Struggling with Fatigue? How to Cope Without Making it Worse
Image by Muntazar Munsory/Pixabay
How did you sleep last night? Well, I hope, leaving you feeling rested and refreshed for your busy day. But for millions of people around the world – and virtually everyone I work with – that’s not the case. Insomnia is a modern affliction, linked to the impact of a 21st-century lifestyle on a brain and body designed for a hunter-gatherer existence. All these screens, bright lights, noisy cities, sugar, caffeine, traffic jams, rolling news, demanding jobs, smartphones and social media leave us feeling frazzled, hyped up, our nervous systems in a constant state of agitation and activation. No wonder we can’t sleep.
For some reason, I have been waking at 5am or earlier every day – this morning I think was 4.45am, which is not good for me. I really need my sleep, ideally eight or even nine hours, so less than seven leaves me feeling fried, dragging myself through the day with the aid of far too much caffeine (I’m on my second vat of coffee already and it’s only 10am!). I could write at length about the lifestyle changes I have adopted that seem to help, but the advice in this post is much older and wiser than that.
How We amplify Suffering
I often mine the rich seams of Buddhist wisdom with my clients, in my teaching and writing, because these ideas have helped billions of people over the millennia. They are as true today as they were 2,500 years ago. And it’s the core teaching that the Buddha imparted to his disciples on the verdant hillsides of northern India, was that some degree of suffering is intrinsic to living a human existence. In Pali, the language of the Buddha, the suffering we all feel – because it’s hard simply to exist, meaning we all feel stressed, unfulfilled, dissatisfied, anxious or bewildered at times – is called dukkha. In his Four Noble Truths, the Buddha laid out these fundamental principles:
Suffering (dukkha). A human life inevitably involves suffering. We get sick, as do those we love. People close to us die and we will eventually pass away too. This is, of course, painful – so we suffer purely because we are alive.
There is a clear cause of suffering (samudaya). Much of our suffering is avoidable, because we amplify the intrinsic suffering of life by constantly wanting things to be different in some way. We cling to pleasant experiences and try to avoid or push away unpleasant ones. Sadly, this doesn’t work and just makes things worse. We are also confused about the nature of reality, thinking that we are separate from other beings, when in fact we are all interconnected, interdependent, breathing the same air, warmed by the same sun, drinking the same water. We are not islands, but part of a vast, interconnected web of life.
Suffering can end (nirodha). The Buddha taught that it’s possible to free ourselves from suffering, the ultimate expression of which is enlightenment. For most of us, this is not some great Shazam! moment, but a gradual process, as we wake up from the (bad) dream most of us live in, most of the time. We think we are unworthy, which is not true. We think we would be happy if only we had this thing or that person, which is also not true. As internal family systems also teaches us, happiness is not dependent on some external person or thing being just as we need them to be, but is intrinsic and always available if we can learn to access it.
The path (magga). There is a clear path to freedom from suffering, laid out by the Buddha after his own enlightenment. This involves spiritual practice like meditation, living ethically, treating all sentient beings with kindness and compassion and developing wisdom as, hopefully, you are doing right now. The Buddha called this route to enlightenment The Eightfold Path, but that’s a story for another day.
Turning Tiredness into Suffering
What the heck does any of this have to do with feeling tired, you may well ask. Well, everything. Because we can see from these four Truths that my weariness is the first kind of suffering. It’s dukkha, which is inherent in being human and having insufficient sleep sometimes. They key here is not my tiredness, it’s the way I respond to that tiredness, which brings us to step two, samudaya. If I think to myself, ‘Man, this is so frustrating! Why does my stupid brain keep waking me up at 5am? It’s making me crazy!’ or ‘I am so, so exhausted – and I will feel this bad all day. I hate feeling like this, it sucks.’ Then, of course, I will make myself feel worse – I am amplifying the original suffering by trying to push away the bad feelings (tiredness), causing a whole rash of new bad feelings (irritation, frustration, impatience, agitation, hopelessness).
But luckily, having learned the Four Noble Truths, I understand that the third Truth applies (nirodha), which is that I can free myself from this extra suffering by simply accepting the tiredness. And I did that, at 6am, when I wearily dragged myself out of bed. I thought, ‘OK, this is not great, but it’s just tiredness and that can’t hurt me.’ I also thought, ‘Imagine if I was living in Gaza right now, or on the front line in Ukraine. That would be infinitely, unimaginably worse than just feeling tired, so it’s not that big a deal.’
And these thoughts helped me feel better. Thinking this way, accepting and turning towards my suffering with patience, tolerance and compassion, are all part of the fourth Truth (magga), which is walking the path the Buddha laid out, 2,500 years ago. I have been walking that path for many years and, alongside my IFS therapy and day-to-day meditation practice, it’s why my suffering has greatly reduced. If it has worked for me, it can work for you too – as it has worked for Buddhists for thousands of years. You don’t have to be a Buddhist, of course, or even show any great interest in Buddhism – these Truths apply to all of us, atheists and religious folk alike.
I very much hope that helps, especially if you’re feeling weary today.
Love,
Dan ❤️
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