10 sources of exhaustion you can’t afford not to know about

At the end of any year, we’re all forgiven for feeling anything from a little tired to absolutely exhausted, especially if we’re in roles of the giving of ourselves.

Anyone who is a parent or a teacher, a pastor, chaplain, nurse, manager, etc, together with being a child of an elderly parent, or juggling studies or paying off debt, and who possibly has multiple helping and serving roles, will relate. In simpler terms, most of us can relate.

Here are ten sources of exhaustion, which is an adaptation of the work of Ruth Haley Barton’s Invitation to Retreat: The Gift and Necessity of Time Away with God :

1.            Being too plugged in

It’s the curse of the modern social media and email age. Most of us spend far too much of our lives connected to devices. Without tempering this excessiveness of electronic stimuli, we risk burnout simply because we have a fear of missing out (a.k.a. FOMO).

2.           Trying so hard and juggling so much

Few of us truly want to disappoint people, because, let’s face it, even if we’re selfish, keeping people happy makes life easier. We’re often prepared to do more just to keep the peace. And just because we do this doesn’t mean we’re “people pleasers.” It’s often just strategically wise to keep people happy. But the more we say yes, the more exhausted we become.

3.           Functioning out of an inordinate sense of ought and should

This is about listening to our language, or even what we’re saying to ourselves about making needs out of wants. We place a lot of pressure on ourselves. We should do this, or we ought to do that. If you’re exhausted, you know how it goes.

4.           Finding it difficult or even humiliating to receive help from others

It is far easier for us to do things for others than to “owe” people. But if we can’t receive others’ help, we will find life exhausting.

5.           Living more as a performer than the person God created you to be

We are human beings not human doings, but all the same, we act as if all that matters is our performance. I know how hard this can be having had employers that I found impossible to please regarding performance—yep, just didn’t know how. I know that conditioned me to see my worth in what I do and what I have to offer rather than seeing my worth as who I am. God is far more interested in who we are than what we do.

6.           Few or no boundaries on my service and availability to others

Priding ourselves on saying yes to everything is the sure road to burnout. Let me just leave that there!

7.           Always feeling you should be doing more because there is always more to do

There will ALWAYS be more to do, and the more we do, the more we SEE the things that need to be done. We don’t need to be the ones to do what needs doing.

8.           Carrying the burden of unhealed wounds – sadness, unresolved tension or conflict, toxicity in relationships

This one’s loaded. Grief, unforgiveness and untenable relationships will do us in if we let them. We will have grief. We will. We must take our sadness to God. And we must find ways of resolving tension (which takes intuitiveness and courage) and putting in place boundaries in toxic relationships—or ending them.

9.           Information overload

Just about every adult alive at this time knows a world where information bursts toward us like out of a firehose. We need to protect ourselves against the relentless deluge.

10.        Just being plain willful (as opposed to being willing)

This speaks to our narcissism. Yep, it’s in us all. Only the ones who can see it are those who are probably low on the narcissism scale. Most of us know what we want and, if we’re honest deeper down, we insist upon having it. 

The opposites of these are easy to note down:

1.           Establish a routine that is a foil to being plugged in all the time. This is the demand for structure and honesty. If we can’t abide by sensible limits, are we being honest about where the real problems lie?

2.           Stop trying so hard and stop juggling so much. Say no more often and be equipped to say no by preparing answers beforehand.

3.           Function more out of an ordinate sense of could and might rather than ought and should.

4.           Receive love from others, after all, those who want to help us are probably doing so because they just want to love and serve us. Let’s give them that chance and then it gives us the opportunity to be thankful toward them.

5.           Repeat after me, God’s far more interested in who I am than what I do.

6.           Boundaries to our service and limiting our availability to others is wisdom.

7.           There may be more to do, but unless we’re directly responsible, it doesn’t mean we must do it.

8.           We must enter (surrender to) processes for healing our wounds – or at least be honest about these enduring weaknesses and the limits we’re encumbered with.

