 Welcome to Happiness Isn't Brain Surgery with Doc Snipes. This podcast was created to provide you the information and tools Doc Snipes gives her clients so that you too can start living happier. Our website, docsknipes.com, has even more resources, videos, and handouts, and even interactive sessions with Doc Snipes to help you apply what you learn. Go to docsknipes.com to learn more. We're going to continue talking about symptoms. In this section, we're going to talk about the causes, function, and interventions for lack of energy, as well as feeling agitated. We're going to kind of combine both of them together. And when you feel a lack of energy, you know, it's the, I just really don't have the energy to get up and make food, or take a shower, or even get out of bed some days. And it can feel like you're carrying a hundred pound knapsack on your back. I mean, it can feel a lot harder to do simple things like just walk across the room. Agitation is, doesn't necessarily, a lot of people think of it as meaning irritability and, you know, crankiness, which it can, but agitation, we're really talking about your movements. So if you are bouncing your leg incessantly, or you can't seem to sit still, that could be another symptom of anxiety or depression. It's usually more prominent in anxiety, and lack of energy is usually more prominent in depression. But you can see the two of them co-occur. So don't just assume one or the other. So what causes this insufficient or excessive sleep? If you're not getting enough sleep, you may just move and be agitated, sort of, in order to stay awake. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean you're depressed or anxious. It may mean you're just trying to stay awake. If you're sleeping too much, you may not have a lot of energy and a lot of get up and go. Doesn't necessarily mean you're clinically depressed. It could mean that your body is not getting the quality sleep it needs. So you're sleeping a lot, but you're not feeling rested. Lack of motivation and reward can also cause a lack of energy and fatigue. If you are doing things and you just don't see a benefit, you're going to work every single day and you just can't seem to get ahead. You're going to the gym every day and you're not seeming to see any progress. You do stuff around the house for your family and they don't seem to appreciate it. Whatever it is that you find is a reward for the stuff that you do. If you're not getting the rewards, if you're not getting some positives out of it, you're probably not going to have the energy or motivation to do it, so it's going to be more rewarding to sit on the couch and watch TV, for example. So you want to look at, is my lack of energy due to sort of a lack of motivation because just nothing seems to be rewarding right now? And you want to look back at that first symptom that we talked about and the lack of pleasure in things and that can be a cause of lack of motivation. But sometimes, like I said, it's situational. You're doing stuff right now and you just don't seem to be getting ahead or making the progress you want, so you're getting frustrated. And that's a sort of a social behavioral cause. It's not necessarily meaning that you are experiencing, quote, depression. A lack of movement can also cause a lack of energy or fatigue. They say a body in motion tends to stay in motion and a body at rest tends to stay at rest. Well, if you've ever been on bed rest or been sick for a week or so and you get up and you start trying to get back into your routine, you may realize it seems like it's a lot harder. You get fatigued and exhausted a lot easier, especially if you've been on bed rest or whatever for a couple of weeks. So look at your movement levels. Have you suddenly changed and gone from, you know, when I have a project or we're getting ready to launch a new product? Sometimes I'll work for, you know, two, three weeks and I won't go to the gym. I just come in, I sit at my desk, I work all day long, I get up, I go home, you know, do what I need to do around the house and with the kids and then repeat the next day. Not recommended. Just saying it's what I do. I can speak from experience and at the end of that period, when I go back to the gym and I start, you know, gardening again and doing some of those other things that take a lot of physical energy. Wow, I get tired really easy and mental energy is still energy. So if you've been sick or you've been out for a while and you get to work and maybe you don't have a physically demanding job, maybe, you know, it's more mentally, mentally draining. But you still may find that, you know, after two or three hours, you feel exhausted, your brain uses a lot of blood sugar, your brain uses energy. So it's important to remember that if you've been out of the rhythm for a while, your body's probably down, downshifted and it's not used to using that much energy right now. So you will feel fatigued more easily, whether it's because you're not moving as much or because you're not thinking as much, you're going to need to build back up into it. Be compassionate with yourself, you know, if you're getting back, you've been on, you know, maybe had open heart surgery or something and you're getting back to work and, you know, maybe work for a couple of hours and then give yourself permission to take a break, take a rest and then start again and you may have to do that a few times a day until you get through the whole day. As you get your wind back, so to speak, you'll be able to eliminate some of those breaks and work straight through a lot easier. But be compassionate with yourself. Fear of failure or rejection can also cause a lack of energy. If you're always worried about what other people are going to think or if you're going to fail or succeed, then it's important to pay attention to