Why are such positive developments the exception rather than the rule? Why do most people (including the “experts”) greatly prefer to believe in the power of medication rather than let themselves be guided by the knowledge stored in their own bodies? Our bodies know exactly what we need, what we have been denied, what disagrees with us, what we are allergic to. But many people prefer to seek aid from medication, drugs, or alcohol, which can only block off the path to the understanding of the truth even more completely. Why? Because recognizing the truth is painful? This is certainly the case. But that pain is temporary. With the right kind of therapeutic care it can be endured. I believe that the main problem here is that there are not enough such professional companions to be had. Almost all the representatives of what I’ll call the “caring professions” appear to be prevented by our morality system from siding with the children we once were and recognizing the consequences of the early injuries we have sustained. They are entirely under the influence of the Fourth Commandment, which tells us to honor our parents, “that thy days may be long upon the land the Lord thy God giveth thee.

When people with ME/CFS report symptoms of post-exertional malaise, those symptoms are independent of emotional distress, but when the general population report what they think are post-exertional malaise symptoms, their symptoms of post-exertional malaise are significantly related to emotional distress. It is possible that because healthy individuals experience a relationship between emotional distress and post-exertional malaise, they might believe that these two domains are connected for themselves and by inference with patients with ME/CFS, when in fact it is not the case. This ultimately might blur the ability of healthy controls to understand the experience of post-extertional malaise for people with ME/CFS.

Does everyone else have this figured out? Is my hole too deep? And where is all the water going? We pause to catch our breath, wondering if everyone else feels like an epic failure too. One person can’t possibly keep up with a clean house, a fulfilling job, a well-adjusted family, an active social life, and a running regimen of fifteen miles a week, right? With silence our only answer, we decide, No, it’s just me. I need to get it together. What follows is a flurry of habit trackers, calendar overhauls, and internet rabbit holes to figure out how to be better, until we pass out from emotional exhaustion or actual adrenal fatigue or we give up completely and head back to the beach house for a shame-filled margarita.

Dr. Tuttle explained that there was a way to maximize insurance coverage by prescribing drugs for their side effects, rather than going directly to those whose main purposes were to relieve my symptoms, which were in my case “debilitating fatigue due to emotional weakness, plus insomnia, resulting in soft psychosis and belligerence.” That’s what she told me she was going to write in her notes. She termed her prescribing method “ecoscripting,” and said she was writing a paper on it that would be published soon. “In a journal in Hamburg.” So she gave me pills that targeted migraine headaches, prevented seizures, cured restless leg syndrome, prevented hearing loss. These medicines were supposed to relax me so that I could get some “much-needed rest.

However, there is no fixed rule that dictates when and if a symptom will appear. This group includes: •   Excessive shyness •   Diminished emotional responses •   Inability to make commitments •   Chronic fatigue or very low physical energy •   Immune system problems and certain endocrine problems such as thyroid malfunction and environmental sensitivities •   Psychosomatic illnesses, particularly headaches, migraines, neck and back problems •   Chronic pain •   Fibromyalgia •   Asthma •   Skin disorders •   Digestive problems (spastic colon) •   Severe premenstrual syndrome •   Depression and feelings of impending doom •   Feelings of detachment, alienation, and isolation (“living dead” feelings) •   Reduced ability to formulate plans

The rover crested a nearby dune with the trailer in tow. It slowed for a few moments, then continued toward the ship at top speed. It came to a stop twenty meters away. There it remained for ten minutes while the astronaut inside suited up. He stumbled excitedly out of the airlock, falling to the ground then scrambling to his feet. Beholding the MAV, he gestured to it with both arms, as if in disbelief. He leaped into the air several times, arms held high with fists clenched. Then he knelt on one knee and fist-pumped repeatedly. Running to the spacecraft, he hugged Landing Strut B. After a few moments, he broke off the embrace to perform another round of leaping celebrations. Now fatigued, the astronaut stood with arms akimbo, looking up at the sleek lines of the engineering marvel before him.

