![]() ![]() Plus, because many of us-frontline workers and parents, especially-have been in survival mode, focusing on meeting our basic needs like food and sleep, we haven't been able to address our emotional well-being.Īnd it isn’t like declining cases of COVID-19 and shifting guidelines wave a magic wand and erase everything that happened to us. We’re still in a (hopefully) once-in-a-lifetime global pandemic, for one, and you can’t fully process stressful or traumatic events while they’re still happening. We may be feeling extra tired because we never had a chance to breathe or heal properly in the first place. We haven’t had a chance to process what happened. But that doesn’t make our pandemic fatigue any less valid. Without a specific source to point to, we often add an extra layer of shoulds and guilt, judging ourselves for not feeling better-particularly as restrictions continue to lift and things are starting to return to “normal.” As we look around, the reason for our feelings may be less obvious right now than it was in March 2020. There’s another reason why not knowing the triggers for our symptoms can make us feel even more taxed: Many of us believe, often incorrectly, that if we just knew the cause of our exhaustion, we could fix it. As a result, we might not even notice or respond to each relatively small stressor-an updated CDC guideline, another Zoom meeting that could have been an email, a canceled event-but eventually they accumulate, causing us to feel weighed down and tired all the time. Sometimes, as my therapist told me, we may even think we’re getting better at dealing with *gestures* all of this, but we’re actually just getting used to it physically and emotionally. Instead, our reserves are depleted and our body responds with exhaustion. Two years into the pandemic, we are way past flight-or-fight mode, which gives us energy. Here are some of the reasons why we’re all (still) so tired: We’re getting used to our new reality-and not in a good way.Ĭontinued fatigue is a typical reaction to prolonged stress (it’s even a stage in a psychological model for stress called General Adaptation Syndrome). I’m a psychiatrist and I’m feeling it too. In other words, despite restrictions being slowly lifted, pandemic fatigue is possibly the most “normal” thing about our current existence. We’re all tired, and talking about exhaustion over and over again is, well, exhausting. As they tell me their stories, I nod not only to advance the conversation but also because I’ve been experiencing a lot of the same feelings. But it’s also because many of my patients are stressing over-and feeling exhausted by-the same things: uncertainty about travel and social gatherings, trouble focusing and completing tasks, and general burnout, to name a few. Part of that is because the mental health system is broken and the pandemic has only made that more evident-the need for mental health services is high, and all of us working in the field can only do so much. Working as a psychiatrist has also been extra fatiguing. It isn’t just waking up, though, that’s become more of a challenge in these past two years. ![]()
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