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.

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.

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.

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.

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*.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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’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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

This made me realize I don't find my mom exhausting just because there's something inherently exhausting about her but because I know any time I try to invest in telling her something important is just wasted time. Fascinating. Thanks for the epiphany.

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.

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.

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.

Tiredness being an emotional state of conservation explains why I'm always so exhausted in anticipation of an event, but I'm rarely tired during and after it

It's honestly fascinating to think about it this way because I've been going to therapy for over a year and only recently finally figured out through the process and plenty of introspective that basically all of my emotional issues come from the perception that everything I do is a failure (or it's never good enough) and this began to couple with a fear of failure, where I tend to just not do things that I perceive as something I am likely, or even just have the possibility to fail at (or again, just not do as good as I think it should be done). And I never thought to connect that to the fact that I am perpetually tired. I always attributed it to poor sleep patterns and habits, and whenever I tried to do something about those I gave up pretty early due to not seeing any improvement, retrospectively thinking that that's the problem, that I didn't commit hard enough (which also led to considering it a failure and having a harder time trying again because I thought I'd just fail again). But considering how much I think about pretty much any activity before doing it, it makes sense that the amount of mental preparation I do could lead my mind to thinking its a monumental task and thus make me feel tired as a way to stop me from doing it, especially considering I do all that preparation because I fear failure, so if I perceive the most likely outcome to be failing to complete the task and feeling bad about trying to do it, why bother even trying in the first place? The obvious question is how to break out of that vicious cycle...

Story of my life for years. What helped me a lot was to make myself physically tired by doing sports of other activities. At least in my case this “real” tiredness replaced the mental tiredness for a few hours, giving me peace of mind.

This actually makes so much sense, why I felt more energetic when I was on anxiety meds even though it is supposed to be a sedative. It didn't give me energy, just took away the mechanism of my brain telling me not to bother to do anything.

I cannot stress this enough, but if you're tired a lot of the time and have trouble sleeping you should consider having a sleep study done. I had one done recently and was diagnosed with sleep apnea, and now I'm (hopefully) on the road to recovery and good rest.

Raises some questions for those who feel tired just from waking up each day, just the thought of having to go through another day makes you tired

You've been through a lot dr. K. I gotta say I respect you a lot for the growth you have experienced and now helping a bunch of us getting through some stuff. Honestly this channel is a gem

There is another type of toredness when you are socially drained as an introvert. It feels completely different but will oftentimes end in lots of sleep and need for alonetime. Sometimes I feel like this society doesnt work for the most of us. The video actually really helped me btw so thanks a lot!

They did a research study where they put people in a bunker they let them work and do activities at their own schedule and sleep whenever they were tired. By the end of the study the participants didnt want to stop because they had the most energy they ever had and best sleep they ever had. Humans are meant to meet their physical and emotional needs on their own time. Modern life is unnatural.

There's definitely a distinct difference between being tired and being fatigued (what is discussed in this video). You'll find being tired from a day of hard work, assuming you get some time off to recover and it isn't TOO back breaking, will often leave you feeling pretty good and successful. The right kind of tired can almost feel comfy in a way. Mental fatigue on the other hand rarely feels good even at the end of the day and can be a lot more taxing comparatively. The human body is evolved for a certain amount of physical toil and craves it, while I doubt it is nearly as well adapted for repetitive, strenuous, menial (or perceived menial) mental tasks.

Thank-you! This a break through for me. I have been tired all my life and now in my 60's and want to address why. Tiredness is an emotion! I don't know you but I can tell you are a gift to the world. I love how you presented the information by clear definitions and examples. Kisses and hugs! Dr!

It's astounding how accurately this video explains what's I've been expiriencing for the past 5 - 7 years. The sentence "my brain is disincentivising making progress in life" simply struck a chord because of how accurately it describes what i haven't been able to verbalize for the longest time. As to how my mind is coming to the conclusion that doing anything is pointless is mostly because of repeated past experiences. Where my mind tells me in no uncertain words that " you've tried many times before and look where that got you, are you sure you want to go through that all over again. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is an utterly stupid thing to do. " Well my mind isn't completely wrong but doing the same thing over and over is referring to me trying to make some progress in life. But after ignoring my minds judgement about potential outcomes (being there's nothing to gain and a lot to lose) several times I've been convinced that my mind is right and just trying to protect me and there's really no hope for the future considering the situation. Right now I'm really being tempted to try again in hopes of finding out that what my mind was telling me was all bullshit.