Whatever we did during that first year was done from behind a veil of shock. Indeed, if we had to pick one word, one emotion that imbued our minds, our thoughts, our very being in that horrible first year, it would be shock. In some ways it obviously insulated us because we learned later that what we thought was the worst possible pain could from time to time become even more acute as our lives unfolded. If there was any sensation at all that permeated the cocoon of shock in which we wrapped ourselves it was exhaustion. Our bodies were encased in a relentless fatigue that left us drained of energy and debilitated during the days, but refused to allow us the luxury of restorative sleep at night. In that first year, we all refused to accept the finality of the death of our children, and some of us never will. It seemed that our existence had become surreal; it was as if we were each having an out-of-body experience. We wanted to wake up and find it was not true … . This could not be

…in America there is no escape from the awareness of color and the fact that our society places a qualitative difference on a person of dark skin. Every Negro comes face to face with this color shock, and it constitutes a major emotional crisis. It is accompanied by a sort of fatiguing, wearisome hopelessness. If one is rejected because he is uneducated, he can at least be consoled by the fact that it may be possible for him to get an education. If one is rejected because he is low on the economic ladder, he can at least dream of the day that he will rise from his dungeon of economic deprivation. If one is rejected because he speaks with an accent, he can at least, if he desires, work to bring his speech in line with the dominant group. If, however, one is rejected because of his color, he must face the anguishing fact that he is being rejected because of something in himself that cannot be changed. All prejudice is evil, but the prejudice that rejects a man because of the color of his skin is the most despicable expression of man’s inhumanity to man.

Breathe. Pause. Move. Pause. Breathe. Pause. Move. Pause. It is unending. I heave myself over the final lip and strain to pull myself clear of the edge. I clear the deep powder snow from in front of my face. I lie there hyperventilating. Then I clear my mask of the ice that my breath has formed in the freezing air. I unclip off the rope while still crouching. The line is now clear for Neil to follow up. I get to my feet and start staggering onward. I can see this distant cluster of prayer flags semisubmerged in the snow. Gently flapping in the wind, I know that these flags mark the true summit--the place of dreams. I feel this sudden surge of energy beginning to rise within me. It is adrenaline coursing around my veins and muscles. I have never felt so strong--and yet so weak--all at the same time. Intermittent waves of adrenaline and fatigue come and go as my body struggles to sustain the intensity of these final moments. I find it strangely ironic that the very last part of this immense climb is so gentle a slope. A sweeping curve--curling along the crest of the ridge toward the summit. Thank God. It feels like the mountain is beckoning me up. For the first time, willing me to climb up onto the roof of the world. I try to count the steps as I move, but my counting becomes confused. I am now breathing and gasping like a wild animal in an attempt to devour the oxygen that seeps into my mask. However many of these pathetically slow shuffles I take, this place never seems to get any closer. But it is. Slowly the summit is looming a little nearer. I can feel my eyes welling up with tears. I start to cry and cry inside my mask. Emotions held in for so long. I can’t hold them back any longer. I stagger on.

The other problem with empathy is that it is too parochial to serve as a force for a universal consideration of people’s interests. Mirror neurons notwithstanding, empathy is not a reflex that makes us sympathetic to everyone we lay eyes upon. It can be switched on and off, or thrown into reverse, by our construal of the relationship we have with a person. Its head is turned by cuteness, good looks, kinship, friendship, similarity, and communal solidarity. Though empathy can be spread outward by taking other people’s perspectives, the increments are small, Batson warns, and they may be ephemeral.71 To hope that the human empathy gradient can be flattened so much that strangers would mean as much to us as family and friends is utopian in the worst 20th-century sense, requiring an unattainable and dubiously desirable quashing of human nature.72 Nor is it necessary. The ideal of the expanding circle does not mean that we must feel the pain of everyone else on earth. No one has the time or energy, and trying to spread our empathy that thinly would be an invitation to emotional burnout and compassion fatigue.73 The Old Testament tells us to love our neighbors, the New Testament to love our enemies. The moral rationale seems to be: Love your neighbors and enemies; that way you won’t kill them. But frankly, I don’t love my neighbors, to say nothing of my enemies. Better, then, is the following ideal: Don’t kill your neighbors or enemies, even if you don’t love them. What really has expanded is not so much a circle of empathy as a circle of rights—a commitment that other living things, no matter how distant or dissimilar, be safe from harm and exploitation. Empathy has surely been historically important in setting off epiphanies of concern for members of overlooked groups. But the epiphanies are not enough. For empathy to matter, it must goad changes in policies and norms that determine how the people in those groups are treated. At these critical moments, a newfound sensitivity to the human costs of a practice may tip the decisions of elites and the conventional wisdom of the masses. But as we shall see in the section on reason, abstract moral argumentation is also necessary to overcome the built-in strictures on empathy. The ultimate goal should be policies and norms that become second nature and render empathy unnecessary. Empathy, like love, is in fact not all you need. SELF-CONTROL

