When I met Inés, she was 33 years old and, according to what she told me, the energy of an old woman of 90.
Once any physical cause had been ruled out, Inés came for a consultation to discover why he was tired much more than any of her co-workers, even more than the older ones (some close to retirement), because it was such an effort to take care of her 5-year-old daughter, why she didn’t feel like going out on weekends, why when he sat in his chair at night, he found himself without the strength to talk about the day with his partner, Tomás. She didn’t feel like having relationships with him either, reading a book, going on a trip, she didn’t even want to leave the house.
The young woman told me that throughout the day, at any time, even when she woke up, she was extremely tiredwithout strength, fatigued, absent from everything that was happening around her.
in appearance, Inés had everything to lead a happy life: a beautiful daughter, work, a house without a mortgage, a gift from her in-laws, good friends, a stable partner with whom she got along wonderfully. However, Inés was not happy, she noticed a continuous fatigue that slowed her down, that held her back and made her deeply unhappy.
Emotional fatigue, what is its cause?
What was wrong with Ines? Why did she feel this emotional and physical fatigue that paralyzed her?
In consultation, we inquired into her past and discovered that three years ago, Inés had been pregnant with a child, but after a first trimester plagued with difficulties, lost her baby in the fifth month of pregnancy. After the loss of her son, the pressure around her to minimize her pain was enormous and Inés was unable to elaborate her mourning in a healthy way.
For days, while she suffered enormously and felt that her world had collapsed, the people around her (of course, without any bad intentions) denied and they minimized their pain recommending you turn the page and forget about everything.
However, Inés did not feel prepared In order to assimilate the death of her son so quickly, she needed to mourn the loss of her baby, have time to take care of herself, to recover her self-esteem and her enthusiasm for life.
After a few weeks, the pressure of her environment could with her and the young woman’s reaction to protect herself from suffering was to unconsciously “anesthetize” her pain. Inés stopped talking about her sadness with the others. Why, if no one listened to her?
He also began to pretend that nothing had happened. and to try to behave as she did before her second pregnancy. Soon after, extreme fatigue appeared, she wanted to have the strength to act as before, but her body and her mind prevented her from doing so.
Inés’ emotional stress became so intense that at a given moment, his capacity to endure was full, his body and mind felt overwhelmed. The enormous sadness, not having mourned her in a healthy way and having been forced to put aside her needs by denying and hiding her emotions, ended up manifesting in her body and mind in the form of fatigue. extreme. Inés lost her desire to live and, with them, her strength left her.
How to regain strength
Extreme fatigue, like the one suffered by Inés, is always related to particularly intense and prolonged emotional stress. It can appear, among other reasons, due to the death of a loved one, work, divorce, moving, a traumatic event, etc. Not always, but sometimes emotional fatigue accompanies depression.
To overcome emotional fatigue and regain your strength, the people who suffer from it have to learn to know themselves in depth, to respect their emotions and to respond to their needs. If they don’t deny their emotions, if they don’t reach an extreme point of saturation, if they devise strategies to assimilate and live with them, they will manage not to feel overwhelmed and incapacitated again.
Also, it is very beneficial for these people, to undertake, despite the fatigue, a daily routine of physical activity. At first, it will be enough to take short walks, if possible through a natural environment (the park close to home will do). Later, as they regain their mental and physical strength, they can do a longer activity such as a sport, dance, longer walks, etc.