I often wake up and feel tired once I realise I have to live my day, particularly when it involves participating within society ~ I wouldn’t say I’m always depressed, anxious or introverted but that I’ve always felt different and struggled to connect with people in my life and overtime that’s made life seem pretty darn tiring (except when I’m alone doing my comfort things or with the few people I consider ‘my people’)

OMG! That's huge meant to me. You have just cracked what I've been felling this 'feeling' so far. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Keep it up Doc.

Absolutely LOVED this video/explanation. A few days ago I did a check-in of how far along I am with my goals for the year & for the “big” ones, I’m a bit behind. I realized that when it came time to do them I’d always “feel tired” & surmised that my fear of failure was keeping me away from them. What I’m getting from this is that I’d need to change my mental association with the completion of the task; i.e. see it as an achievable goal opposed to unachievable. Anyway, thank you for your work, your “Duh!” breakdowns are always so fascinating! 🙌🏽

Outside of mental health, make sure you check if you have sleep apnea. Getting that treatment helped tremendously.

Wait but this is a life-changing and maybe even world-changing concept. It explains why my anxiety makes me procrastinate. It explains, for example, the studies that show that people make bad financial decisions BECAUSE they’re poor, not the other way around - because financial stability seems like an impossible goal not worth pursuing, so the emotions shut down the thought of attempting it.

I feel like this makes so much sense. To me, this might also be an explanation as to why so many people feel tired all the time. In this time and age, a lot of people have a harder time finding meaning in life and meaning in the things they do in life. If we don't find meaning in it, it will be perfectly reasonable to expect a person to react like they don't see what they get out of doing things. If I understood what Dr. K says, then that lack of seeing the reward at the end is what leads to a feeling of being tired.

🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation: 00:00 😴 *Tiredness as an Emotion* - Tiredness is an emotion, not just a lack of energy. - Emotions, including tiredness, serve a function and provide information. - Tiredness is the brain's response to a perceived high workload or low chance of success in a task. 09:14 ⚙️ *Tiredness as an Energy Conservation Strategy* - Tiredness is a mechanism to prevent wasting energy on challenging or low-success tasks. - It discourages us from investing energy in tasks with unclear chances of success. - Tiredness is a protective mechanism to prevent energy expenditure on unlikely goals. 15:45 🧠 *Overcoming Tiredness* - By critically examining why certain tasks make you feel tired, you can uncover underlying beliefs and patterns. - Chunking large tasks into smaller, manageable goals can reduce the perception of high workload and overcome tiredness. - Understanding why your brain disincentivizes progress can help you address and overcome tiredness in various aspects of life. Made with HARPA AI

Being tired all the time is my super power. I can sleep whenever I want. Middle of the day road trip? I'm sleeping. International flight going overseas? I'll sleep through that too. People trying to call me for a social event? Nah, sorry, I'm sleeping!

"No way I'm going to waste energy on life in general" -My brain

Fascinating video, I love how you are explaining it in an evolutionary sense, makes it click really easy. I have been classifying my tiredness into different categories, physical, emotional, mental. The last two might be tied together but I don’t feel they are 100% the same

I’ve noticed that feelings of boredom for me often precede such feelings of “tiredness” as well. It makes sense that the feeling would subconsciously motivate me to then avoid that boring task or activity and cause to me do something hopefully more fulfilling. If the task is still logically important though, you might have to try to set yourself up for some kind of personal success (like looking for ways to get it done five, then, or more minutes faster) as you do the task to motivate you further.

This video really helped put everything into perspective for me. I find myself not doing anything for days on end because I am just so tired. The thing is though, I often have plans to do something in the day, and do not do it because of the effort it would take. Afterwards I feel awful because I put off something that needs to get done anyways, which just makes me feel more and more tired. Even when I don’t have to do anything, I will find something I “need” to do and plan to do it, and then don’t. I am in this cycle I cant get out of, just feeling tired ALL the time no matter what- to the point that I have been seeing doctors regularly. It might just be that I need to work on boundaries for myself and analyze what about certain tasks (or nearly all of them) has me feeling so drained. Thank you for this video

