Mental Health Fatigue and Intentional Non-Striving
There is a particular kind of tiredness that does not come from a lack of sleep. It comes from being a person who has been trying. Trying to manage health appointments, medications, therapy sessions, work expectations, family needs, relationships, self improvement, healing, coping, growing. It is a fatigue that settles into the nervous system and the body, not because anything has gone wrong, but because so much has been asked of you for such a long time. This is what many people quietly carry into summer. Health care fatigue. Emotional fatigue. Life fatigue. It does not always announce itself dramatically. Often it whispers through irritability, flatness, a loss of motivation, or a deep longing to stop being “on” for a while.
Health care fatigue is increasingly recognised in research, particularly among people managing chronic physical conditions, mental health challenges, neurodivergence, trauma histories, or prolonged stress. It reflects the cumulative load of appointments, self monitoring, decision making, advocating for yourself, and constantly assessing how you are feeling and whether you are coping “well enough”. Even therapy, which is meant to support and heal, can become part of this load. Therapy is work. Good, meaningful, necessary work at times, but still work. Relationships are work too, even the loving ones. Growth is work. Insight is work. And when the human nervous system does not get adequate periods of rest from work, it does not simply carry on unchanged. It adapts by slowing, withdrawing, or seeking relief wherever it can find it.
Summer often arrives carrying a cultural message that we should be happier, more energetic, more social, more productive in our joy. There is an unspoken pressure to “make the most of it”. For many people, particularly those already fatigued, this pressure adds another layer of effort. There is a moment most summers where I catch myself doing this too. I sit down with good intentions and create a “summer to do list” that is so wildly ambitious it would require a small team, a different nervous system, and perhaps a parallel universe to complete. Clean out the garage. Tidy the shed. Finally organise the kids’ baby photo albums. Start writing that book. Take up painting. Learn paddle boarding. Read all the books I’ve been meaning to read. And suddenly what was meant to be a break begins to feel like another performance review. Some of this, for me, is shaped by my neurodivergence, that familiar mix of optimism, curiosity, and time blindness, but it is far from unique. Many of us do this. We load our “time off” with emotionally charged, long postponed tasks and creative aspirations, as if rest must also prove its worth. Before we know it, the very space that was meant to restore us is filled with pressure, self expectation, and the quiet sense of falling behind, and the break itself no longer feels restful at all. The nervous system does not experience summer as restorative by default. Rest is not seasonal. It is physiological. It is psychological. It is relational. And it is deeply individual.
For some people, real rest looks nothing like the glossy version we are sold. It does not look like sunrise yoga, green smoothies, early morning swims, or perfectly balanced meals. Sometimes rest looks like staying in your pyjamas until midday. It looks like letting the dishes pile up because you simply do not have the capacity to care today. It looks like turning your phone off and allowing the world to continue without your immediate participation. It looks like scrolling mindlessly, binge watching Netflix, eating chocolate, eating too much, or eating the “wrong” things for a while. Not as an act of self destruction, but as an act of relief.
This is where permission becomes important. Many people do these things anyway, but without permission. They do them wrapped in shame, self criticism, and the sense that they are failing some invisible standard of wellness or adulthood. Shame keeps the nervous system activated. Permission allows it to soften. There is a profound difference between choosing to do nothing for a while and feeling trapped in doing nothing while judging yourself for it. One is regulation. The other is stress.
From a psychological perspective, periods of intentional non striving can be deeply reparative. Recovery requires not just rest, but relief from self evaluation. The brain needs time out of problem solving mode. The prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for planning, analysing, and improving, benefits from periods where it is not required to perform. During these times, other systems associated with emotional processing, creativity, and integration are given space to operate. This is not laziness. This is biology.
For those who have spent years in therapy or self work, there can be an additional layer of pressure to always be reflective. To always be “doing the work”. To always be integrating insights. This can quietly turn therapy into another performance. A place where you feel you must show growth, awareness, or insight to justify being there. It can also create an internalised therapist voice that never quite switches off. Permission to take a break can include permission to not analyse yourself for a while. To not unpack every reaction. To not turn every feeling into a learning opportunity. Sometimes a feeling is just a feeling. Sometimes a low energy day is just a low energy day.
This does not mean abandoning care or ignoring serious needs. It is not about risk, harm, or neglect. It is about discernment. Eating chocolate for a week is not the same as harming yourself. Watching Netflix all day is not the same as giving up on life. Letting the house be messy for a while is not a moral failure. These behaviours often become problematic only when they are driven by avoidance layered with shame, or when they are the only available coping strategies over long periods without support. When they are chosen consciously, temporarily, and with kindness, they can be part of a healthy rhythm. Many people worry that if they stop pushing, they will never start again. This fear is understandable, especially for those who have relied on discipline and self pressure to survive. Yet studies on burnout and recovery consistently show that rest does not erase capability. It restores it. When people feel safe enough to rest, their natural curiosity, motivation, and engagement tend to return. Often in gentler, more sustainable forms.
There is also something quietly radical about choosing status quo in a culture that constantly urges optimisation. Status quo does not mean stagnation. It means allowing things to be as they are for a moment. It means not trying to fix, heal, improve, or resolve everything all at once. It means recognising that you are allowed to exist without making progress today. When people allow themselves to stay in status quo, even briefly, they often find that movement returns naturally, without force. The body and mind tend toward balance when they are not being pushed. Celebrating and honouring who you are right now is an extension of this permission. Not the future version of you who is more healed, calmer, fitter, or more organised. Not the past version of you who coped better or functioned more easily. The you that exists in this moment. The good, the bad, the ugly, the glorious. The strong parts and the parts that are still very much a work in progress. Psychological research on self compassion shows that wellbeing is not built through harsh self appraisal, but through the ability to hold our imperfections with warmth and realism. Self compassion does not reduce motivation. It stabilises it.
In clinical work, it is common to see people who are exhausted not because they are failing, but because they have been succeeding at coping for too long without enough support or rest. Their symptoms are not signs of weakness. They are signs of a nervous system asking for a different rhythm. Therapy can be a place to explore this rhythm, to distinguish between helpful effort and harmful over effort, and to renegotiate your relationship with productivity, healing, and self care.
If you find yourself resonating with the idea of health care fatigue, summer permission, or the longing to simply be for a while, therapy can support you in making sense of that without judgement. Therapy does not always have to be about digging deeper or working harder. Sometimes it is about creating enough safety to pause. To breathe. To notice what emerges when you are not pushing yourself forward. A psychologist can help you explore where rest ends and avoidance begins, how to rest in ways that genuinely replenish you, and how to return to growth when it feels right rather than forced.
If you would like support with this, you can book an appointment with a psychologist through our practice. Therapy can be a place where you are allowed to arrive exactly as you are, pyjamas, fatigue, chocolate wrappers and all, and begin from there. To read more about using therapy to slow down, reflect, and pause click here.
