Mental exhaustion is like physical tiredness, except it’s your mind instead of your muscles. It tends to show up when you focus on a mentally tough task for a while: preparing for exams, your job, caring for children or aging parents, and other things can lead to mental exhaustion.
However… how do you know it?
1 – Angry or Impatient: if you’re short-tempered or irritated, snapping at people more often (out of your normal character).
2 – Hard to concentrate: you’ll notice it when you can’t get work done.
3 – Drowsiness: hard to pay close attention to what you’re doing, and you may not react to things very fast.
4 – Insomnia: specially those working on the laptop 8 hours a day.
5 – Start doing unhealthy things: start to drink or use drugs more than normal.
6 – Depression: feeling numb, and tired even if you sleep your 8 hours daily.
7 – Over worried: if you’re always mentally exhausted, you might start to feel panicked or worried all the time.
8 – Habits Changes: You may snack more than normal and not pay attention to what you eat.
9 – Make more mistakes: lessens your ability to catch and fix your mistakes quickly or at all.
10 – Pain becomes more painful: if you suffer from some sort of painful medical condition, it gets worse: headaches, sore muscles, back pain, or stomach problems.
In Chinese Medicine, the best treatment for mental fatigue is physical exercise in order to get balanced. Only being tired mentally AND physically you reach equilibrium, which means going to bed and sleep properly. Once you start doing physical exercise, it feels harder however have a bit of patience (2-3 consecutive days doing exercise) and you’ll see the results.
Photo by Ayo Ogunseinde