I definitely experience tiredness in relation to emotional overload. I’m an introvert working in a fields that makes me have to fake extroverted traits. It requires constant interactions, conversations, and a great deal of social-emotional investment. I love what I do, but it’s not an easy thing for me to do. My ADD doesn’t help, either. As a result, I am completely drained at the end of the week. I go home and spend the weekend not doing anything but recovering in my home. The thought of any more social interactions outside of work with anyone but my now adult kids (who are all easy going and easy to be with) is just awful. Exhausting is exactly how I describe it. I can sometimes actually feel the energy drain from my body at the thought of leaving home or socializing. I really hate the idea of anyone else in my home, which is my safe place to drop my mask and recharge. Having two children with Aspergers, I recognize some of those traits in myself over the years, but never went through the diagnosis process for myself. It was yet another thing that just seemed too exhausting to go through.

I’ve been struggling with depression, procrastination and extreme tiredness. The only I want to say is thank you. I feel like I’ve open an important door in my journey. Thank you for this video

Great video and this is why we should prioritize, make a to-do list, go step by step... in order not to feel overwhelmed. Also, set your goals to be reachable. Just last week I was so tired all the time, I had soooo much to do, I was overwhelmed. Yesterday evening I imagined my life after I finish all these tasks and it was so relieving. So, I prioritized my to-do list and I just went one by one, instead of looking at it as a whole. Make your goal reachable!

Takeaways: → Analyze whether your physiological response has an emotional component. → What is my body telling me not to do and why is it telling you that? → Analyze the reasons given by your mind and imagine if your best friend said the same thing and go from there. → Some actions really might be tiring.

As a woman ADHDer I am chronically fatigued. Stimulants help because they provide a short window where I am less-tired enough to get some necessary tasks done. In general though there are very few moments in my life when I am not consistently tired despite multiple intervention types.

I'll tell you why I'm tired. Listening to this video!!! 😮

Will implement this, helped me understand why i was avoiding the worthy tasks. Bless you Dr. K

Please keep in that this mechanism can also get dysfunctional, making the sources unclear. For example: “I’m tired, I don’t want to go on a date tonight” could be interpreted as: “I guess I’m just not that into them.” When in reality it’s actually: “I’m afraid of getting hurt due to past relationship trauma.” Or even just “I’m feeling insecure about how I look tonight.” Tiredness is also a good way to identify when your brain is working against you, due to trauma and/or negative coping mechanisms.

As a teacher, this really helped me understand why I feel tired whenever I'm preparing a 7th grade math lesson.

This gentlemen is extremely wise . He really opened up my eyes in this video. Thank you for this video

One the most comprehensive and resonating descriptions of family dynamics around divorce. You are a blessing, your work is a gift to us 🙏

There are medical conditions like thyroid disorders, metabolic disorders, sleep apnea, heart conditions, medicines can cause tiredness as a side effect, and many other medical conditions that can cause people to feel exhausted every day. If someone is truly tired every day for a long period of time, part of figuring things out should be to visit a doctor and rule out medical conditions. But I definitely agree with emotions being a big factor. You made a great point about the source of tiredness being hard to find because it can be caused by multiple overlapping conditions, including thoughts, emotions, lack of healthy boundaries etc.

I felt chronically tired for about a year and a half. Figured I wasn't getting enough sleep and I was simply aging. Then I got my annual blood work and found out that my thyroid had given up on me. I took the medication and all of a sudden felt 10 years younger. Friendly reminder to always get your blood work done cuz maybe your tiredness is part of a larger issue.

With every word you spoke, you spoke directly to me. Absolutely insane. Thanks brother.

Finally an explanation about how I am feeling. Your content is pure gold! Thank you for sharing your knowledge, it's helps me way more than the psychiatrist I've been seeing for 7 years

Fascinating. This has given me so much food for thought. I am tired all the time and I thought I just wasn’t getting enough sleep. My fiancé just asked me last week if I was ok because “you always say your tired.” At the time I brushed it off, but after seeing your video, I realized I have to reevaluate my actions and thoughts. Thank you!

This morning: Why do I want to sleep all day every day lately This afternoon: Dr K vid on tiredness What a beautiful channel

I think this was great and really hit home for me since I have been sooooo unproductive for years now when before I was so outgoing and getting things done no problem and very very independent. After listening to this I thought why am I tired and not wanting to do anything? I think my brain has just overthought things I do and said something to me like, “no that’s not good for you, not worth it, just don’t do it and you’ll feel better, it’s ok, just don’t do it.” Wow, I got a lot out of this. However I do think there are other medical problems sometimes but this is a great starting point.

