You got 7, 8, maybe even 9 or more hours of sleep.
You’re eating OK.
You’re on your 4th cup of coffee or your second energy drink.
You have LOTS of work to do today.
So WHY, despite all of this, are you STILL dragging? Why can you not seem to wake up no matter what you do?
Perhaps you aren’t “tired” in the typical sense. It may not be that you need rest or stimulants, as one typically does when one’s body and mind have endured a heavy workload. The tiredness that comes with depression and anhedonia is different. It’s a tiredness that settles in at a deeper level, a fatigue that hits you more in the soul than in the mind or the body.
It can’t really be fixed with sleep or with caffeine. You can ingest unsafe amounts of coffee and Monster and still feel like your body weighs twice what it normally does.
In fact, ingesting large amounts of caffeine when you’re struggling with anhedonia and chronic fatigue puts you in this weird, purgatory-like feeling where you internally feel wired on a really unpleasant level but still have minimal energy or motivation. It’s actually incredibly unpleasant.
The only way to treat the exhaustion that anhedonia causes is to treat the anhedonia. Nothing else will really make a dent.
If you generally have poor sleep - related or unrelated to anhedonia - this technique just might help you fix it. (and you can check out SleepReset, a partner I highly recommend).
- Scott
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I'm an advocate for sleep as a critical part of good mental health, but I also know that so many with depression and anxiety can't or struggle to get the sleep your mind so desperately needs.
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