9.           Limit the flow of quality information and be disciplined to jettison information that is dubious.

10.        Having a willing attitude in reconciling and accepting our individual reality.

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A simple prayer for when change is desperately needed

For all that seek desperately for quiet, for stillness of heart, and tranquillity of mind, for healing of soul, this prayer is for you. For those who are sick and tired of being sick and tired. For them that need hope amid staring down the barrel of change. For anyone brought to the valley of decision... this prayer is in the language of “I”.

O GOD

As I embark on this fresh journey, would you be with me in instituting these necessary changes, one day at a time, so these changes stick this time. Make me rise knowing that every great journey starts with a single step in the right direction and make me to keep stepping in the appropriate direction.

Lord, You know me, and You know my need, and You are the only one who can sustain me as I make the changes necessary—Your changes for me, those You have been ushering into me for quite some time now, the changes You know I can make.

I thank You, God, that You give me the power to make these changes. Help me be accountable. Help me find all the right resources, and please keep my heart humble, especially in the times when I need to reach out for support or when I’m tempted to complain.

Help me to heal in the process of the changes I’m making, Father. You know how much I’ve tried before, and You know just how much help I’m going to need from You. Help me, please, Lord, stick with the process, because, Lord, You know, I get unstuck so quickly and find my old tricks again so darn easily.

Help me in terms of people, God, especially regarding certain persons and certain triggers. Help me to know how to respond, how to say no, when to implement a boundary, and give me the wisdom of kindness and grace as I communicate my need.

Help me with my responses, too, most gracious God. Give me more of that fruit of self-control that I would not react negatively, while helping me to not berate myself when I get it wrong. Give me wisdom upon Your revelation for the words to use and how to speak them and give me a heart that would act according to Your will and not my own.

Help me prioritise the right things, in the right way, in the right order, for the right reasons. Most importantly, Lord, help me know what is right, and give me courage to do what is right, even if that is potentially costly.

As prayers go, Father, You know this is a plea. Impress this most urgent need of seeking Your help on my heart, God.

In Jesus’ name,

AMEN.

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The person with the “pray for me” eyes

The eyes have it. I know it’s a play on words, but it’s ever so true.

Anyone who’s ever been depressed or anxious, or who’s suffered loss or lives with PTSD, or who bears the bodily marks of trauma, with threads of dread woven through the mind, will know. They will know.

What will they know, we may ask?

There is a look we detect in a person’s eyes who is struggling. If we’re struggling and we look into a mirror, we see a duplicitous image—one that looks normal to our eyes, but also another one that betrays that image.

The second image is seen through the filter of our heart. We see weakness and vulnerability. We see the words, “Pray for me,” written through the eyes of the heart in the second image. This is a desperate voice that is already doubting whether anything will help; already doubting whether they’ll be believed; already doubting whether there is any point to even requesting prayer.

The person with the “pray for me” eyes is certainly feeling beyond help. When we’re there we feel as if we’re beyond the miraculous touch of God, even if in our minds we say we believe and know notionally at least that with God all things are possible.

What we must do when we’re healthy enough to care is to sense this look in another person’s eyes. We don’t need to feel we must fix them or their issue, but being available to absorb their feeling of estrangement, and being there enough to build empathy through eye contact and proximity is crucial. It never seems like we’re doing that much when we’re caring, but what seems little is already just so much for the person being cared for!

If we’re the person with the “pray for me” eyes, we must seek out support.

Finding a person who will sit with us even for ten minutes. Someone we can trust. Someone who won’t prod and poke. Someone who will listen, and if they’re given a word of encouragement to give it. The truth is we’re searching for answers, and we can get those answers from the least likely of places at times.

Being alive is encountering people enough to see the “pray for me” eyes, and then to act on that discernment. “Are you okay?” One of the most powerful and lifegiving sentences known to humankind when asked with solemn sincerity.

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What makes depression many times worse than it already is

It’s only when we’re there—at a particular destination—that we really have a grip on what’s actually going on; because this life is so deeply experiential. There are inherent limits to what we can communicate, because there are all sorts of psychological filters we screen information through. And even when we’re there in a specific location, side by side with another person, we can still have two different perceptions of what’s going on.

When we’ve reached the destination called “depression,” which is probably the worst, most hell-like location anywhere—never a place you send a postcard from—it’s the same.

