Tired all the Time: What the Stress of 2020 is Still Doing to You
You aren’t lazy. You are suffering the aftershocks of pandemic stress.
There’s a kind of pleasant fatigue that comes from a day of physical activity — hiking, biking, swimming, running. But this? This isn’t it. You feel exhausted, overwhelmed, anxious and even depressed. The heaviness of your limbs is only second to a heaviness of mind, a feeling of alienation, of isolation. You might say you are tired, but in truth, you feel utterly drained; everything is an effort, a drag.
Usually, this cluster of symptoms would be diagnosed as burnout, and a regimen of self-care recommended: take some time off, stay home for a few days, do something nice for yourself, stop stressing. The advice is hard to follow in the best of times, but in this post-pandemic world it seems impossible and possibly wrong-headed.
Traditionally, burnout has been considered primarily occupational — with the World Health Organization emphasizing that it was not a medical condition and “should not be applied to describe experiences in other [nonoccupational] areas of life.” But times have most certainly changed. We are facing a second epidemic of cognitive stress and emotional exhaustion, and we are facing it worldwide.
