One emotion that comes up for me a lot is tiredness. Just like hunger, there’s biological tiredness and emotional tiredness. I give into this emotional tiredness often and use it to buffer against emotions, especially when I’m overwhelmed. This just came up for me (a 30-minute nap ago) while watching the overflow module of Monday Hour One. I’m just getting started with this and my brain is freaking out. Here’s my thought download and a model I did:
TDL: I can’t anticipate what work will be like in January when we start the integration and test portion of the project because I’ve never done it before. I can’t estimate how long it will take to do something if I don’t know how much I’ll have to study new things to have the skills to do it. I’ll end up getting more emails than I can anticipate. You don’t understand, my job is different and I’m a special snowflake (tongue in cheek). We get pop up meetings all the time that I can’t plan for.
Unintentional Model:
C: Listened to thought overflow portion of Monday Hour One
T: I can’t estimate how long something will take if I have to do research to learn how to solve it
F: Tired
A: Try to sit with the tired feeling, close my eyes to feel it and doze off. Have a very strong urge to nap which didn’t exist 7 minutes ago. Take a nap.
R: I indulge in tiredness, quit my work
Can I get some feedback on my model? While I was writing it, it didn’t matter which thought I chose from my thought download, the feeling of exhaustion was so strong that I couldn’t tell if there were any other emotions there, all I could see is that F = tired.
How can I start addressing this emotional tiredness without taking naps? I know it must be true, but I can’t imagine there being a thought I can practice ahead of time that will counteract this. It feels so overwhelmingly strong. It’s disrupted my life so much though. Almost all my difficult conversations with my partner have ended in me being too emotionally tired to continue. Then I take a nap and forget everything important when I wake up.