that because that underlying anxiety is exhausting. It is totally draining to constantly worry about others' opinions or how things are going to turn out. Poor nutrition can also cause lack of energy. Your body needs the right building blocks to make the neurotransmitters you need for motivation to fuel your muscles and everything. So if you're not eating well, you may find that you feel fatigued. Thyroid or hormone imbalances, yep, it keeps coming up, doesn't it? Can also cause a lack of energy or fatigue, especially low levels of estrogen and testosterone and thyroid hormones. What is the function of low energy? Well, your body is devoting scarce resources to rebuilding and functioning. It ain't got enough gas to do all this other stuff. It's saying, all right, I only have a certain amount of energy right now. So I am going to focus it on what is most necessary to survive and going to the gym or going to the grocery store. That's not making the list today. Be compassionate with yourself. Recognize that your body's trying to tell you you've got to pace yourself a little bit. Life is a marathon, not a sprint. So how do you cope? Ask yourself, again, instead of reinventing the wheel, think of what you already do, what besides caffeine helps you get energy. Deep breathing can help. When you oxygenate your blood, it can help you get energy. For some people, being outside, getting some sunlight will help sort of recharge their batteries. A vitamin D deficiency is also linked with depression as well as low energy. So make sure that you're getting enough vitamin D, which is our sun vitamin. What drains your energy? So we've already looked at what helps you get energy, what you've done in the past, make a list of those things and try them out when you're feeling kind of sluggish. For me, if I get outside, especially if I get outside and get my heart rate up, I generally feel a lot better. If I just sit inside all day, I tend to feel even more sluggish. What drains your energy? Once you know how to build it up, you also want to figure out how to keep it from getting drained. You know, how can you put the stopper in so you're not losing energy in the process of trying to gain it? You don't want to be working against yourself. Emotionally, what drains your energy? If social networking, if getting on Facebook or whatever, or Instagram or whatever it is, drains your energy. It causes you stress or anxiety or irritability. Consider removing that when you already feel like you have low energy or limiting the time you spend on it, even when your energy is not low. So it doesn't drain your energy. I found it's better for me to limit my social networking time to no more than an hour a day. Mentally, what drains your energy? What thoughts do you have that cause you stress and anxiety and angst? Whether it's a negative internal critic constantly telling you that you're not good enough or stuff that's going on in the world and politics and finances and relationship issues and other things you think about. So what thoughts do you have that drain your energy? Because you want to take those thoughts and kind of harness them and say, all right, I have this thought. Now, what can I do about it to improve the next moment? If I am concerned that, you know, politically we're in a bad place and that a nuclear war could start, you know, then I'm going to say, what do I do to address that thought? Do I start stockpiling in case there is some sort of international crisis? So I have enough food and water to get me through six months or whatever, you know, sort of the prepper mentality. If I have this mental thought that, you know, I'm not good enough and everything I do seems to fail. Well, then I want to look at what things have I done that have succeeded? What are the reasons I'm good enough and work on self-esteem issues? Because holding that thought and just continually telling myself I'm not good enough is just going to kind of beat me into the ground. And that's going to suck my energy dry. So I need to figure out how to get rid of that thought or what to do so I can let that thought go and feel like, OK, I've got that issue resolved. Physically, what drains your energy? You know, when I was sick, I wasn't working out as much, I wasn't out in the garden as much. And when I started feeling better, you know, I wanted to go back to the gym and just jump right back into my old life and that that didn't happen. I found that I had to choose. I could either do gardening or go to the gym, but I couldn't. I didn't have the energy. I didn't have the ability at that point because I had been down, downshifted. I didn't have the ability at that point to go running and work in the garden without causing myself a relapse into my illness. So it's important to look at physically. What are you doing that's draining your energy? Housework can be draining. Shopping can be draining. You know, what are you doing? Socially, what drains your energy or who drains your energy? My husband's an introvert and my daughter actually is, too. So the two of them going into somewhere where there's a lot of people where it's crowded, especially if they're expected to be social, is exhausting. It's not that they don't like other people, but that many people in a small space drains their energy. It's exhausting for them. They prefer, you know, small groups, two or three people at a time. They're cool. So think about for you what social environments and what people suck your energy in. Suck your energy, you know, there are certain people in my life love them to death, but they can be an extreme drain on my energy levels because it's always, you know, gloom and doom. So there I limit my contact with them sometimes, especially if I'm already having a low energy day, but I also, you know, set boundaries on our relationship. So when