Wow, that was brilliant! Thank you so much for sharing this. It was light bulb after light bulb moments. It also reminded me of the 5 minute timer trick. Where you set a timer for 5 mins to do something you are putting off and tell yourself you only have to do 5 mins. This worked so good for me and I’d always end up going longer because I could appreciate the progress I had made and could see the end in sight. Thanks again ❤️

My takeaways: Feeling tired doesn’t mean you’re physically tired, it’s an emotion. Feeling tired is just a signal from the body telling you that this thing your doing is not worth the energy. Ask yourself why you feel tired, try to put it into a new perspective. Big tasks can be daunting, take tons of time and even feel impossible, so why start? - your body makes you feel tired when you think like this. Break up larger goals into many smaller ones, so you can actually make measurable process. What else did you take away?

This is AMAZING. You explained the chaos in my brain so well

That made so much sense, it helps with how I choose to approach my work now

That uncanny gradual restoration of energy you get going from being utterly 'nah man' to 'well, ok lets give it a shot' while watching this

That "MEH" at the end of "Lets go, yeah fun, lets do it" was the most relatable thing I have ever heard from Dr. K and it was glorious. Thanks for that moment. Also very much appreciate the massive scale effort of mental health healing the HealthyGamer community extends to people in need of assistance. Dr. K's healing stats are absolutely outrageous and we love to see it. GG

I have been blaming myself for being perpetually tired as a high school teacher for six years now and I think you have just dramatically changed my life perspective. ❤️

This explains why I used have so much energy earlier in my career, and life: I had high optimism and no idea how to properly estimate the workload to achieve my goals. Now I’m 40, been doing database coding and data analysis for 12 years, I feel the emotion of “tired” way more (and not b/c I’m middle aged per se) but b/c I can estimate a tasks workload way way better. And that goes for work AND family life.

Another thing to keep in mind is that constant tiredness can also be a symptom of Lymes disease. I know someone who got found a tick embedded in his thigh and he knocked it off before realizing what it was, and he quickly forgot all about it. Well a full year and a half later he realized that he had been constantly tired for the past 6 mos or so. He went to the doctor several times, and they diagnosed a bunch of different things that all ended up being wrong, and out of tbe blue one day someone said, "maybe he has Lymes disease" so for the hell of it they forced the doctors to test for it, and sure enough, he was positive! They treated him and within a few months he was a new person! He still has long term problems with pain in his joints because he went so long without being diagnosed, but at least he didn't die, and he isn't tired anymore!

damn dr. k your description of being a kid with divorced parents is spot on. you feel like a ping pong ball being knocked back and forth or a chew toy being fought over by two dogs. even if everyone has good intentions you are stuck in the middle and no one is happy.

Brilliant, thank you. I’ve read in other literature that with ADHD, this effect can be compounded by two things. First is that time blindness impairs your mind’s ability to estimate that time load; you could be fooling yourself that something is going to take longer than it actually will (or worse, shorter which leads to overcommitment). Second is the hyperfixation effect of not knowing when to stop; which leads to a system 1 choice of not starting the thing unless it can be done ALL AT ONCE. So there is clearly some energy consumption that coincides with task / focus switching. Doing that could create actual exhaustion, or again, the mind anticipates that and puts up the wall of tired to avoid the situation all together. Interesting stuff doc thank you

This is why I prefer reading books on my Kindle, somehow holding the physical book and literally seeing how many more pages I have makes me tired. But with my kindle, I only see one page at a time and brain says, you can do that. And so I click to the next page and it says again, you can do that, and before you know it, I’ve reached the end of the book.

I've been having this issue of chronic tiredness and sleepiness especially during lectures or anything I really want to focus on and it leaves me feeling so dissapointed with myself. Thank you Dr. K for another vid to understand myself better.

This is literally profound! I’ve been struggling with extreme tiredness, which has physical reasons that are being addressed, ie low iron and sleep apnea, but there is still a debilitating underlying tiredness. This is really a new lense to look at the issue with. Thank you

I was in therapy for ten years & the way you describe things is soooooooo much more helpful.

I recently went down from full time to part time. I'm privileged that I can do that. The lower in stress has helped my energy and mood immensely.

