Why Am I So Tired All the Time? It Is Not Your Sleep, Your Age or Your Phone

For twenty years I watched people come into my consulting room tired in a way they could not explain. Not tired from a hard day. Tired on a day when nothing much happened.

You might know the feeling. You did not do all that much, and by the evening you are exhausted and you cannot say why. So you think it is your sleep, or your age, or your phone. It might be. But I sat with people who had sorted all of that out, made real changes, and were still tired. So I stopped believing that was the cause.

Most of your tiredness has nothing to do with your body. It is the effort of keeping up the version of you that other people get.

Somebody asks how you are and you say I am so good, I am really good, I am fine, what about you. It is not always true, and you probably did not even choose to say it. You make those adjustments every time someone looks at you. Nobody sees you do any of it, and it takes more out of you than a hard day's work.

This is why a holiday does not fix it. You can take the week off, sleep in, leave your phone in a drawer, and you will feel better for a day or two. Then it comes back, because you rested your body, and your body was never the tired part.

And understanding it will not stop it either. I had people who could explain their pattern better than I could. The year, the moment, which parent, what the room looked like. Then they went home and woke up and did the same thing the next morning. Knowing did not change a thing.

What does change it is going back to the moment the pattern started and letting yourself recognise the part of you that got sent away, then bringing it back. Not as insight. As something you actually feel through, one place at a time, until the habit your body built to protect you stands down.

Twenty years as a therapist in private practice, until I saw the limits of it and left.

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