This sense of disconnection is what makes depression many times worse than it already is. When we’re depressed, we know acutely how hopeless life is, how closely despair crouches, how debilitating just living and breathing is, let alone the energy required for work.

When our lack is so visible in the forefront of our lives, as we come to face everything we hate about feeling this way, as the mind is frustrated doing the simplest things, where function is a perennial challenge, we notice something even more apparent.

We notice very plainly just how estranged we are from life and the people around us. Depression is the loneliest of illnesses. It’s cruel in that it shows us how weak we really feel, and it rubs that reality in our face.

We see it in people’s responses to our responses to them. It’s like meeting someone really different when all is awkward. When we see mirrored back to us our own sense of feeling inadequate, we see that lack of connection as our fault, never really thinking that the other person can only reciprocate the awkwardness. It’s not really a reflection of what they feel about us at all, but it’s all they have to work with.

It’s like the reality many face when they reveal their story of abuse or trauma or loss, and because it can seem outlandish, the response can be one of, “I really don’t know what to think of that,” and so the person telling their story interprets that as the person either disbelieving them or unable to go there.

The biggest challenge someone has in helping anyone who’s depressed is just how to connect, when in our depression we may not even know how to connect with ourselves.

What is sorely needed when we’re undergoing depression is an empathy where a person or people will choose to linger with us for a time; if we’re in the mood to mix for support, that is.

If we linger together long enough, we do break through barriers to intimacy. But there needs to be an interest, and what ought to spark that interest is what the person helping might learn as they seek to understand. What we really need in our depression is understanding of our own crisis, and when another person shows the kindness of patient interest in this regard, intimacy is built and trust is established.

It’s to not just listen, but to be present, which has to be the most selfless of activities. Only as we commit to being there as if we ARE the depressed person can we hope to achieve a semblance of connection—and then it may be that the connection is incredibly authentic.

Only as we’re attended to in our depression like this do we sense we really can drop our guard and BE before this person who has availed themselves to us.

What’s needed most desperately indeed in our depression is the desire to act as if we really do truly understand, and because our perceptions are all so finely tuned, we find we can’t fake this.

Empathy is the greatest gift we can receive in being encountered in our depression. 

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A grief that abides as fellowship in loneliness

I’m hoping this helps with hope for those who are yet still oppressed by a grief that abides. This is about a grief that abides beyond the pain, as a fellowship that gives us a sense of spiritual companionship in our loneliness.

Do you know when I feel most lonely these days? It’s when I’m misunderstood, underappreciated, jaded, exhausted, taken for granted, and betrayed. Less than fighting back against these things, as if resisting them or the people involved would help, I’m more apt to give up temporarily.

I’m prone to brief periods of cataclysmic discouragement, especially when people want yet more out of me, when I’m already giving the proverbial 110 percent, or when people cast me off into the nether land of a category that suits them, or when I’m just exhausted, which tends to happen usually once a month.

But my experiences of grief have given me something of a fallback. There is something about having been thrown into the deepest grief that abides well into loneliness. It’s like it’s only in loneliness that a spiritual gift for bearing such loneliness becomes apparent.

How do I explain this?

In having learned an acceptance for things one cannot change, and we only learn that when we’re in positions of helplessness for days and weeks and months at a time — (see the value in it?) — whenever we feel this again, that capacity to bear what seems hopeless comes into its own again.

Grief suffered all the way through, certainly to the point where we learn, or accept finally, that we cannot control some things in life, helps us abide the grief of a bout of loneliness.

The loneliness in view is the apparent disconnection we feel from the world that seems not to understand or appreciate us, or the world that rejects us. In those terms, this loneliness takes us straight back to a fellowship we could only enjoy with God when God was all we had.

When all else is stripped away, and there is nothing that connects us with this world, where we really feel like a foreigner in a very strange and desolate land, we have access to a fellowship with God that is only available when we feel this way.

There is a great truth that we cannot deny. Grief has bestowed on us the truly great gift that we’re no longer crushed by this world or this life, because our trust is in something and Someone far greater.

This is I’m sure why the apostle Paul could say, “When I am weak, then I am strong.” For me, the spiritual progress of “accepting a hardship as a pathway to peace” is most definitely the spiritual perfection of Christ. This is not only possible, it’s miraculous, and the essence of true salvation experience.