But peace, too, is a living thing and like all life it must wax and wane, accommodate, withstand trials, and undergo changes. Such was the case with the peace Josephus Famulus enjoyed. It was unstable, visible one moment, gone the next, sometimes near as a candle carried in the hand, sometimes as remote as a star in the wintry sky. And in time a new and special kind of sin and temptation more and more often made life difficult for him. It was not a strong, passionate emotion such as indignation or a sudden rush of instinctual urges. Rather, it seemed to be the opposite. It was a feeling very easy to bear in its initial stages, for it was scarcely perceptible; a condition without any real pain or deprivation, a slack, luke-warm, tedious state of the soul which could only be described in negative terms as a vanishing, a waning, and finally a complete absence of joy. There are days when the sun does not shine and the rain does not pour, but the sky sinks quietly into itself, wraps itself up, is gray but not black, sultry, but not with the tension of an imminent thunderstorm. Gradually, Joseph's days became like this as he approached old age. Less and less could he distinguish the mornings from the evenings, feast days from ordinary days, hours of rapture from hours of dejection. Everything ran sluggishly long in limp tedium and joylessness. This is old age, he thought sadly. He was sad because he had expected aging and the gradual extinction of his passions to bring a brightening and easing of his life, to take him a step nearer to harmony and mature peace of soul, and now age seemed to be disappointing and cheating him by offering nothing but this weary, gray, joyless emptiness, this feeling of chronic satiation. Above all he felt sated: by sheer existence, by breathing, by sleep at night, by life in his cave on the edge of the little oasis, by the eternal round of evenings and mornings, by the passing of travelers and pilgrims, camel riders and donkey riders, and most of all by the people who came to visit him, by those foolish, anxious, and childishly credulous people who had this craving to tell him about their lives, their sins and their fears, their temptations and self-accusations. Sometimes it all seemed to him like the small spring of water that collected in its stone basin in the oasis, flowed through grass for a while, forming a small brook, and then flowed on out into the desert sands, where after a brief course it dried up and vanished. Similarly, all these confessions, these inventories of sins, these lives, these torments of conscience, big and small, serious and vain, all of them came pouring into his ear, by the dozens, by the hundreds, more and more of them. But his ear was not dead like the desert sands. His ear was alive and could not drink, swallow, and absorb forever. It felt fatigued, abused, glutted. It longed for the flow and splashing of words, confessions, anxieties, charges, self-condemnations to cease; it longed for peace, death, and stillness to take the place of this endless flow.

Bergamot's fruity scent uplifts and balances the mind and emotions. Bergamot oil has a regulating influence and can act as a relaxant, stimulant, or tonic depending on the needs of your body, mind and emotions. Bergamot promotes a cheerful and friendly attitude. Its refreshing aroma relieves fatigue.

