Анна ШиманDraft translation. This text was translated automatically and has not been proofread yet — if something reads oddly, it does.
Today let’s talk about tiredness and a lack of energy.
What does a person do when they feel tired and short of strength and energy?
Almost always the “saving” thought of economising comes to them. After all, it is logical: if you have little strength as it is, you need to save it. Yet logic without an understanding of psychology and mental processes leads to even greater losses of energy.
How does this show?
You want to sleep, you have no strength for ordinary things, you become absent-minded and forgetful. In the early stages of an energy imbalance a person may feel irritation and anger. This is how they try to fight the sense of powerlessness inside. Some people “pull themselves together”, and that keeps them going for a while. And after that a person usually feels even more drained, and this is exactly where self-pity is sure to wake up. In the deeper stages of the imbalance, pity eats away at the will like rust, and the person ends up in an “energy pit”. They cannot see a way out, and so the thought settles in their mind that they need someone to help them get moving and climb out.
Yet helpers who are not prepared run the risk of falling into the pit along with them. It is very hard to help a person who is in strict economy mode. At this point they are unstable and unsteady, and it is better to refer such a person to a specialist.
So how can you help yourself restore self-regulation and “come out of the twilight”, and is it even possible?
Yes, it is possible: to bring yourself into a state where help from outside will do you good, and you stop being a “funnel” that swallows energy.
To be able to help yourself, you need to take in a few ideas:
1. A person is a conductor of energy. That is, energy (a resource) connects to a person when they are ready to take action. Energy is always given for action.
2. If energy has not been spent on action, it:
a) is spent on creating illusions and feeding the Ego;
b) rolls back into the unconscious, strengthens the instinctive part and merges with it;
c) is spent on the goals and affairs of the people nearby;
d) goes into conflicts and rows, setting off negative swings and cycles in your relationship with the world and with people.
3. The less energy there is, the more willpower you need to apply to yourself. “I want to / I don’t want to” does not work here; it is a luxury you cannot afford. This is the level of survival, regulated either by fear or by “I must”, which a person carries out of their own free will. They push past themselves and little by little move towards the way out of the pit.
4. The more you do, the more energy appears. This sounds surprising, but if you remember the first point, it becomes clear: the more you save your strength and energy, the less of it there is.
So, to cope, a person needs to turn their thoughts in this direction, take responsibility for their state, set up a daily routine and start doing the necessary things regularly, so as to stabilise their everyday life.
Once this works, you can move on to small, short-term “I wants”, which need to be turned into goals and carried out at once.
This “I want — I do” process raises self-esteem, gives back a sense of control over your life, and as a result the motivation for longer-term goals gradually begins to wake up.
Of course, you also need to remember the body: play sport or do morning exercises, sort out your eating and sleep.
Together this will give you the base you need to rely on yourself and will help stabilise your balance. And only after that can the mechanisms of self-regulation start up.
Why?
Because unused energy returning to the depths of the unconscious activates the instincts, and with them fears and even panic. Because of these fears the psyche loses its balance, and the person falls into the “energy pit”, where no one can help them, since all their energy goes on compensating for and fighting fear and panic. And on keeping up the illusion of balance, on creating pictures where “I’m doing great”, “it’s nothing serious”. On compulsive actions that dispel anxiety and panic without solving the main task: restoring psycho-emotional balance.
So I recommend keeping an eye on your energy level, thanking the people near you whose goals you are carrying out (because you have none of your own), finding the self-pity inside you and changing it, rooting it out, because it dissolves the will. It makes a person weak, irresponsible and prone to addictions.
Take a realistic look at your life and find ways to fill your day, starting not with “great and grand” things but with ordinary, everyday ones.
Strength to everyone.
Anna Shyman, psychologist, programme leader at the Psyvision centre