The endgame of grief is transformation to the ends of a fellowship felt most in loneliness.

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Those first few shocking hours of grief

Unparalleled with anything ever before experienced, that first few hours of grief shook me like nothing else. Yet, I’ve had so many moments like it over the past 16 years or so.

It was night, and that night lasted forever. I drove and drove, hardly able to keep my eyes on the road, as tears streamed so hot and heavy like never before. It was such an incredibly shocking experience, like being thrown to the bottom of the ocean with a heavy chain tied around my feet. It seemed I was drowning in pain and it was relentless.

I drove aimlessly, without destination, but craved somewhere to drive that held some memory of comfort. Although I’d been a Christian for nearly 13 years, I hadn’t darkened the door of a church for several years. I had such a sick, backslidden faith. But it was to a church I drove, about 40 kilometres from home.

For the first time in years, I prayed to God; in the resonance of bargaining, “Lord, anything but THIS… anything, I’ll do anything.” I should have known back then, but still I refused to recognise it, a new life was beginning, and to say I hated it would be a cataclysmic understatement. I simply was unable to come to terms with the reality that had come suddenly to be mine.

I not only sobbed, there were shrieks and writhings of self-harm that I’d never heard or felt from myself; kind of death cries of anguish resembling the feeling that I was actually dying, but in reality, I was far from death. Little did I know that life was being reborn, but the pain was so intense I felt my insides were crawling outside of me. (Honestly, how do you describe the indescribable?)

I sat there for hours. Midnight came, though I was barely able to recognise the time, I was so intoxicated by exhaustion. Nobody knew at that stage where I was, what I was doing or the plight I was in.

This was to be the first of many such lonely encounters where all there was, was me and God. I initially doubted God was there, but then I couldn’t bear the fact. He must have been there. But at this point I’d never before or since felt so alone.

I should not have been driving, but I drove home. I didn’t sleep much as my mind tormented me for my present and future. I entered a partnership with anxiety there, and it never really left me for months afterwards.

Those first few shocking hours of grief I’ve since learned are horrendously normal in our human experience when we experience loss. How on earth do we warn people who have not encountered it? We can’t. Until we’ve been there, we have no idea.

Until that time, I had no idea what life on the other side of loss was like. I had no idea it existed. I was clueless about a pain that many people suffered. I literally had the eyes of my heart opened in an instant.

Having been there in that place where shock and numbness stay with haunting loyalty, we just know that those moments change us forever. In such moments, we lose our naivety, and trauma takes its place.

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Why grief can be unresolvable, and why you don’t just ‘get over it’

This will be counterintuitive to a lot of people, I’m sure, but there is a broader narrative at play as the bedrock of all our maladies.

Whether we’re talking about trauma from known experiences (whether it’s one or many, trauma does not discriminate), trauma from unknown experiences (childhood, amnesia, unacknowledged angst, etc) or loss in all its myriad forms, we can be sure of one thing.

All of these equal grief, and there is a great degree of that which cannot be resolved, because it amounts to loss. Again, it might be counterintuitive to say this, but once we’ve experienced loss, how can it be that we’re ever found again? Life changes when we would never have chosen that change.

What ends up happening when we’re deep in grief, is we aspire to be elsewhere without the wherewithal to be there. We’re locked interminably out of that elsewhere place. We are in essence stuck in the in-between.

But what happens when we’re no longer deep in grief, is the emotional memory of that trauma encoded deeply inside us. What was lost cannot be found. But it can be reordered. It can be denied, which is not the healthiest of options. It can send us into conniptions of resentment; another far-from-healthy option. It can also be locked away and be irretrievable. Indeed, any of these places of spirit we can find ourselves locked in. But it can be reordered, and that’s our hope.

The new name to call trauma is grief, for contrary to popular and historical opinion, we don’t get “closure” from loss. By definition, again, loss is irrecoverable. We do find ourselves in a “new normal,” but very often this is a state we’re far from satisfied with.