• Black: fertility, protection against malevolent forces, healing of chronic illnesses • Blue: peace, tranquility, protection, healing of addictions, psychic and emotional pain • Brown: justice, legal issues, healing fatigue and wasting illnesses • Green: growth, prosperity, abundance, employment, physical healing, especially cancer • Purple: sex, power, lust, spiritual growth and ecstasy • Red: luck, love, good fortune, fertility, banishment of negative entities, protection, healing blood ailments and female reproductive disorders • Pink: love, romance, requests for healing children • White: creativity, forgiveness, new projects* • Yellow: romance, love, sex, growth, prosperity, good fortune, abundance

We believe CFS is a biological illness, manifest with complex interlinking between adverse thoughts, moods, emotions and physical symptoms.

Acidosis can lead to chronic headaches, sleepiness or even insomnia, vertigo, seizures, diarrhoea, shortness of breath, chronic cough, palpitation, indigestion, reflux, heartburn, loss of calcium in the body, weakness in the bones, dry skin and other skin disorders including rashes, acne, body odour, increased risk of formation of kidney and bladder stones, accelerated ageing, degenerative diseases, fatigue and hormonal and glandular disorders. And I have only just scraped the surface here. When

Its mental discipline, however, is by far more fruitful, and keeps one's mind in equipoise, making one neither passionate nor dispassionate, neither sentimental nor unintelligent, neither nervous nor senseless. It is well known as a cure to all sorts of mental disease, occasioned by nervous disturbance, as a nourishment to the fatigued brain, and also as a stimulus to torpor and sloth. It is self-control, as it is the subduing of such pernicious passions as anger, jealousy, hatred, and the like, and the awakening of noble emotions such as sympathy, mercy, generosity, and what not. It is a mode of Enlightenment, as it is the dispelling of illusion and of doubt,

The effects of the war going on in the unseen world manifests in our strained and damaged relationships, emotional instability, mental fatigue, physical exhaustion, and other stuff.

COLD DEFINITION: a sudden or ongoing exposure to uncomfortably low temperatures PHYSICAL SIGNALS: Shivering Blue lips Yawning Eyes that tear up Chattering teeth Tingling extremities Stuttering speech Skin that’s uncomfortably cold to the touch Dry, cracked lips A stiff jaw that makes speech difficult Numbness in one’s extremities A burning sensation in the skin Clumsiness Slow, shallow breaths Lips that tremble Poor dexterity or increased clumsiness Wrapping the arms around the torso Jumping, shuffling, or dancing to get the blood flowing Clapping one’s hands or stamping one’s feet Shoving the hands deep into the pockets Red and swollen patches on the skin (chilblains) Pulling the limbs tightly into the core Slurred speech Rubbing one’s hands together Tucking one’s hands into one’s armpits Pulling a collar or scarf up over the face Huddling inside a jacket Rounded shoulders, the chin dropped down to the chest Cringing and squeezing one’s eyes shut Turning one’s back to the wind or source of cold Pulling down one’s sleeves to cover the hands Curling and uncurling one’s toes to get the blood flowing Rubbing one’s legs; using friction to create warmth Quivering breaths Slapping oneself Shaking out the arms and legs Flexing the fingers Taking deep breaths in an effort to wake up Curling into a ball; making oneself small Sharing body heat with others Blowing into cupped hands to warm them INTERNAL SENSATIONS: Low energy Fatigue or drowsiness The feeling of even one’s insides being cold A weakened pulse Nausea Loss of appetite A burning sensation in the lungs when inhaling A voice that loses strength MENTAL RESPONSES: Confusion Muddled thinking Impaired decision-making A desire to sleep Apathy CUES OF ACUTE OR LONG-TERM COLD EXPOSURE: Frostbite Hypothermia Gangrene Limb amputation Coma Heart failure Death WRITER’S TIP: Emotional attitude makes a difference when dealing with the cold. A person who can maintain mental acuity and focus will withstand the elements much better than someone whose mental condition is compromised by negativity. Return to the Table of Contents

I read somewhere that grief is more than an emotion. It’s a physical experience, too. All kinds of nasty stress chemicals get released into the bloodstream when a person is grieving. Fatigue, nausea, headaches, dizziness, food aversion, insomnia… The list of side-effects is long. I’ve got them all.

