Feeling Exhausted?

If you’re feeling overly tired or have little energy, you’re not alone. Even though everyone feels tired from time to time, chronic fatigue can harm your quality of life and prevent you from doing things you enjoy.

Why am I tired all the time? 

Feeling exhausted is so common that it has its own acronym, TATT, which stands for "tired all the time". We all feel tired from time to time. Fatigue may be caused by simple factors like a lack of sleep or coming down with a cold or the flu. However, it can also be caused by underlying health conditions.

In most cases, fatigue can be remedied by lifestyle or dietary modifications, correcting a nutrient deficiency, or treating an underlying medical condition. Still, to improve fatigue, you need to get to the bottom of what’s causing it.

The reasons are usually obvious and might include:

• too many late nights;
• long hours spent at work;
• a baby or other responsibility keeping you up at night. 

But tiredness or exhaustion that goes on for a long time is not normal. It can affect your ability to get on and enjoy your life. It can be helpful to think about psychological causes, physical causes, and lifestyle causes such as:

• parts of your life, such as work and family, that might be particularly tiring;
• any events that may have triggered your tiredness, such as bereavement or a relationship break-up.
   

Psychological causes of tiredness

Psychological causes of tiredness are much more common than physical causes. Most psychological causes lead to poor sleep or insomnia, both of which cause daytime tiredness. Psychological causes include:

Stress: The strains of daily life can worry most of us at some point. It's also worth remembering that even positive events, such as moving house or getting married, can cause stress.

Emotional shock: A bereavement, redundancy or a relationship break-up can make you feel tired and exhausted.

Depression: If you feel sad, low and lacking in energy, and you also wake up tired, you may have depression. See your mental health care provider if you think you are depressed.

Anxiety: If you have constant uncontrollable feelings of anxiety, you may have what doctors call generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). As well as feeling worried and irritable, people with GAD often feel tired. See your provider -  medication and talking therapies can help.

Resources:

NHS. Why I am tired all the time. https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/sleep-and-tiredness/why-am-i-tired-all-the-time/

Healthline. Why do you feel exhausted? 12 Reasons (Plus Solutions). https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/10-reasons-you-are-tired#:~:text=Not%20getting%20enough%20sleep%20is,%2C%20you're%20not%20alone.