Why Am I So Tired? When I Haven’t Done Anything Different?
Resetting the Nervous System to right here, right now!
This is the most common question I get asked when working with women in my clinical practice. Women who are competent, powerful, and intelligent. Women who juggle all the things, and yet still suffer. They all describe a debilitating type of fatigue.
Here’s how the conversation unfolds. We explore what has changed in life. There is a resounding exclaim that sounds like “Nothing in my life has changed!”
As a coach and counsellor, I gently steer the conversation to the fact that everything in their body has. I bring to their conscious awareness that their internal world is evolving. “Queen, you feel tired because you’re still doing all the things, but nothing differently.”
Women’s routines are often the same. Their work hasn’t changed in a while. Women are doing everything they have always done. They maintain a routine to ensure everyone feels comfortable.
And I think that’s the problem right there. Women maintain everything for everyone around them.
The battle-weary woman often complains, “So why do I feel like I can barely get through the day?”
On the surface, their fatigue doesn’t make sense. These women eat well, they exercise. They still hustle as if they have toddlers. And I suspect this is why General Medical Practitioners (GPs) are gaslighting women by looking at blood work results and stating “You’re fine”, without actually diving into conversation.
But if nothing has changed in the woman’s world, why does everything suddenly feel harder?
My clinic conversations invite the client to recognise the answer is often that something has changed. It just hasn’t been visible because she has been too busy do-ing for everyone else. I will often state, “Queen, your nervous system has signalled that your capacity has changed. The cumulative load your body has been carrying (for years) has changed.”
Many people assume exhaustion only happens after a major life event. We expect to feel tired after moving house, caring for a sick loved one, grieving a loss or working long hours. What we don’t expect is to wake one morning and realise we simply don’t feel like ourselves anymore.
Some women blame their age. Some blame their misperceived lack of motivation. Others begin wondering if something is seriously wrong with them. Some are concerned that their fatigue is so significant they fear they are going insane.
As a therapist, I become curious before I become concerned. I want to understand not only what is happening today, but what my client’s nervous system has been carrying for months or even years. When you understand more of your stress story, the client will recognise the things that contribute to the load.
A woman’s body is remarkably adaptive. And whilst we adapt regularly, our body will often absorb stress silently for a very long time. Eventually, however, there comes a point where the system can no longer carry or compensate for the load.
The body doesn’t suddenly become exhausted overnight. It slowly accumulates the cost of staying in survival mode.
Think about carrying a backpack. On the first day, you hardly notice the weight. Each day someone quietly adds another book. You adapt. Your muscles adjust. You keep walking because you have no choice.
Months later, someone asks why your shoulders hurt. Most of the time, the women I work with honestly don’t know the reason. Nothing happened today. The backpack simply became too heavy.
Queen, your nervous system works in much the same way. Each time you activate the fight-flight-freeze-fawn program, without resetting the system, you accumulate a little more stress in the system. This accumulation shrinks your ‘window of tolerance’, or your capacity for life.
Every difficult conversation. Every night of interrupted sleep. Every time you swallow your feelings to keep the peace. Every deadline. Every act of people pleasing. Every hormonal shift of every cycle. Every layer of grief where your needs are not met.
Every moment your brain scans for what might go wrong next, or where the next threat to your perfect hustle may occur. This means you’re on alert, and there’s very little room to decompress.
None of these experiences may overwhelm you on their own. Together, however, they begin asking more of your brain and body than they were ever designed to sustain.
This is why I rarely ask, “What happened this week?”.
Instead, we talk about what gets in the way of how my client wants to be thinking, feeling and doing. It doesn’t take long to unpack a whole bunch of things that have the potential to push their buttons.
I become curious about what my client’s nervous system has been carrying for far longer than anyone has noticed. Together, we explore where their brain has been constantly gathering safety information.
And can I just take a moment to clarify that your brain does not distinguish safety in terms of being killed by a sabre-tooth tiger anymore? Your brain classifies your ‘hustle’ as unsafe — because you have not made any space for regenerative rest.
Long before you consciously think about danger, your nervous system has already decided whether it needs to stay alert. If that internal alarm remains switched on for weeks, months or years, it demands energy. Your hustle needs energy like a nuclear power plant.
A lot of energy, and on all levels. Physical, mental, and emotional. This is what erodes your resilience and motivation. The constant hustle, the lack of deep rest.
Stress hormones such as cortisol help us respond when genuine danger exists. They increase alertness, sharpen attention and prepare the body to act.
The difficulty arises when your nervous system never fully receives the message that it is safe again. The body continues preparing for emergencies that are no longer happening. Even while you are sitting quietly on the couch, while you are trying to sleep. Even while everyone around you believes you are resting.
