The Second Burden of Exhaustion
Many people are exhausted twice. First by the burden itself, and then by judging themselves for carrying it.
When we talk about exhaustion, we usually focus on what's causing it: work, caregiving, stress, responsibility, uncertainty, or simply trying to keep too many things going at once. But I've become increasingly interested in something else, which is the story we tell ourselves about being exhausted in the first place.
Exhaustion tends to get treated as a problem to solve: something to push through, overcome, or ignore until it goes away. But exhaustion isn't always the problem. Sometimes it's information. It's a signal that the demands we're carrying have started to outpace the resources we have to meet them. Understood that way, exhaustion isn't necessarily evidence of weakness, failure, or a lack of resilience. Often, it's simply a reflection of being human.
The trouble is that many of us have learned to meet exhaustion with criticism instead of curiosity. Maybe I should be able to handle more. Maybe other people are managing just fine. Maybe I just need to try harder. Rest comes wrapped in its own quiet set of beliefs, too: that we haven't done enough yet to deserve it, that we don't have time for it, that other people need us more, that it has to be earned before it can be taken. When those narratives are running in the background, exhaustion becomes heavier than it actually is.
That's the second burden. The first is the exhaustion itself. The second is the guilt, shame, self-criticism, and quiet denial of our own needs that tends to follow close behind. This second burden rarely gets discussed, but it may be one of the biggest reasons so many people struggle to recover. Instead of listening to what the exhaustion is telling us, we end up fighting with it.
Awareness is where that starts to shift, not awareness in the sense of monitoring yourself constantly or trying to do one more thing perfectly, but simple curiosity. What am I actually carrying right now? What kind of exhaustion is this? And what story am I telling myself about it?
The goal was never to eliminate exhaustion entirely; it's part of being human. The goal is a healthier relationship with it. Because before we can address why we're tired, we first have to understand how we're relating to our own tiredness.
As you move through this week, it's worth sitting with two questions: What do you believe exhaustion means about you? And when it shows up, how do you meet it? With criticism, with resistance, or with curiosity?
