The kind of tired sleep doesn’t touch, that constant chronic fatigue 
Why am I so tired all the time? If you live with chronic fatigue, you’ve probably asked yourself that more times than you can count. You wake up tired. You go to bed early, like everyone keeps telling you to, and you wake up tired again. Your bloods come back fine, or you’ve got a diagnosis with no real reason attached to it, and you’re still running on empty.
First things first, because you’ve probably been told otherwise: this is real, and it’s physical. It is not in your head. Keep working with your GP and keep getting checked. What I want to talk about is the part the tests don’t measure.
After sixteen years of readings and healing work, I see the same thing again and again. A woman sits down to ask about her relationship or her job, and what comes through before she’s said a word is how exhausted she is. When we look underneath it, it’s rarely just tiredness. It’s usually three things stacked on top of each other: saying yes when she means no, living a life that isn’t really hers, and soaking up everyone and everything around her.
Do you remember Buckaroo?
The little plastic mule. You load him up piece by piece, and he takes it and takes it. Then one piece too many, and he bucks the whole lot into the air.
That’s the best picture of chronic fatigue I know.
The pieces look like this. The yes to the extra shift. The yes to a friend’s crisis at ten o’clock at night. Being the strong one. Holding it all together. The no you should have said years ago and never did.
People pleasing isn’t a personality flaw. It’s a safety strategy, and it’s usually learned early. Often it goes back to a little girl who found out that being helpful kept the peace, or that being tired got her called lazy. Somewhere along the line she picked up a belief: “I’m only worth something when I’m doing.”
Here’s the thing about a safety strategy. Your conscious mind can’t just overrule it. You can know full well you’re a people pleaser and still hear yourself saying yes before you’ve finished the thought.
So when your voice can’t say no, your body steps in and says it for you. That isn’t your body failing you. It’s your body doing the only thing it has left. Louise Hay linked this kind of long-term exhaustion to pushing beyond your limits and the fear of not being good enough. Sit with that word “enough” for a second and notice what happens.
When you’re living off your soul’s path
This is the bit nobody puts on a symptom checker. Think of a time you lost track of the hours doing something you love. You came out of it lighter, not emptier. Now think of dragging yourself through a job, a role or a relationship that feels wrong. Same number of hours. Completely different tank at the end of it.
Living someone else’s version of your life is exhausting. The sensible career. The role you’ve always played in the family. The version of you that keeps everyone comfortable. Every single day you’re swimming against your own current, and that costs energy you don’t get back.
In 2008, we had a recession in the UK, triggered by the financial services industry behaviour & the collapse of Northern Rock. MY mortgage business died and I was left with no business, no income, no job. Long story short, I picked up my tarot cards and here we are over 17 years later. I love what I do, I wasn’t in love with mortgages any more, but I was trapped by lack of qualifications for anything else besides financial services, the money – it paid well – and no passion for anything else, except my spiritual interests.
The recession sprung me from that jail which was fantastic, but boy did it hurt! That old job was draining me, I hadn’t realised how much it was draining me until I was doing something I loved and something with purpose.
Your soul rarely shouts. It nudges. A restlessness, a Sunday-night dread, a pull towards something you keep putting off. Ignore the nudges long enough and they get louder. For some women, the body becomes the loudest voice of all and puts the brakes on for them.
Ask yourself this: if money and other people’s opinions weren’t a factor, what would you stop doing tomorrow?
Why empaths get hit the hardest
If you’re an empath, there’s another layer. You don’t just carry your own load. You pick up everyone else’s too, often without realising it’s not yours.
The places you spend your days. Prisons, hospitals, schools, care homes, busy offices. Anywhere people are frightened, in pain, stressed or unhappy holds that energy, and if you work there you’re sitting in it for eight hours a day. Some of the most drained women I see are nurses, teachers, carers and prison staff. They come home flattened and can’t understand why, when “all I did was sit at my desk”.
The people around you. The friend who offloads. The colleague who moans. The family member whose mood sets the temperature of the whole house. They walk away feeling lighter. You walk away carrying it.
The news and social media. You don’t even need to be in the room any more. Every war, tragedy and outrage gets delivered into your hand before you’ve got out of bed. Your nervous system doesn’t know the difference between a disaster on a screen and one next door, and for an empath it lands straight in the body.
Now add that on top of the people pleasing and the life that doesn’t fit. No wonder you’re exhausted.
Where to start
You don’t have to overhaul your life by Monday. Start small.
- Listen to your words. “I’m drained.” “I’ve got nothing left to give.” “I’m running on empty.” Ask yourself: drained by what, and by who?
- Practise one small no this week. “Let me get back to you” counts.
- Rest with permission. Resting while feeling guilty isn’t rest. Your body still thinks it’s on duty.
- Leave the building at the door. After work, imagine washing the day off in the shower, give your body a good shake, or take five minutes outside before you go into the house.
- Put the news on a diet. No phone for the first and last hour of the day.
- Ask “Is this mine?” When a heavy feeling turns up out of nowhere, ask the question. If it eases or shifts, it probably wasn’t yours to carry.
And one question to take away. If your body could talk, and it didn’t have to be polite, what would it say it’s had enough of? Write the answer down without editing it.
If this has made you go “hang on, that’s me”, my free Body Signals guide is a good next step. It’ll help you start reading what your body has been trying to tell you. Body Signals guide link
This blog is about the emotional and belief patterns that can sit underneath physical symptoms. It isn’t medical advice and it isn’t a replacement for your GP, it’s to help you address the root cause.
Check out my podcast The Healer Within, there’s an episode on this coming in November.