Tackling emotional exhaustion


As… Risky as self-diagnosed is, sometimes you can notice some symptoms on yourself, or you have been feeling in a certain way about something, and social media helps you on recognizing such signs.

I feel like I’ve been feeling emotionally exhausted. I have difficulties in waking up (and dreading the day,) small chores/tasks becoming a burden, and I unable to enjoy things that I used to enjoy.

It has been going on for 1-2 weeks, and things just finally clicked today (I thought I’m just having lack of sleep, that’s all. Or maybe lack of sleep is part of the signs?)

Then, I checked Google and found this link: How to Refuel When You’re Feeling Emotionally Drained. When I checked Google — with keywords “how to handle emotional exhaustion,” — most of the articles are from 2017-2019, so I omitted them as I feel it’s irrelevant. We are dealing with emotional exhaustion in 2020-2021, in a really specific case: The pandemic. The HBR article above dated from the 2020, so I feel it fits.

The first step in reducing emotional resource consumption is recognizing the circumstances (e.g., situations, tasks, relationships) that deplete you, then limiting your exposure to them.

I wonder if the emotional exhaustion started when I started checking my Twitter timeline. The time frame fits, though. I used to not checking my Twitter timeline, but I have been pretty active lately — and lets just say stuffs on Twitter has not been super great lately.

We can’t order the pandemic to stop (as much as we want to!) but the discussions about it has been amplified tenfolds and even more on social media chambers. Now I wonder if it caused the unneeded stress on my end.

I still need Twitter, though. Mainly for the account itself (to check Twitter Card Validator whenever folks ask why their link didn’t display images when shared on Twitter.) But yeah, maybe less rage-scrolling.