I was tired, exhausted, depressed for years. Then, due to something else I stopped eating carbs. Not tired anymore.

I’ve always felt as though there’s two kinds of tiredness. The one you’ve described in this video where it’s more emotionally not wanting to do something, and then there’s also the one where you’re tired after a long day of work so now you’re sleepy and your body feels physically drained of energy. I have adhd and I’m constantly tired, but not the sleepy kind. Even when I’m hyperactive, the moment someone tries to get me to do something I don’t want to, I’ll immediately become emotionally tired almost to the point of it being painful. My medication works well for this as I know it’s replacing the low dopamine levels in my brain which makes me feel less tired and as such a lot more likely to become somewhat motivated to do something I don’t want to do. However I know it’s not fool proof. It’s always stuff that I know I should be doing, but I’d really rather go and do something else. Even doing a critical analysis into how I’ll feel after doing something like cleaning, the good feelings still don’t make me want to do it. My brain still just goes nah fam and I wind up just not doing it but also feeling guilty for not doing it. Then I feel tired for the rest of the day because I know there’s stuff I need to do, but I wind up doing stuff I enjoy instead. Yet the joy immediately disappears when I remember that I have stuff to do and that’s why I’m feeling tired to begin with. Honestly it’s why I feel like CBT has never worked for me, despite me putting in my best efforts to adhere to changing my routine for the better. Going shopping for food makes me feel tired. Cleaning makes me feel tired. A lot of games I used to enjoy but played to death now make me feel tired. Thinking about picking up new hobbies knowing the learning curve is a lot just leaves me tired. It really is a mental disability. The hyperfocus can be a borderline super power when directed at the right thing, but it’s not guaranteed to be directed at something I want or need it to be. It’s like being in a car driving over the speed limit, but nobody is at the wheel and the car has Tesla autopilot running with me along for the ride. Sometimes it’ll work amazingly, other times it has me crash straight into a lamppost.

This video just explained - and potentially solved - the most perplexing issue in my life for the last 10 YEARS. I haven’t paid taxes in 5 years, relationships are futile and draining, house improvement projects are stacking up, my email inbox is chaos incarnate, hmmmm… time to reset the thought process when my mind tells me I’m tired. Let’s do this! 👍🏼

This makes sense. I have Long COVID and severe chronic fatigue. EVERYTHING makes me feel tired when I think about it. Because now every little thing is so much harder and more taxing than I could have ever imagined prior it could be. So my stress radar is extremely sensitive, but at the same time it needs to be. Overdoing myself results in post excertion malaise, pain, and lost days in bed.

Sometimes it really helps to remember your “WHY” For the non-compulsory things in life like working out or studying a way to get over that tired feeling is to try and remember why you’re doing it in the first place. Then you are able to decide whether it’s worth completing the task and making progress towards your goals or not. Eg. I don’t want to go to the gym today because it’s going to take a lot of effort and I don’t have a lot of time. I’m also going to be all sweat and I’m going to have to shower afterwards too. However, the reward of the end goal far outweighs the reward of staying in your comfort zone and doing something easier. Discipline can only take you so far when you’re feeling ‘tired.’

As an introverted autistic person, I can relate to a lot of this. I have several types of tiredness, one is being the “I’ve done too much today” type of tiredness (and as I have chronic illness, that “too much” can be anything from running several errands, to just heat up dinner for myself), and then there’s the sensory overload tiredness where the environment has just overloaded me with sensory input so my brain just can’t any longer, then there’s the social exhaustion from being in social situations where I often mask my autism at least part of the time and masking autism is damn exhausting (then add sensory input from being in a group etc to that) and then there’s the overwhelmed tiredness when having to deal with a task, and because you get overwhelmed by it you don’t know where to start so you get even more overwhelmed and eventually just throw your hands in the air and cry (thanks, executive functioning issues…) And then of course there is the tiredness from having autistic meltdowns when you just can’t get out of a situation in a timely manner to avoid said meltdown… Add it all together 24/7, 365 days per year and you’re so tired that your tired is tired, yet you keep going because the different types of tiredness allows you to do different things. I’m a gamer and I can play games even when I’m very tired, but sometimes I can only manage sims 4 because of how I’m feeling, while other days I’m totally fine with Elden Ring or FFXIV or similar. Right now I’m feeling completely drained because of sensory overload from a low frequency noise from a machine outside and pelvic pain from doing a wrong movement earlier that nearly made me scream out loud. I want to play Elden Ring, but the machine outside along with the pain is making me need to hide under a blanket to just calm down and relax until the pain lessens and the machine goes away as I’m just too overwhelmed by sensory input and everything is bothering me