He hated his job. This was new to him. Boredom he had felt before, fatigue too, but hatred was not something he was used to, and he struggled with the intensity of the emotion.

Given the mental health stigma within the Black community that precludes many Black women from identifying themselves as needing help, the groups were advertised as women’s wellness groups, rather than as mental health treatment. The brochure listed common symptoms of depression, such as feeling stressed, overwhelmed, and irritable; having difficulty paying attention or concentrating; feeling tense or on edge; feeling unmotivated; having difficulty sleeping; and feeling fatigue. Women saw themselves in these symptoms, even when they adamantly denied being depressed.

This kind of absolute dependency on God insults our pride. We're so quick to embrace other solutions for our emotional, physical, and mental fatigue. "I can figure this out on my own," we tell ourselves. More often than not in our trials we pretend everything is okay, and we dive headlong into self-sufficiency. Faith, rather, acknowledges the fierceness of the storm and throws us into the sea, and we swim as fast as we can to where we see Jesus walking on the water (John 6:16-21).

I've heard that this sometimes happens to parents-especially if you have trauma from your childhood. When your kids get to be the age you were when you were dealing with something rough, you relive it emotionally. Unfortunately, there wasn't the same conversation about mental health back then that there is now. I hope any new mothers reading this who are having a hard time will get help early and will channel their feelings into something more healing than white marble floors. Because I now know that I was displaying just about every symptom of perinatal depression: sadness, anxiety, fatigue. Once the babies were born, I added on my confusion and obsession about the babies' safety, which was ratcheting up the more media attention was on us. Being a new mom is challenging enough without trying to do everything under a microscope.

During this period the mystic will feel forsaken, emotionally fatigued and intellectually bored to such a degree that he may become a sick soul. Meditation exercises will be impossible and fruitless, aspirations dead and uninviting. A sense of terrible loneliness will envelop him. Interest in the subject may fall away or the feeling that further progress is paralysed may become dominant. Yet in spite of contrary appearances, this is all part of his development, which has taken a turn that will round it out and make it fuller. Most often the student is plunged into new types of experience during the dark period. The Overself sends him forth to endure tests and achieve balance. The most dangerous feature of the “dark night” is a weakening of the will occurring at the same time as a reappearance of old forgotten evil tendencies. This is the point where the aspirant is really being tested, and where a proportion of those who have reached this high grade fail in the test and fall for several years into a lower one.

emotional exhaustion—the fatigue that comes from caring too much, for too long; 2. depersonalization—the depletion of empathy, caring, and compassion; and 3. decreased sense of accomplishment—an unconquerable sense of futility: feeling that nothing you do makes any difference.1

Being in its presence was weirdly fatiguing for Uncharles. He had never encountered another robot with so many undirected tics and mannerisms. Processing them was a serious drain on his system resources.

Here’s a classic case in point: Eva had been taking an antidepressant for two years but wanted to get off it because she was planning to get pregnant. Her doctor advised her not to stop taking the drug, which motivated her to see me. Eva explained that her saga had begun with PMS, featuring a week each month when she was irritable and prone to crying fits. Her doctor prescribed a birth control pill (a common treatment) and soon Eva was feeling even worse, with insomnia, fatigue, low libido, and a generally flat mood dogging her all month long. That’s when the doctor added the Wellbutrin to “pick her up,” as he said, and handle her presumed depression. From Eva’s perspective, she felt that the antidepressant helped her energy level, but it had limited benefits in terms of her mood and libido. And if she took it after midnight, her insomnia was exacerbated. She soon became accustomed to feeling stable but suboptimal, and she was convinced that the medication was keeping her afloat. The good news for Eva was that with careful preparation, she could leave medication behind—and restore her energy, her equilibrium, and her sense of control over her emotions. Step one consisted of some basic diet and exercise changes along with better stress response strategies. Step two involved stopping birth control pills and then testing her hormone levels. Just before her period, she had low cortisol and progesterone, which were likely the cause of the PMS that started her whole problem. Further testing revealed borderline low thyroid function, which may well have been the result of the contraceptives—and the cause of her increased depressive symptoms. When Eva was ready to begin tapering off her medication, she did so following my protocol. Even as her brain and body adjusted to not having the antidepressant surging through her system anymore, her energy levels improved, her sleep problems resolved, and her anxiety lifted. Within a year she was healthy, no longer taking any prescriptions, feeling good—and pregnant.