we get on the phone, I don't end up on the phone for three and a half hours. It's like 30 minutes and off and that helps me still engage with them because they're important to me, but set a healthy boundary. So I don't end up just completely depleted for the rest of the day. And environmentally, what drains your energy? For me, it's clutter and dirty floors. I am a fanatic about floors, but when I look around and I see clutter everywhere, it's just, I feel exhausted. I feel oppressed. And I prefer, in our house, we call it flat surfaceitis, which is an inflammation of all the flat surfaces. And I've got teenagers who are homeschooled. It happens, things build up on every flat surface and that has to be, that has to go away by the end of the school day because it bugs me to have piles of stuff on every flat surface. And that, since it quote, bugs me, that's going to be something that is not a huge stressor, but it's one of those slow drains on my energy. It's kind of like if you have a garden hose and you put a, a nail hole in it. It's not going to be a huge leak, but it's going to slowly drain, drain the energy. When you felt lethargic or low energy in the past, how did you help yourself feel better? What else can you do? So make a list of those things. Other simple-ish interventions, get up and move around. Try doing 15, which is, and I say this for a lot of different things, try 15. It means do something for 15 minutes and generally you'll find once you start moving around, you feel a lot better and you keep going. But if you can move around and get your blood going for 15 minutes, you may feel better and whether it's, maybe you just go outside and walk, walk the dog or whatever you do, stay hydrated. Dehydration is implicated in low energy and confusion and difficulty making decisions and other things because you're not thinking as clearly, but it is implicated in low energy. So make sure you're hydrated. Increase motivating chemicals by having some successes. If you're feeling unmotivated, if you're feeling like things just aren't painting out for you, whatever you do, set yourself up for some successes, look at your goals and see if maybe you can make some smaller goals that you can achieve and focus on successes you've had in the past. Get an accountability buddy, whether that's your roommate or, you know, your workout partner or your neighbor down the street, somebody who can help you get up and kind of get moving. My husband will do that sometimes if I'm, have particularly low energy. He'll be like, why don't you, why don't we go out and walk around outside and, you know, thankfully I don't experience that a whole lot anymore, but there was one job I had. I would come home and I would basically just sit there and all but drool on myself for the rest of the evening. I was so exhausted, but if he helped me get out and, you know, we walked around on the farm or I started pulling weeds or something. I kind of get my second wind and it would help a lot. Identify any fear or depressive thoughts that may be dampening your motivation and your energy and try to think the opposite. It's not always easy, but sometimes fake it till you make it. So if you have an internal critic that keeps telling you, you're not good enough. Talk back to him and tell him, tell, tell yourself, yes, I am good enough. Thank you very much. And here's why. Think about how you get motivation to do something when you don't have any. And sometimes things you have low energy already or you'd rather spend your energy on something else, but things like laundry or going to work need to be done. So how do you make that? Inviting, how do you increase your motivation? You might set a reward. If you get all your tasks accomplished for the morning, then you can go to your favorite restaurant for lunch or whatever it is. I work for myself. So once I get my tasks accomplished, I get to go home, which keeps me from dilly-dallying and helps me be a little bit more motivated. And how do you get started on a task when you don't want to? I would say try doing 15 is always an intervention. But sometimes I'll bribe myself. I'll be like, okay, let me make a cup of coffee and then I'll get started on this task because everything goes better with decaf. But it's going to be different for different people. You might have something else that you do that helps you get in that mindset to get started on a task. Um, when I do laundry, I'm bad about putting laundry away. You know, I'll, I'll work, I'll do housework and I'll get kind of tired. And by the end of the day, when the laundry is ready to be put away, I'm just like, you know what, I just don't feel like it. But I found that if I dump the laundry onto my bed, I have to clean it off before I can go to sleep. And I avoid putting it back in the basket. I know that some of you are going, we'll just put it back in the basket. No, that kind of defeats the purpose. If it's on my bed, I clean it off and it gets put away and everybody's happy. So the reason I get started is because I have to, in order to do the next task that I want to do agitation means being sped up during the day. And it can be caused by high levels of anxiety. A lot of people when they get anxious, um, will, you know, click ink pens or I have a worry stone that I rub. Um, I'm also really bad. If I've got a thumb drive, I'll click it in and out and in and out and in and out drives people crazy. Um, but I digress high levels of anxiety can cause you to do a lot of things, um, physically, um, that seem repetitive or that are communicate anxiety, like shaking your foot constantly. Stimulants can also cause you to feel agitated. Even if you don't have anxiety thought, anxious thoughts about things, having enough stimulants like caffeine and nicotine can actually increase your anxiety neurochemicals. So you feel