The Tiredness Behind the Tiredness: Why Anxiety Exhaustion Isn’t What People Think
We all know what physical tiredness feels like — the kind that comes from a busy day, or maybe a long walk, or just spending two hours trying to put together flat-pack furniture that came with missing screws 😳. But anxious tiredness? That’s a completely different beast — and a rite of passage for those of us who unknowingly got lifetime VIP passes to the Overthinkers Club without ever signing up for the newsletter.
Here are two more posts that might meet you where you are:
It’s the exhaustion that greets you before you've even finished blinking, driven by your very own internal clerk who has been working mandatory overtime since 1998 sorting papers no one else can see.
It’s not about big, dramatic moments. It’s about the sheer, quiet effort of managing your own mind.
Because anxious tiredness isn’t just about being tired. It comes from the constant juggling act going on inside your own head. It’s the quiet effort of staying steady, staying aware, staying safe. It’s the emotional labour of being a person who feels things deeply and anticipates things early. And because it’s not obvious or visible on the outside, people assume you’ve got it all together — even when your brain has already done half a day’s work before breakfast.
If you could peek inside my head right now, you wouldn't see chaos or panic. You’d find a tiny office tucked somewhere behind my forehead—complete with a small desk, a flickering lamp, and my very own “admin” clerk. They’re very busy shuffling papers labelled:
“What if?”
“Check again.”
“Did we sound weird?”
And the second a conversation goes quiet for a fraction of a second, up leaps the clerk, grabbing a clipboard, and scanning the emotional weather like a tiny meteorologist who takes their job far too seriously.
It is constant — and constant effort is exhausting.
Often when talking about anxiety, it's easy to gravitate towards the big stuff, the moments that can feel like a crisis. But the version I am talking about here isn't that kind of heavy. Most of it is made up of things that would barely register on some people's radar:
Spending three extra seconds choosing a text message emoji so you don't sound weirdly abrupt.
Replaying a completely normal chat from three hours ago to check if you talked too much.
Stressing over a minor plan change because your brain already mapped out the whole route and hates a detour.
Keeping track of everyone else's mood just to make sure the room feels steady.
None of it looks like a big deal from the outside. It’s just the sheer weight of keeping all the plates spinning—a hundred microscopic decisions running in the background, chipping away at your battery until late afternoon rolls around and your brain simply refuses to process one more single thing.
Some mornings I wake up already more than a bit weary—not because I slept particularly badly, but because my head has already clocked in for the day. Before my feet even touch the floor, the sorting has begun: scanning for trouble, checking the mood of the room, preparing for things that haven't even happened yet. It’s a full logistics operation running in total silence before I’ve even had a chance to pour a cup of tea.
That specific kind of tiredness—the one that comes from caring just a fraction too much about things nobody else is even looking at—doesn't really have a neat label. It just lingers in the background, quiet and persistent, long after the day's actual work is done.
I know there is no grand resolution to this, and the office isn't going to suddenly close down just because I'm tired. But maybe there can be a quiet shift.
The breakthrough isn't figuring out how to shut the department down—honestly, I wouldn't even know where the light switches are. It’s just accepting that the clerk isn’t trying to sabotage me. If anything, they just care a fraction too much about getting everything right.
The office stays open, and the papers keep shuffling. But seeing it as an overzealous attempt to keep me safe, rather than a fundamental flaw in how I'm built, takes some of the sharp edges off. I don't have to love the night shift my brain runs, but I can stop treating the clerk like an over-earnest temp who won't stop reorganizing the filing cabinet.
Some days, just letting them work quietly in the background without fighting them for the desk—and accepting that the tiredness is just the price of being an absolute genius who can generate twenty entirely unique ways a normal conversation can go sideways in under twenty seconds—will do.
It's a bit like popping your head back into the little office to have a quiet, gentle word about their obsession with overtime, only for them to slide a brand-new, perfectly colour-coded invoice across the desk for a whole fresh batch of hypothetical social disasters you haven’t even had yet. You both just stand there for a second, share a weary, knowing look, and realise you might as well just sign off on the expense report and let them get back to filing.
The Exhaustion No One Sees
The Background Hum of Anxiety
Thanks for reading and virtual hugs to you all.