A lack of dopamine makes your emotions harder to control or regulate. There are more feelings of sadness and even depression. Other symptoms can be procrastination, less motivation, lack of interest in life, different sleeping patterns, restless leg syndrome, mood swings, fatigue, feelings of guilt or despair, a bad memory, lower focus, addiction to caffeine or other substances, or obesity.

Your fatigue is telling you it's time to lighten the inner load.

For 90% of dieters, a deficiency in one of four essential brain chemicals can cause weight gain, fatigue, and stress. The solution to losing weight doesn’t lie in deprivation diets; it lies in balancing our neurotransmitters. Specialized nutritionists, like myself, and advanced practitioners are focusing on how the brain affects our health. Serotonin influences appetite GABA curbs emotional eating Acetylcholine regulates fat storage Dopamine controls metabolism When these brain chemicals are balanced, our bodies are more able to lose those extra pounds.

abilities when misunderstood, misused, or ignored can drag us down emotionally, sometimes to the point of near-paralysis. They fatigue us quickly and perhaps even chronically, and burden us with unnecessary responsibility and ill health that doesn’t heal no matter what we try.

I have no idea what to do, and everything is starting to feel dangerously hopeless. Hopelessness is not an emotion to be indulged. On the heels of hopelessness comes defeat, and even though everything seems pointless and impossible, I still want to win. Underneath my confusion and utter, bone-crushing fatigue, even though I don't know much of anything at all, I still know I want to win.

I’m sure you have felt the exhaustion, fatigue, and the drain on your emotional and spiritual life as you balance being a wife, mother, and everything else you have to do. When we are stressed, we can look to a lot of things to feed our souls, such as a fun girls’ night out or a long movie or time surfing on the Web or a huge batch of chocolate chip cookies! But anything less than God Himself will leave our souls unsatisfied. Psalm

Emotions have their own movement. They move like waves: huge tsunami waves, choppy rapids, or long slow tides. The best way I know to work with emotion, especially strong and difficult emotion is to let it move like a wave, allow it to complete its movement and, eventually, to leave. If the movement gets held back, if it gets trapped and stagnates, or an inner turbulence stirs, the unexpressed emotion and grief can turn into physical illness, fatigue, depression, anxiety, or other displaced emotion.

Avoid making important or long-term decisions when you are fatigued mentally, emotionally or physically.

I discovered that compassion fatigue is a real thing. Emotions, so strong at first, can easily shift into apathy. The subsequent guilt is paralyzing; it can prevent us from ever doing anything and freeze us into inaction. No wonder some people live for themselves, unaware of or unengaged with those who desperately need help. When global problems overwhelm, the human tendency is to do nothing.

The rocks of Pennsylvania ranged from smaller than a golf ball to larger than a picnic basket. Some were half buried and immovable toe-stubbers, others shifted dangerously underfoot. They were universally sharp-edged and largely unavoidable. Or at least, bypassing any given one just meant stepping and stumbling over others. The rocks of Pennsylvania provided a level of obstacle heretofore unseen on trail. Ruts and potholes threatened to snap ankles, piercing points stabbed into trail-sore feet and larger stones teetered unexpectedly. More than brute strength or stamina, hiking over these rocks required fine-motor control, balance and mental acuity. Each and every foot placement required blink-quick consideration and an exacting precision that was no less fatiguing than hiking up mountains all day long. The rocks of Pennsylvania weren’t simply physically demanding and mentally taxing. They were emotionally challenging as well. After more than a thousand miles, thru-hikers had grown accustomed to moving along at certain rates of speed. Over rocks, those rates became unrealistic. For many, readjusting to this slower pace was an infuriating experience, much like driving a shiny new Corvette round and round a parking lot littered with speed bumps.

