Mental Exhaustion happens when you feel overwhelmed particularly with long-term stress. You may feel emotionally drained, detached and apathic. Mental exhaustion to your brain is like bodily tiredness to your muscles. many things can lead to this state : job stress, family problems, care of kids or of aging parents, and many other stressors.
Irritable Mood
Mental exhaustion can make you irritable and angry. You become ill-tempered and less tolerant. You would snap at others frequently. You will find it extremely difficult to control you emotions.
Less Productive
Although productivity fluctuates up and down for everyone, mental exhaustion makes it difficult to focus and deliver. Your motivation is also drained. You become easily distracted and you miss a lot of your deadlines. It becomes difficult even to complete a slight task.
Absent-minded
You become drowsy and your mind wanders a lot. This will reflect itself as poor attention and low concentration and your reaction time gets slower. Some tasks like driving or machine operation become risky and dangerous. Car accidents are associated with mental exhaustion.
Disturbed Sleep
One could believe that with mental exhaustion it would become easier to sleep. But this is not the case. In fact, the opposite takes place. Sleep becomes difficult. Insomnia is more common in people with jobs which highly mentally-demanding. Lack of sleep aggravates the mental tiredness even more. You consult your doctor for the sleeplessness since treatment could help a lot. Please see our sleeplessness self-guide for more advices.
Bad Coping
People resort to many unhealthy coping strategies to get along. They may start to use drugs or may start to drink more than usual. People with prior substance use disorder may suffer more from this problem, either by relapse or by more indulgence. The drugs become part of the coping package for people because they help to manage stress and in control of impulsiveness.
Depression
Depression is common as a result of persistent mental tiredness. You may feel like you don’t care about anything. Your energy is depleted and your motor activity is slowed down. Emotions could become blunt and numb. Doing tasks or finishing things can become hard. If you have low mood and lack of interest in things for a period more than two weeks, you better talk to your doctor. if it is depression then it is treatable. Depression in the context of work environment as the main stressor is called burnout.
Anxiety
Sympathetic nervous system is hyperactive during mental fatigue. This hyperarousal is called fight or flight response. This anxiety is a warning alarming you of some danger around you. With continuous mental tiredness you could develop episodes of panic attacks and/or feel floating nonspecific anxiety all the time. This can take place alongside the depressive symptoms.
Little Activity
Mental fatigue results in physical fatigue. Experts don’t know the exact cause behind that but it maybe because the tolerance for activity goes down. To do minimal efforts requires a lot of energy. This maybe a sign of depression too.
Appetite Change
Appetite is also affected in most of the times. It is either increased or decreased. So you may eat more than normal and gain weight or you lose appetite and lose weight. Stress can cause you also to crave sugar , fats and salty foods.
Reckless Mistakes
Mistakes happen more than usual, mainly due to reduced attention and focus. the ability to catch mistakes on right time and correct them is also decreased. In certain jobs like driving and machinery operating this can be very hazardous.
Body Pains
Mental fatigue is accompanied by aches in your body. You might experience frequent headaches, tender muscles, back pain, or gastric burning. If you have some other disease your pains might be augmented even more.
Disconnect
A short break form work and environment can be helpful. Even a small amount of time ranging from minutes to hours can help you recharge.
Pomodoro technique is widely followed technique to take breaks. It is as follows :
- Use a timer to get an alarm after twenty five minutes.
- Throughout the 25 minutes bring all your attention to one task only.
- Keep until the timer goes off and take a break of five minutes.
- Repeat the process again with another task or for completing the previous one.
- After round 4 take a break for twenty to thirty minutes.
- Repeat again until the task is complete or your time at work is over.
Do Workouts
Doing physical activity is helpful. It is hard in the beginning because of the nature of the mental fatigue but with perseverance tolerance to exercise improves and with it improves the mental exhaustion
Train On Relaxation
Learning some relaxation techniques will get your body used to turning on some natural relaxation mechanisms. It will activates your parasympathetic system, activate your vagal nerve, reduce your heart rate, quietens anxiety and relieve muscle tension. Have a massage, try mindfulness and meditation, do some yoga.
Seek Support
Get support from your family members, your friends or your counsellor
Wellbeing Arena 