A Guide Through Fatigue

Fatigue is one of the most debilitating mind body experiences and an insidious wave to surf in the ocean of physical sensations. If you are getting hit daily with waves of fatigue, it can feel like being caught in the undercurrent of a stormy sea with no orientation and nothing to hold on to. Like all mind body symptoms, fatigue must be listened to as a signal but not given power as a command. In the moment, you will not be able to trust your brain’s alarm signals or the sensations of your body shutting down, so you must rely on an inner set of navigation tools to get to safety. I invite you to summon courage - all that you can muster - and practice grounding yourself when the experience arises.

The fatigue may feel like it’s ripping the ground from under you, which is why it is important to have D.A.N.C.E. tools available to you in every moment. The illusion of a mind body experience is that what appears on the surface is rarely what lurks beneath. Underneath the experience of fatigue is actually a hypervigilant or dysregulated nervous system on high alert after detecting danger or threat in the mind body system. The source of this threat is typically a belief and emotion energy triggered by a given situation. As you expand your awareness to include the emotion and belief energy you are carrying, you begin to notice when stored emotions of fear, sadness, or anger show up to be acknowledged, along with beliefs of “I am… unworthy/not good enough/unsupported/rejected.” I invite you to practice getting clear on which beliefs and emotions you are carrying so you can be prepared in the moment to recognize what is showing up. You can engage in this practice by setting aside time in the morning or evening to reflect on the stories of your current life and writing out the beliefs and emotions that surface from a particular conflict or tension. You do not have to wait for symptoms to appear to set aside time to check in. Within any current story playing out in your life, there will always be a preceding belief and emotion energy attached that has been triggered. If you practice getting quiet and listening beneath the brain-driven patterns of thinking, you may start to touch the energetic source manifesting your symptom experience or other various conflicts and stuckness in your life.

To begin this practice, you may start by bringing safety to your experience. Rather than grabbing for something external like a food, drug, or other distraction, use the tools available within you. Unlike a surfer caught in the undercurrent of a wave, you have the power of the breath - use it. Wherever you are, breath is always the first and most effective way to start bringing safety to your mind and body. With breath, you can move into a brief meditation and visualization practice (you can find mine in the ‘Resources’ section of my site) or a gentle movement practice (walking, stretching, etc.). Sometimes, a simple 15 minute rest or bath can help settle the nervous system enough to allow tension points to release and emotion and belief energy to emerge. Always ask yourself whether the activity of your choosing is creating the optimal environment for healing or further burying the emotional stuckness. In the moment when symptoms hit, you may be overwhelmed by the pain, confusion, or fatigue, but with practice in these safety building techniques you will start to create space for imagery, feelings, beliefs, or memories to emerge. Do not push this away as fantasy, no matter how faint, spontaneous, or unrelated it may seem. I promise you there are no coincidences in what shows up in your mind and body for you to be with. The quieter you are able to get in your mind body experience, the more you allow your soul to speak and, with that, the layers of trauma in its way.

Regardless of what the trigger is, there will always be some level of fear present in the nervous system as a result of your brain’s fire alarm response to the threatening source of belief and emotion energy. Like other mind body experiences, just identifying the source emotion or belief may not necessarily make the fatigue lift instantaneously, but by expanding your awareness and your tools to restore safety to your experience you will turn off the alarms over time by rewiring the neural patterns in your brain. For a while, all you may detect is the fear that is present, but consider this an achievement to be able to go one layer beneath the fatigue and to touch the state of dysregulation in your body. From there, you will continue to open and relax into the layers beneath that. Like a diver going hundreds of feet beneath the ocean surface, your foot will eventually graze the sandy bottom of the ocean floor while the waves swirl overhead. With the right tools, you can find your emotional footing and recognize that the storm happening on the surface was never the truth of who you are.

You may have formed socially conditioned habits of escaping the fatigue through external substances such as food, drugs, energy drinks, sex, screens, or stimulation of any kind. The external sources may alleviate the experience temporarily, but they are not actually helping you engage the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the optimal environment for healing practice, release, and transformation. Resist the attempt to eat, drink, or push away your experience and instead use tools that bring you closer to your inner home. Take your body for a walk, sit on your meditation cushion or yoga mat, use the breath, and set the intention to release what is showing up. With these tools, you start to direct your powerful brain toward the path of safety and conviction in the truth of who you are underneath the layers that no longer serve you. Healing is a D.A.N.C.E. so do not beat yourself up for not always saying “Yes” to the invitation. Sometimes you may want that coffee or snack to change your state externally and that is okay. Just know that with practice, you can always come back to the source of healing within and continue to rewire your brain from the inside. Once you can identify that fear or other emotion energy present, you can take more conscious and intentional actions to be with and move through it. Remember that the emotion and belief energy manifesting your symptom experience may have never been yours to carry; it may stem from your ancestry or lineage so it is important to snuff out thoughts of self-blame or self-punishment. The mind body experience is not your fault nor does it represent your truth as a soul being human. The layers of trauma you carry are a manifestation of what has been absorbed and stored in your body at a molecular level and, with practice, you can let them go. You no longer need to be dragged so easily into the undercurrent of danger, and as you allow the energetic waves of emotion and belief to move through you, your body will return to its natural state of aliveness, peace, and joy.