Anxious & Exhausted?

If you’re living with regular bouts of anxiety, then the likelihood is that you feel exhausted with a foggy head that no amount of sleep seems to ease.

Despite all of this, many of you will keep trying to do all of the things you feel are expected of you. You might get frustrated with yourself for not being able to do things to the same standard as you would be able to achieve if you weren’t so tired. This frustration is often exacerbated by your inability to understand why you’re so tired. Maybe you feel like you should just ‘push through it’, and ‘be better’.
Having an understanding of the things that might be contributing to your tiredness can help you to be a little kinder to yourself. Your tiredness isn’t a sign of weakness – it’s your body’s natural response to long-standing anxiety.
When you’re anxious, your body is in ‘threat’ mode. This means that it’s preparing to fight or run away from something. Physiologically, your heart speeds up; beating faster and harder to pump oxygenated blood to your muscles. You can often feel your heart beating faster and might begin to breathe more rapidly as your airways dilate and more oxygen enters your blood. Each of your senses becomes more sensitive – you’re able to hear smaller sounds, your pupils dilate and your peripheral vision improves. Your brain begins to work more quickly so that you’re better able to make decisions. This speed-up can cause your thoughts to race. The newly oxygenated blood rushes to your muscles and sugar and fat are converted for use so that you can fight or run away if needed. As your digestive system isn’t needed to help you 'fight or flight', It slows down and the blood supply is reduced which can cause problems with your digestion.

All these changes and more occur very quickly without you consciously deciding to make them happen. 
Lots of things can feel like a threat to us; feeling embarrassed, worrying about a family member, running late, the pressure to remember everything your child needs for school, not knowing what to wear, politics… the list goes on. With so many threats each day, your ‘threat mode’ can be almost constantly activated.

It’s no wonder you’re tired!

When anxiety strikes, jiggling and fidgeting often come with it. Your legs might begin to shake. You might play with your hair, your nails, something in your pocket, or a piece of jewelry. Sitting still can present a challenge and you could find that you’re constantly standing up, sitting down, and changing position. Sometimes you might be aware of it, but there are times when you have no idea that you’re doing it until someone points it out.

You might not think of this movement as anything significant. However, if you begin to notice how much you’re moving, you could be surprised at how it adds up.

If you are always moving, fidgeting, on the go, pacing, and rocking, then you’re never at rest. You never let things settle and give your body a break – your heart rate never settles and your muscles are permanently burning through energy.

When you’re anxious, you often tense up. This is all part of fight-or-flight mode; your muscles are tensed up ready for you to run away or attack your enemy. But when you’re getting ready for a doctor’s appointment or waiting for a meeting with your boss, there’s not anywhere you can run to or anything to attack. So you stay tense. Your shoulders rise and become taught, you might clench your leg muscles, your core might tense-up; your whole body becomes stiff.

Often you won’t notice how stiff you are until either someone points it out, or it begins to hurt. Even when you notice your stiffness and consciously unclench, you might find that it’s not long before you’ve accidentally clenched-up again.

This tension can put a lot of strain on your body and leave you feeling drained.

Your brain is a muscle. Muscles get tired. When you are overthinking everything, mentally running through things over and over again, and worrying about different scenarios, you are putting your brain through its paces.

It’s mentally exhausting.

At the end of a day of non-stop thinking, you often feel stressed and overloaded. You might have thought so much that your brain needs to almost ‘reboot’ itself, in the same way that if you open too many things on a computer then it crashes and you have to turn it off and on again. Your brain might go completely blank for a little while making it difficult to think about anything at all – you might forget how to do things, even things that you do daily such as brushing your teeth. It can take a while, and often some rest, before you feel up to thinking or doing anything again.

Maybe you have particular rules or rituals you follow. You’ve often ended up following these patterns because it helps life to feel more manageable. But sometimes, you can become almost ‘trapped’ in the rules that you’ve created which can lead to a lot of frustration.

You might follow the same routine each day, have to check that you’ve locked the door multiple times, or walk a certain way home. All of the checking in on things and sticking rigidly to routines or plans that life sometimes likes to blow off course can be really hard work. Getting stuck in certain cycles can mean that you keep trying to fulfil your routines while running on empty. 

As much as these rituals can feel ‘safe’, and give you a way to manage the unpredictable world around you, it can also be utterly exhausting, and force you to keep going when you have nothing left to give.

Or your anxiety may result in an awful lot of checking. Checking and double-checking to see that you’ve locked the door. Getting up five times during your evening meal to make sure that the oven is off. Driving back to your house to check that you’ve remembered to turn the lights off. It can go on and on.

All this over-thinking, repeated checking, and rationalizing the ‘need to check’ thoughts can tire you out. Whereas most people do something once and it’s done, you might have to do it six or seven times and, as a result, use six or seven times as much energy. It’s no wonder you’re exhausted.
When you’re very anxious, you rarely move around at a gentle speed. More often than not you will be going faster than is perhaps necessary. You’ll rush from task to task without pausing to catch your breath. Writing and re-writing lists, checking things, double- and triple-checking things, over-preparing and overthinking, means that you have an awful lot more to cram into your time than someone who isn’t anxious. So you run to try and fit everything in.
Anxiety can have a significant impact on how much sleep you’re able to get. When you try to go to sleep your mind begins to race. It’s as if the minute your head hits the pillow all of your anxiety gremlins wake up and start trying to make themselves heard.

It doesn’t end when you’re asleep, either. Your dreams can be full of anxiety, taking twists and turns that you don’t want to watch or experience. You might find that you wake up regularly during the night, sweating, shaking and feeling breathless.

When morning finally comes around you’ll often feel as though you haven’t slept at all. It’s exhausting.

Anxiety has a number of physical symptoms. This can include feeling nauseous which can put you off your food. Your appetite might be non-existent and the thought of food only makes you feel worse. Any hunger you do feel can mix in with the nauseous  feelings so you don’t always recognize it as hunger at all.

Drinking can also be more difficult when you feel nauseous. That combined with needing to go to the bathroom more often and sweating more can lead to you becoming dehydrated.

Hunger and dehydration can feed into your exhaustion, especially when your anxiety means that you're burning through more energy than you would be if you weren’t anxious.
During the ‘fight or flight’ phase, you’re on high alert, and your body is flooded with energy. When a period of anxiety ends, your adrenaline often runs out. This is called adrenal fatigue and can leave you feeling drained.

With anxiety, it can sometimes take a little bit of trial and error to find the things that work for you. 

In terms of tiredness, there are a few things you can do to manage it. 

Trying to eat a relatively healthy diet, and to drink enough, even if you have to set reminders on your phone or stick to a particular routine for a while, can help you to replenish nutrients and energy that you’re rapidly burning through.

Practicing good sleep hygiene can improve your sleep quality and the speed at which you get to sleep. You might find it helpful to start going to bed earlier, that way even if it takes you a while to get to sleep you should still get a decent number of hours. 
Pacing, balance, and allocating your energy to the highest priority tasks can help you to cope with the limited energy that you have. 
Through careful management, you can reduce the impact that it has on your life, and prioritize your energy, for the most important tasks. 

Taking time for self-care and caring for your basic needs provides a solid foundation for you to work from. It’s important to prioritize your self-care  because doing so allows you to feel better able to cope with whatever life throws your way.

It’s also important to remember that you’re not alone in this. There are people who want to help and support you.
The Center for Therapy & Counseling Services is here if you want to talk to a professional. Call us at (732)254-0600 to schedule an appointment.