after hearing this, i'm wondering if my tiredness is because of my anhedonia. whenever i do stuff, i feel little to no joy or relief, even if i got the task 100% done and there are visible results. even when i consciously try to be mindful, think about how good it is that the task is done, praise myself for doing it... i still tend to not feel anything good. so i guess it makes sense that my brain caught on and is like "we're not going to feel any sort of reward for doing this. therefore this is a waste of energy. time to feel tired". i wonder if that's a reason why depression leaves so many of us feeling tired. i've been considering my inability to feel much joy to be relatively low priority in terms of my mental health symptoms and been considering the tiredness a higher priority, but now i'm thinking they're probably linked.

I grew tired after a couple of minutes waiting for him to cut to the chase to see if he has new information to me or if I should move on, and realized there's gonna be 16 more minutes of talking about someone's mom, holidays and boss.

I am tired of being tired. BTW, I now realise why I no longer have interest in relationships or marriage - too much work, too little chance of success.

I think this is why I struggle with friendships so much, even with people I really like and who give me energy. I'm really awkward and I get really attached to people, but I've also lost almost every friendship I made so I just get really crushed an lonely. Now, I struggle to even text people back because it takes so much energy to try and respond like a normal person and I have a suspicion that everyone is just gonna leave me behind anyway. This is gonna help me to put that feeling into perspective and not create my own friendship problems.

Tireness as an emotion makes a lot of sense. The moments I often feel that is when it comes of doing house holding tasks like washing the dishes or using a vacuum. I also notice that my tireness became less after I realized that I had to work smarter and not harder and doing all the tasks I need to do in parts and spread those parts over the week What works for me is planning and following a struture. I also train to not think about greater end goals, just do it, take notes on what needs to be done and how I should do it But most importantly: Take Your Time, don't rush it and forgive yourself when things do not go 100% according to plan.

I accidentally discovered this channel and totally like his contents. Not only he is good at explaining things but also he is good at gestures and playful that he could even become an actor as well. Also, he plays with his hair every now n then which is cute too. May be he is full energy so, he does hand gestures a little too much.

This was brilliant and so helpful! I've been utterly exhausted the past week. I attributed it (initially) to jet lag (traveling overseas). But there's def something else happening for me to be so tired despite getting enough sleep, eating well, taking vitamins, etc. I'm going to look into this more. Someone should write a book about this (exhaustion as an emotion). Thank you!

My ADHD was exhausting, it's part of the reason tasks are so tough, every phone call and interruption made me feel like I needed a nap. Edit: after meds it's way better btw.

Oh my God. You just changed my life. I’m not joking. This solved a mystery I needed solved. This makes perfect sense. Thank you so much.

I have been placed in situations with extremely difficult projects to accomplish over and over and over again in my life I was just thinking about how much I used to enjoy it and now I don’t … I feel tired everyday I’ve lost sight of the benefits of my accomplishments Everything I’ve done … success or failure or in between has taught me invaluable lessons I’m thinking I need a vision board today

@HealthyGamerGG thank you for how fucking brilliant you and your channel are! I am literally feeling safe in the presence of your videos, because of the deep insight you have into all the topics and your energy! thank you!

I sort of figured this out over 22 years of a very confusing life, but dang this explains this extremely well in a way I would've never come to in my lifetime. Very informative and useful as always, let's all do our best to improve tiny bit by tiny bit every day!

Personally, my tiredness turned out to be physiological. I finally got a doctor to do blood tests because I was afraid I had cancer (ok yes I am a bit of a hypochondriac but cancer runs rampant in my family and I've had a host of weird health scares in my past so it's made me become hypervigilant) and it turned out that I have hypothyroidism. Since getting on my thyroid medicine it's helped a lot. I'd say definitely rule out the physiological stuff first because the solution may be as simple as taking a little pill every day.

Finally someone who told the real reason behind it instead of giving strategies. Thank you so much💫😇

I FELT TOO TIRED TO WATCH THIS VIDEO