The following post is something I have as an "introductory" text box on my "Running On Two cylinders" blog. I thought it would make a good first-post on this one.
When you're struggling with getting things done, and feeling as if you're running on only some of your usual six or eight cylinders (depending on whether "usual" for you is six or eight cylinders, and there are differences between individuals when it comes to their normal energy levels), the words, "exhausted", "exhaustion", "physically exhausted" and/or "mentally exhausted" can seem to crop up in your mind on a regular basis.
In a world so ready to assume that feeling bad must be depression, the word, "depression", may be another one that crops up in your mind.
Maybe you're not sure about whether it's exhaustion or depression, so maybe you start looking up signs of depression to see if you think they might apply to you. Even before looking up signs of depression you may know, yourself that you don't really think you have depression; because you may know that you're certainly capable of being in a good mood. You may not, however, trust your own "diagnosis" or "not-depressed"; and since you're a reasonable and objective person, you decide to first consider that how you're feeling could possibly be depression.
Perhaps you look up signs of depression in any number of places, and maybe you look them up whenever you're thinking about how badly you need some kind of help with how bad you feel. Depending on how exhausted you're feeling (or whether or not you're having a good or bad day when you look up those signs of depression), you may see a couple or a few symptoms that make you think you can't rule out the possibility of depression. Then again, you may see enough that would suggest you COULD rule it out that you settle on thinking that if your problem is, in fact, depression; it's probably a very mild form of it. That may be when you decide that depression isn't particularly what you should be focusing on in your efforts to find some kind of help somewhere/somehow/ After all, you wouldn't have been looking up signs of depression if you weren't feeling that bad and so often thinking of words like "exhausted".
For a brief moment you may wonder if it even matters what, exactly, the name of your problem is. You wonder if anti-depressants may help. You know that all kinds of people live on anti-depressants. Some say they don't help a bit. Others say that help. Then, however, you may remember that your life is filled with things that have added up and contributed to your exhaustion. You may think about side effects that anti-depressants may cause, and then ask yourself if you really want to risk side effects when you know that even if your exhaustion is now something that's "wrong with you" at this point the cause of it is clearly from things around you and/or in your life. In other words, if your "chemicals" are "off" you're not surprised and wouldn't be normal if they weren't "off" under your particular circumstances.
So, you may decide to look up "exhaustion" instead of "depression". One problem is that finding something that seems to adequately understand and address your kind of exhaustion can be really difficult. First, looking up "exhaustion" is likely to get you all kinds of sites (including expert ones) that tell you that the solution is to reduce stress, sleep more, eat better, exercise more, and change any situation that's causing you problems. Second (before getting into some of the problems with material you may find), you're exhausted. Exhausted people can have trouble dealing with the frustration of looking "all over the Internet" for what they want/need to find. You may not even really know what it is you want/need. You may ask yourself what, exactly, you're hoping to find. The answer may be something along the lines of "I don't know... an an answer about whether I may have depression, advice about how to feel better if I'm exhausted, words that seem to understand what I'm going through? I'm just looking for some kind of thing that might help me figure out how to get out of my exhaustion."
You may notice that you're running into "burnout" articles, and you may notice that most of them involve job burnout. Your problem isn't your job, but you may think those "burnout" articles may have something to offer you. What they so often offer are a few discussions about how job-burnout happens. Then they may tell you to reduce stress, sleep more, eat better, eat better, exercise more, and think about changing jobs (or even careers).
So, maybe you quickly discover that job-burnout material isn't what you really need, and you try to think up other terms to search in your effort to find something about exhaustion. You probably don't have to think very long, however, because when you were looking up exhaustion originally, looking at depression sites, and viewing those job-burnout sites you probably ran into at least a few things about adrenal fatigue. In fact, maybe you already read some things about adrenal fatigue. Maybe you didn't. Either way, there's a good chance the adrenal-fatigue material isn't all that helpful to you either. Here's why:
First, adrenal fatigue is a subject that involves a lot of people trying to sell a lot of nutritional supplements and books. "Adrenal fatigue" or "Adrenal Insufficiency" are terms used when the adrenal gland isn't functioning (to use a non-medical phrase) "up to par". Basically, stress can put a strain on adrenal glands because it is the adrenal glands that help us meet our cortisol needs in order to keep functioning well under stress. Adrenal fatigue is said to result when the adrenal glands have essentially been over-worked and (to use another non-medical term that I've run into more than once) "run out of juice".
In any case, you may decide to read up on adrenal fatigue. One easy-to-discover problem can be that the exhausted you may run into one after another sales sites, many of which offer a quickie-blurb article on adrenal fatigue (and one that says pretty much the same thing as all the other sales-based "adrenal-fatigue" sites do. These sites may be offered by people who are physicians (or only claim to be); and even if the articles on those sites aren't all "quickie-blurb" articles, many of them are graced with the letters, "M.D." next to their authors. One might think that should be reassuring (and even a "deal-sealer"), but it isn't reassuring for you because a) you don't even know if you could trust the product in the first place, and b) you're not planning to buy something without knowing for certain what, exactly, is wrong with you. Besides, you don't really think there's anything wrong with you other than some circumstance(s) in your life that you cannot possibly change at the moment.
