Exhaustion

What follows are some further thoughts on this area with which I have been particularly kept busy in my professional life. Please note that I have written in further and more practical detail about the general subject of tiredness in the article on fatigue so at some point that should be read as a background to what follows.

ABOUT
- Herbal Medicine
- The Clinic
- Richard Whelan

HERBS
- Alphabetically

CONDITIONS TREATED
- By Group
- Alphabetical

CLINIC INFORMATION
- Clinic Hours
- Clinic Location

CONSTITUTIONAL MEDICINE
- Ancient wisdom in the modern world

Exhaustion is as good a word as any for that state of extreme tiredness where a normal kind of life is just not possible any longer. Really it is the ‘end point’ of a process that has usually taken a long time to get to the point that people just cannot cope any longer. It has to be said that a great many people have been seen to reach this place, and as you may well know if you are reading this, it is no fun, no fun whatsoever. In my practice I have had much to do with people who have become truly exhausted. Each one is different with their own unique set of circumstances but the manifestation of the state of exhaustion, how it makes people feel and act, is very similar from one to another. The loss of enjoyment of life is a source of great distress to people in a state of exhaustion. There is often an underlying question, especially these days, as to whether the big ‘Depression’ is at fault here.

Certainly it is to be 100% expected that someone who is exhausted will not be feeling very happy about it but I think it can be a grave folly to mistake the end process of a chronic tiredness with a mood disorder that is supposedly caused by a chemical imbalance. One way of looking at the problem makes you look at what you have to do to get your life back in order; the other just assumes you can carry on as you were so long as you add in a chemical fix.

Another feeling that is common to just about everybody is a sense of immense frustration. They may be too tired to fly into rages but that simmering feeling of tension and irritability is undeniably there under the surface, causing all sorts of its own mischief.

There is clearly an increasing pattern of exhaustion in our world today. Life is not getting slower, or simpler. Young people in particular can come into their adult life with such a high level of expectations on who they are supposed to be and what they are supposed to achieve that it is really common to see people in their 20s and 30s who are utterly burned out, in desperate states of health.

I don’t want to outline the kind of treatment strategies I use to approach this problem in general because it would be repetitious; the article on fatigue goes into that in some depth.

However there is, at least to me, one crucial point of difference when talking about fatigue and exhaustion. They are, of course, both only descriptive words and people have their own sense of what they convey but, for what it’s worth, in my own approach I make a very clear distinction between the two and this makes a big difference to how approach the ‘what we do’

Tiredness and fatigue generally needs and responds very well to the kind of holistic approach described in the article on fatigue. 

Exhaustion means it’s time to admit defeat. You have lost the battle, for now, and need to understand that and learn to be ok with it, for now.

If someone is exhausted, and really not coping, then finding short term strategies to prop up their energy levels will lead to a longer term worsening of their condition. This is usually difficult advice for people to accept, at least at first, but if I believe someone is truly exhausted then the first and sometimes the only thing I prescribe is rest.

The way I usually put it to people is that you have to ‘give yourself permission to rest’ I talk about this in the article on fatigue too, the difference here is one of it possibly being pretty much the whole treatment rather than just one component of it.

I generally find there is some difficulty in fully grasping this point and some people need to get worse before they are ready to get better. But, once the person gets through their resistance to really letting go, then you see something rather wonderful happening. Typically they collapse for about a week (no-one has ever crashed for more than two) sleep a lot, feel more tired than they ever have in their lives, sometimes, to be honest, they feel like bloody hell, and then the healing crisis passes and you get to see a powerful, and I must say very rapid return to health.

I don’t know if just writing this down like this will convey the ‘sense’ of what I am trying to say. No-one wants to feel tired so their general response is to fight it, not surrender to it! Like I say it can be a hard thing to grasp but I hope, for your own sake, you will give it some thought.

TOP | CONDITIONS TREATED A-Z or BY GROUP