This is why so many people tell me they are exhausted despite doing very little. Their body has been resting but their nervous system has not.
I often invite clients to pause for a moment and notice what is happening inside rather than immediately analysing it. It is at this point I will start introducing somatic breathwork activities into a session.
So, let me ask you a few questions:
- As you read these words, where are your shoulders?
- Are they gently resting or are they being held up without you realising?
- Can you feel your jaw? Is your jaw loose, or have your teeth been quietly pressed together?
- What is happening in your breathing? Is your breath reaching your belly, or is it staying high in your chest? As you notice your body, do you feel supported by the chair beneath you, or does it feel as though part of you is still preparing to spring into action?
There is no right answer. There is simply information.
My role as your practitioner is to introduce awareness into your conscious world so that you can create choice. You cannot respond differently to your experience until you notice the experience you are actually having.
Perhaps your mind is already saying, “I’m fine.” I wonder what your body would say if it had a voice?
Would it tell you it is tired?
Would it ask for stillness?
Would it tell you it has been trying to protect you for far longer than you realised?
One of the greatest misunderstandings I see is that people think burnout is purely psychological. It isn’t. Burnout is experienced through the whole person.
Your muscles tighten. Your sleep changes. Your digestion becomes unpredictable. Your memory becomes foggy. Small decisions suddenly feel enormous. You lose patience with people you love. You forget words. You begin wondering if you are losing yourself.
This is not simply happening in your head. Your biology has been adapting to prolonged demand.
For women navigating perimenopause or menopause, this picture can become even more complex.
As hormones change, the brain becomes more sensitive to stress, sleep disruption and cognitive overload. Women often tell me, “Nothing has changed.” Yet internally, their brain is working much harder to maintain the same level of functioning.
When we add years of caregiving, emotional labour, workplace pressure and constantly putting everyone else first, it becomes much easier to understand why the body finally says, “Enough.”
The good news is this. Your exhaustion is not proof that you are broken. It may simply be evidence that your nervous system has been protecting you for a very long time. That changes the conversation completely.
Instead of asking, “What’s wrong with me?” The therapeutic conversation invites the client to explore, “What has your body been trying to manage?”
Instead of criticising yourselves for being tired, you can become curious about what your nervous system has needed all along. Queen, please remember, healing rarely begins with trying harder. It begins with listening differently.
How To Reset Your Nervous System
Perhaps today your body is not asking you to become more productive. Perhaps it is asking you to become more present. Here is a technique I use to support clients to become calm, in the present moment. It’s a stacking of somatic exercises to tone your vagus nerve.
- Close your eyes.
2. Take two short, sharp inward breaths, and breathe out super slow, as if through a straw. (This is a reset breath that you can take any time.) Then return to your normal breath.
3. Bring your attention to your feet on the floor. Feel where the weight is distributed. Notice the sensations of the tips of your toes.
4. Notice your breathing. Is it rhythmic? Shallow? Deep? Just observe.
5. Bring your attention to your shoulders. If tense, take another reset breath, and allow your shoulders to soften and drop.
6. Continue to breathe, slowly. Purposefully. Allow your jaw to unclench.
7. Breathe deeply and slowly open your eyes. Just being aware of the space around you. Observe five things you can see. Breathe. Four things you can hear. Breathe. Three things you can taste or smell.
8. Notice how you now feel compared to when we started.
This stack of somatic exercises takes roughly two minutes. In that time, this purposeful style of breathing can downregulate your sympathetic nervous system, reduce secretion of stress hormones, realign structural integrity to signal to your brain that you are, in fact, safe in this moment.
These are not small things. They are small actions paired together for a big impact. They are the beginning of teaching your nervous system that survival is no longer the only way to live.
Conclusion
So, if you’ve been asking yourself, “Why am I so tired when I haven’t done anything different?”
I would gently offer another perspective to ask yourself.
What if it isn’t about what you’ve been doing today? What if it’s about everything your mind and body have been carrying for months, years or even decades?
Sometimes nothing has changed on the outside. Everything has simply accumulated on the inside. When you understand that, exhaustion stops being something to fight. It becomes something to listen to. And when you listen with curiosity instead of judgement, you create the conditions for genuine healing.
That is where change begins. Not by pushing harder. But by finally giving your nervous system permission to stop carrying the weight alone.
About Karen
Change Facilitator
Karen Humphries is a Mental Health Counsellor, Kinesiology Practitioner + Accredited Business Mentor, Wellbeing Coach, Meditation Facilitator, Hypnotherapist, and Resource Therapist. Karen is also a published author. She is a self-confessed laughaholic. She loves being of service to the world with her humorous and positive approach to life, encouraging people to ‘choose to change and bloom from within.’