Poor Posture Promotes . . . In addition to sabotaging people’s perceptions and impressions of you, poor posture can cause uncomfortable health issues: • Fatigue • Discomfort • Neck and back pain • Muscle imbalance • Headaches and body aches • Structural changes to your body

Anyone who does not get enough rest and relaxation to enjoy life, who drives him/herself constantly, who is never satisfied or is a perfectionist, who is under constant pressure (especially with few outlets for emotional release), who feels trapped or helpless, who feels overwhelmed by repeated or continuous difficulties, or who has experienced severe or chronic emotional or physical trauma or illness is probably already suffering from some degree of adrenal fatigue.

Someone starts out sedentary, overweight, and somewhat insulin resistant. They set out to improve their health and lose some weight by following a low-carb diet. It works great. They lose weight, their insulin sensitivity improves, and their energy is through the roof. They start exercising, which helps them lose some more weight, as well as build some lean muscle mass. Now they are really into it, and the frequency and intensity of their training increases. This individual is now at a healthy weight (or relatively lean), is exercising regularly, and has better insulin sensitivity. They are a completely different person, metabolically speaking, then when they started. But the problem is they are no longer properly fueling their body and recovering from their intense training sessions (which were once non-existent). They are starting to feel tired and fatigued in the gym, are always in a bad mood, are holding on to stubborn body fat, can’t sleep at night, get sick all of the time, and are maybe having some sexual performance and hormonal issues. Their diet no longer matches their new activity levels and current metabolic condition, because those have completely changed over time. If this person objectively looked at their situation and progress and listened to their own body and biofeedback, they would consider some dietary adjustments. A moderate-to-higher carb intake might be a better fit. But some people will cling to a diet that initially gave them good results, and got them from Point A to Point B, thinking it will get them from Point B to Point C. I’ve been there myself. Part of it is initial experience, part of it is marketing material, and part of it is pure emotion. It doesn’t always work that way for continued progress.

Physical therapy has a high burnout rate. The long hours of intense one-on-one time is emotionally fatiguing. And while we universally love our patients, there’s always one rotten apple in the bunch who just breaks you down.

If you have cancer or AIDS, you are a victim who is bravely fighting a horrible disease. Society regularly labels these people as brave, courageous, and heroic. They are incredibly strong and we cheer them along in their pursuit of health (several members of my family have had, and beaten, cancer, and they are undeniably heroes). If you have chronic fatigue syndrome, though, society views you as weak, as emotionally inferior and constitutionally lacking. People tell you to “snap out of it” or “it’s just depression,” as if you could just decide to be healthy and it would be so. Even people you think love you still harbor secret opinions, “well, he is a bit of a hypochondriac.” These are the people we ridicule on sitcoms: the kid who needs an inhaler, the teenager with food allergies, all labeled as “weak” and pitiful. Not victims of unfortunate circumstances like those fighting a “real” disease, but people who have chosen to be weak, and therefore, deserve ridicule if for no other reason than it might snap them out of it.

This fits in with what I saw in staff in astronomical facilities and was reporting to the management team: 10-14% Oxygen: Emotional upset, abnormal fatigue, disturbed respiration.

Look at your list of bad habits. For each one you’ve written down, identify what triggers it. Figure out what I call “The Big 4’s”—the “who,” the “what,” the “where,” and the “when” underlying each bad behavior. For example: • Are you more likely to drink too much when you’re with certain people? • Is there a particular time of day when you just have to have something sweet? • What emotions tend to provoke your worst habits—stress, fatigue, anger, nervousness, boredom? • When do you experience those emotions? Who are you with, where are you, or what are you doing? • What situations prompt your bad habits to surface—getting in your car, the time before performance reviews, visits with your in-laws? Conferences? Social settings? Feeling physically insecure? Deadlines? • Take a closer look at your routines. What do you typically say when you wake up? When you’re on a coffee or lunch break? When you’ve gotten home from a long day?