Off The Record
7 Warning Signals You’re Mentally and Emotionally Exhausted
The world runs on caffeine today. Everyone is stressed and fatigued out of their wits with deadlines always threatening to knock one’s walls down. People thrive on a culture that pushes them to their limits and makes sure to wrong out every bit of their working abilities in return for sums of money that seem anything but meager compared to the work one does for it.
The bigger enemy however is not physical exhaustion. Instead, it is the mental exhaustion. Man has over the history of human civilization steadily moved away from nature and natural existence towards an increasingly apathetic and unpoetic existence that is fueled by workaday ethic and money instead of deeper and more profound thinking.
No wonder the world is facing problems like war and climate change and pollution to such an extent. This is primarily because most of humanity’s problems are always solvable by empathy and kindness.
How do you know if you have been affected by this deadly plague? How do you know if you are stuck in a rut thanks to your mind and the fact that it is exhausted from the pressures of life?
The following is a list that might help.
1. Irritability
This is a very common sign among the younger generation. People no longer have the patience needed to listen to each other and understand each other. Everyone is irritable, in real life and on social media. People have stopped hearing to listen, they just hear to reply. This has made every sentence we speak or type out, a potential argument.
2. Messed up Circadian rhythms
A healthy body runs a smooth sleep-wake cycle. This is a cumulative cycle and a good sleeping habit ensures better and healthier body and mind; in turn ensuring the perpetuity of a healthy sleeping habit. Lack of rest and REM sleep is something most of the younger generation suffer from. This has made them inefficient and dull because their neurons are always charged up with caffeine and/or alcohol. This makes them either too sleepy to function or sleepless enough to kill a man.
3. Lack of motivation
Motivation and positivity are positive fuels that help drive people towards the better direction in life. It makes people want to wake up and face the world and its vagaries. Thanks to mental exhaustion however, they end up thinking their passionless existences are perpetual and permanent. But it is never so. There is always a silver lining to every cloud and there is always a perky side to life. One just needs to be able to see it, beyond all the miseries in life.
4. Impatience
This is something that further hinders success. Most tasks require an insane amount of patience and most people run out of it in a jiffy. This is aggravated by the factors discussed above, especially the lack of REM sleep. Overworked nerves make concentrating on day-to-day things even more difficult than usual. Lack of rest and fatigue makes working and understanding the task at hand very difficult. This is why more often than not, people drop out of work and school, simply because they lack the patience to do something that takes time to do.
5. Bad eating habits
What you put inside you is what you are made of, is an appropriate saying. The thing is, given the lack of time for almost everyone, ensures the fact that no one really has the time to prepare a nice, warm meal for themselves nowadays. This is a situation that fast food chains have pounced at and taken advantage of. All the sodium and fat that you put into your body makes you even more lethargic and exhausted. In the long run, these things give rise to chronic health problems and by the time it is chronic, there’s not much you can do about it.
6. Depression
This is simply because of the sheer overwhelming we go through thanks to the above factors. These have made depression such a common thing nowadays that almost everyone has a shrink on call in their lives. This has an even more debilitating effect on one’s mental health and in extension, life itself.
Related article: Apply These 10 Basic Principles To Free Yourself From Depression Forever
7. Introspection
This is because when the outside world fails to stimulate you anymore, you end up criticizing yourself even more, as you peck at the tiniest of flaws you can find in yourself.
It’s never too late to change your life and turn it around. Talk to the ones you love about your problems and let them help you.