anxious and you start kind of jumping around like a little jumping bean unstable blood sugar and poor nutrition can also cause agitation and irritability. So if you're eating too much sugar, drinking too much caffeine or not eating frequently enough, your spikes and crashes in blood sugar may make you a little bit more agitated. Um, they also, you know, as your blood sugar crashes, you may start to feel tired. So you start kind of jumping around a little bit more to try to wake up. When you're sped up, your body is likely detecting a threat, whether it's real, you know, there's a lion chasing you or chemically induced cause you drank six cups of coffee this morning. The key is number one, figuring out why you feel sped up. What's that telling you that you're kind of jumping around? Are you happy? Are you stressed out? Are you, is your blood sugar low? What's going on with you? When you feel driven or anxious, how do you get it under control? When you feel like that. Um, and you know, a lot of people before they go out and do a speech, for example, feel really anxious and agitated and they'll pace the floor and all kinds of stuff. How do you rein that in so you can go do your speech? How do you rein that stuff in? Um, and what can you do to be kind to yourself? Sometimes the agitation, the, you know, jumpiness is because of something that, that you're worried about. So what can you do to be kind to yourself instead of telling yourself you shouldn't be jumping around like this. You need to calm down. Well, what you're doing is what you're doing. So how can you improve the next moment? How can you help yourself see whatever's coming up as a challenge instead of a threat? So if you're going to do public speaking, or if you're going to interview for a job or go to your in-laws or whatever it is that's causing you to be a little bit agitated, uh, how can you be kind to yourself, view it as a challenge, envision yourself successfully completing it. And sometimes you just need to get up and move around because your body has that energy and it's kind of flowing. So move some of those big muscles and that'll help you kind of restabilize. You can also, uh, practice deep breathing, breathe in for four and breathe out for four. When you slow your breathing, you slow your heart rate and you naturally start slowing some of your agitation. Other simple-ish interventions reduce anxiety or worry by addressing unhelpful thoughts that are stressing you out. If you're having stressful thoughts, identify it and say, okay, what can I do about that? How can I change the situation or change how I feel about the situation in a way that helps me use my energy to work, move towards my goals instead of just being stuck worrying about this thing. Use distress tolerance skills to feel the anxiety and let it pass. Anxiety and anger and agitation, whatever you want to call it, are normal emotions. It's your body's way of saying there might be a threat. So tell yourself, thank you for identifying that. Let me check it out. It doesn't mean you have to hold on to that anxiety. It's a normal feeling. It tells you that you might need to do something to protect yourself. So the first thing to do is say, okay, and then check out the situation, figure out if there is a problem and let the anxiety pass. If you check it out and you realize there's really no big deal, there's nothing to be anxious about, then that feeling is going to pass. If you feed it, if you keep dwelling on the what ifs, you're going to hold on to that feeling and be stuck kind of like in quicksand. Practice good time management so you don't feel pressured. A lot of times people have anxiety because they're over committed and they just, they're overwhelmed and don't even know where to start. So if that's you, stop, figure out the have tos. Those are the things that have to get done or there's going to be major negative consequences. Prioritize those. You know, everything else can go by the wayside. We're worried about the have tos. If you don't pay your light bill, power's going to get cut off. So prioritize those. Delegate any that you can. You know, if your kids can help, your spouse can help. If your neighbor down the street can help. Okay, cool. So then what's left? You've got to figure out how to make it happen. You know, maybe you're the one who does all the cooking for the family. Well, let's simplify that. You know, maybe you order takeout tonight or maybe even for the whole week. If you've got a lot of stuff going on at work. Is it something you want to do all the time? Probably not, but is it a way to simplify and help you reduce your stress and anxiety right now? Might be. Pay attention to and reduce how many stimulants you're taking, including caffeine, nicotine, diet pills and decongestants. All of these can cause you to feel revved up. And remember that unstable blood sugar and poor nutrition can make you feel jittery. So try to eat healthfully and regularly. Being fatigued or slowed down, feeling like you're out of gas can be caused by too much or too little sleep, lack of motivation and reward, plain lack of movement, fear of failure or rejection, keeping you revved up all the time and sort of anxious all the time, poor nutrition and thyroid or hormone imbalances. Being sped up on the other hand indicates that your body may be perceiving a threat and it's trying to tell you you need to pay attention and get ready to fight or flee. Or you've ingested stimulants and you're either sensitive or you've ingested too many, or you have a thyroid imbalance or something else going on. So as with all symptoms, ask yourself, when in the past did I not have this symptom and what was different? What has changed that might be causing me to feel this symptom and how can I address it? 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