Like trauma that sticks to us just like our experience has, because we cannot undo what is written in the body, loss that we also cannot undo changes us. We don’t so much reach acceptance as we accept what we cannot change BECAUSE we cannot change it. We learn to live with it even if that means we learn to live a kind of foreign experience of life.

Deep down inside us, we live estranged to an experience of life we would expect is possible. We can feel cut off from what life should be like. We might as well call this depression.

There is hope, but it’s not what we expect it to be. We must incorporate our experience if we hope to live beyond the pain of it. It must be faced. It must be discussed. It must be described. It must be delved into, at least to a point where its sting isn’t so noxious.

When we’ve found that within our trauma, our loss, our grief, we find we can discuss it as a normal part of our narrative—without the pain—we’ve reached a destination along our journey where we’ve learned something. We may not even know what that something we’ve learned is.

There may be no tangible benefit to enduring loss and trauma, and the unresolved grief of it all. The fact that we cannot prevent loss and we cannot go back to what was before the trauma took place indicates that the best we could do is accept the unacceptable.

That is such a harsh concept to swallow, and I for one don’t ask you to imbibe it.

What we can do, however, is learn to be a little gentler with ourselves as we learn what we can. Much grief is unresolvable, and you don’t just get over it. But it does teach us compassion, and strangely enough, these experiences do grow us up. These experiences teach us much about boundaries, the importance of safety, much wisdom and discernment.

Most of all, perhaps, and I owe this to a most recent conversation, we do best not to associate with people who just don’t understand us. They may or may not be toxic in and of themselves, but their perceptions and experiences are toxic to us, for they bear no compassion and no desire to understand, which is confounding.

Even the best scholars, therapists and doctors can barely understand suffering.

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Grief that transforms anger to song to tears to peace

God can take our anger as much as our tears, but wait, there’s more; much, much more.

God just doesn’t accept our anger, even when it is aimed directly the Lord’s way. Indeed, God has a plan for that anger, and the Bible reveals it. The very first verses of Psalms 10 and 13 indicate what we hesitate to admit. We blame God for all sorts of things we don’t like. There is no need for anyone to say, “No, you cannot shake your fist at God!” If the Bible allows it, we can know that God not only understands, God endorses it.

Yet, God’s got much more in store for our anger when life’s going wrong than we even realise. Anger is an inevitable ingredient in the grief process. No genuine grief process is without it.

Now, God could leave us in our anger, to be thwarted in our frustration, without help in our exasperation. That’s where anger leads if we stay angry. Anger alone won’t fix a thing.

Having been angry, the Bible provides a way for our anger to morph into something more productive. And let’s not think of anger as simply spitting chips and cussing. Anger is any response of refusal to submit to God’s good way; it is the epitome of stubbornness, and yet we often do not progress through our grief until we’ve tantrumed ourselves to the point of recognising outbursts solve nothing.

The biblical pattern of lament—whether alone or in community—is to enter into song. Somehow when we speak our sorrows into existence such that we hear ourselves, we feel God hears somehow, and somehow such language of prayer ascending to the genre of song causes us to weep.

Weeping is one way to put paid to anger. Sorrow that forms into saline droplets that run down the cheeks, or that run into our ears when we’re lying on our back, speaks of a grief process that has progressed beyond anger. 

In anger, we’re still able to deny our sorrow, even as we refuse to acknowledge how hopeless we feel. But in sorrow, we’ve concluded that we’re out of control. In anger, we loath being out of control that much that we insist our anger is a form of control. Whether it works or not is irrelevant when we’re sticking to our digs. But in sorrow, we come face to face with a truth that when we accept simply depresses us. Yet, in tears are the transport of healing.

Tears are the vehicle to peace, even if that peace is short and temporary. Tears are a process to heal the untenable moment. Tears are the language of truth for the sorrow we find unacceptable. Yet, tears take us more directly to peace than any other thing.

We soon realise that there’s no shortcut through grief, such as it is that we loved so greatly. Why would we wonder that the gravity of grief is so heavy? We loved what we lost THAT much!

But at least through song, we have a way of overcoming our anger, so we can feel our sorrow through our tears, which gives us more direct access to peace.

Image: from The Lovely Bones soundtrack. Brian Eno.