Second, there can be a lot of different ideas out there with regard to adrenal fatigue. Those ideas include everything from "it's not really a condition the way it's being presented" to "about 80% of the people have adrenal fatigue". What isn't debated, nuanced, or otherwise unclear is that if adrenal glands lack x amount of functioning, and to the extent that it meets the "measure" for this particular diagnoses; in its extreme form adrenal insufficiency is Addison's Disease. Needless to say, most people don't have Addison's Disease, so let's leave Addison's Disease out of the discussion here and focus only on "run-of-the-mill" adrenal "issues".
Since you've decided to read a little more about adrenal fatigue, you may have run into sites that focus only on two symptoms associated with adrenal problems - having trouble getting up and running mornings, and discovering you're in an "afternoon slump". Sometimes those who focus mostly on those two symptoms will even point out, "Yes, you have trouble getting up and running because you don't sleep well (or enough)," and "Yes, it's true your afternoon slump could result from the fact that you eat peanutbutter cups for lunch (because you're so busy, hurried, stressed out, and even to exhausted to make a better lunch); but your not getting the right sleep, and the fact that you're eating candy for lunch, are symptoms of your stress and exhaustion and not the cause of it (which is, of course, adrenal fatigue - so buy the nutritional supplement or book that I'm pushing online)." Some of those sites may give you the distinct feeling they aren't addressing a problem that's as "legitimate" as yours, because you know that while you have trouble getting started upon waking up, and have a heck of a lot more slumps than just afternoon slumps; you have other symptoms as well.
Sites that take adrenal fatigue more seriously usually offer lots of other symptoms of it that would differentiate the run-of-the-mill slumps and tiredness of busy, but "OK enough", people whose only signs are sometimes the main two mentioned on all those sales sites.
So, maybe you've figured out how to find the "more serious" and more "legitimate" sites offering information about adrenal fatigue. Maybe you've even discovered that you actually do have some of those symptoms that would seem to differentiate you from other people whose symptoms "could be anything" or "could be absolutely nothing". Maybe you do crave salt and/or sugar. May exercise does make you feel "depleted rather than invigorated". Maybe you have noticed that you're particularly bothered by extreme temperatures. Maybe you're even convinced that you (considering the stress under which you've lived for so long) most likely do have at least a mild case of adrenal exhaustion. That may be when you decide to read up on things a person can do about adrenal fatigue, and that may be when you run into all the usual stuff (eat better, sleep better, exercise more, reduce stress, and change any situation that's causing you stress). On adrenal-fatigue sites, however, you may also run into some additional suggestions about dealing with the problem. Those suggestions generally include a) stop taking in caffeine, sugar and fat, and b) eat a healthy fruits/vegetables diet (but let's mention, yet again, that you ought to be reducing your stress, sleeping better, and exercising). There may be additional information about all the terrible things that caffeine and sugar can do, especially to the person with adrenal fatigue. You may have no particular reason to doubt the information
Now, while I'm fairly comfortable making some guesses about what you may start looking up online if you're feeling exhausted and/or, maybe, mildly depressed; and while I'm very comfortable giving my own take on what you may find online when you start that "looking-for-answers/help" effort; I'm not comfortable making guesses about what you, personally, make think when you see some of the advice about adrenal fatigue. So, I'll you my own reaction to so much of what's out there in terms of advice (and I'll keep my words to a minimum, for now because I can always further expand on points in later posts).
Whenever I've considered the "program"/course-of-action suggested for those with adrenal fatigue, I've always thought, "Well, I could do all that if I could just go lie down on the couch and not function in my life for a few weeks - but I can't."
I know that in my own situation all the causes of my long-term, unrelenting, and extreme stress are related to things in my life (not in the way I deal with stress). I'm an expert at coping and dealing with stress, I have to say. Hell - I deserve some big prize for my ability to cope with, keep going, and even remain reasonably upbeat and optimistic under stress. I did nothing to bring on my own world's worth of stress, and stopping it is beyond my control. The Internet (and the world in general) is full of advice about how when we can't stop stress we need to "learn how not to respond to it" by "not letting it get to us" or otherwise be "better" at how much we let it bother us. The fact is there can be things in life that bring on terrible stress, and deciding "not to care" or to put things in perspective aren't even realistic aims. People who haven't experienced the kind of stress in which "not responding the wrong way" will help often don't even understand that that kind of stress exists. A good example may be in the case of a mother who knows someone or something has hurt (even if not physically) her child or children. When the stress is caused by not having the money to pay the phone bill, "not caring" and "not letting it get to you", can actually be easy enough. When the stress is something like seeing one's child/children or their lives made more difficult by someone/something, no normal mother in the world is capable of thinking, "Oh well, I'm not going to let that get to me." So sometimes, when we can't change our situation or what's making us stressed out and exhausted; the idea that changing how we respond to it is the "be-all-and-end-all" of answers to our problem just doesn't cut it.
More later...
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