The Hidden Ways You’re Draining Your Own Energy (And How You Get It Back)
There are days when you wake up tired.
Not tired because you pulled an all-nighter.
Not tired because you ran a marathon.
Just… tired in a way you can’t explain — a kind of heaviness that follows you around no matter how much you “rest.”
You think maybe a nap will fix it.
Or getting through your to-do list will fix it.
Or pushing yourself a little harder will fix it.
But it doesn’t.
The heaviness stays. The stuckness stays. The low energy that you can’t shake stays.
It makes you start wondering if something’s wrong with you.
Why am I like this?
Why can’t I just get it together like everyone else seems to?
Here’s the truth no one tells you:
You’re not broken.
You’re not lazy.
You’re not bad at life.
You’re just carrying invisible weights — the ones no one taught you how to notice, name, or lay down.
And every single day you carry them, even in small ways, they quietly drain your energy, your hope, and your sense of possibility.
The good news is:
Once you start seeing these hidden drains for what they are, you can start taking your energy back — softly, steadily, without shaming yourself into it.
You can stop bleeding energy into battles you don’t even realize you’re fighting.
You can start feeling lightness again — not because you “fixed” yourself, but because you finally stopped carrying what was never yours to hold alone.
Let’s walk through the hidden ways your energy might be leaking right now — and how to start gently calling your power back home.
Hidden Energy Drain #1: Mental Overloading
You could be lying on the couch, technically “resting” — but inside your mind, you’re still sprinting.
Your body’s still.
But your brain is racing:
- “I should be working right now.”
- “I still haven’t posted anything.”
- “Maybe I forgot something important.”
- “Am I wasting time?”
You might not even realize it because it feels normal at this point — this low-grade buzzing in the background that never shuts off.
But this invisible pressure quietly drains you all day long.
It’s like carrying a 20-pound backpack everywhere you go.
You forget it’s there after a while — but it’s still slowing you down, tiring you out, making even simple things feel harder than they should.
The truth is:
Rest isn’t just about not moving your body.
Rest is when your mind feels safe enough to stop trying to “earn” the next moment.
If your nervous system never gets to clock out — even for an hour — exhaustion starts to feel like your default setting.
And no amount of naps, vacations, or coffee will fix it until you let yourself mentally put the backpack down.
So what should you do?
- Create a simple “holding list” every morning (or whenever the swirl starts).
This is not a fancy to-do list. It’s a brain dump. A place where your swirling thoughts can live safely outside your body.
You’re not committing to doing everything — you’re just letting yourself stop carrying it all in your head. - Set emotional boundaries around your workday.
Even if you work for yourself. Even if you don’t finish everything.
Pick a window like, “I work between 11AM and 2PM.”
And when that window closes, you lay the mental load down, too.
Not because everything’s done, but because you are done for today.
Your mind deserves off-hours.
Not because you “earned” them — but because you’re human.
You don’t have to be “on” all the time to be worthy of rest.
Hidden Energy Drain #2: Self-Criticism Loops
Sometimes, it’s not life that’s draining you.
It’s the way you talk to yourself when life gets messy.
You forget to send an email. Again.
You eat something you didn’t plan to – like a snack, or two, or maybe the whole pantry.
You procrastinate on your work.
And before you know it, the voice inside your head is tearing you apart:
- “Seriously? Again?”
- “You’ll never make it at this rate.”
- “Other people would have handled this better.”
- “What is wrong with you? Why can’t you get your shit together?”
And do you know what the worst part is?
You might not even notice how automatic it’s become — how normalized it feels to treat yourself like an endless project that needs fixing.
But your nervous system notices.
Every harsh word you think — even the ones you don’t say out loud — your body hears.
Your body doesn’t know the difference between emotional attack from the outside… and emotional attack from the inside.
When you criticize yourself over and over, your system quietly tightens, braces, shuts down.
It drains your energy because deep down, it’s trying to survive you.
Self-criticism isn’t “motivation.”
It’s slow, invisible self-punishment.
And it’s exhausting you more than you realize.
So what can we do instead?
- First, start by catching the voice, not fighting it.
When you notice the critic in your mind, try saying softly:”Oh, there’s that scared part of me again. It’s not my truth, it’s just a fear.“
Recognize it’s fear trying to “protect” you from mistakes — but it’s doing it the only way it knows how: through pressure and shame. - Then, practice a radical reframe: Instead of asking, “Why am I like this?”
Practice asking, “How can I stand with myself right now, instead of against myself?”
You don’t have to bully yourself into greatness.
You don’t have to hustle your healing.
You move forward faster when you walk alongside yourself, not when you beat yourself down.
(We’re going even deeper into this in the next post: Progress, Not Punishment: How to Heal Your Nervous System by How You Talk to Yourself. You’ll want to read it.)
Hidden Energy Drain #3: All-or-Nothing Thinking
There’s a certain kind of heaviness that comes from the way you frame your own life.
It’s not always the work that drains you.
It’s the way your brain says:
- “If I don’t do this perfectly, it doesn’t count.”
- “If I don’t finish everything today, I’m failing.”
- “If I’m not winning yet, it means I’m losing.”
All-or-nothing thinking sneaks up on you like that.
It makes every day feel like a final exam you’re about to flunk.
It turns every small stumble into proof you’re “never going to make it.”
And sometimes it’s even hard to catch it in the act.
But what about your nervous system?
Well, your nervous system doesn’t know you’re just being dramatic.
It hears:
“If we don’t win RIGHT NOW, everything is at risk.“
Or “If I don’t make X amount of money in my business this month, then I’ll be stuck forever in the current situation as I know it.”
It’s a different message for each one of us — but the exact same tone, same structure, and same message for your nervous system.
And that creates pressure that wears you down, even when you’re not physically moving.
It’s the emotional equivalent of sprinting with a boulder tied to your chest.
All-or-nothing thinking keeps you living in survival mode —
like you’re constantly bracing for a life-or-death outcome…
over something as simple as writing a blog post, or missing a gym session, or having that extra snack, or taking a slow morning when you “should” be working.
Sheesh, that was a lot.
So let’s unpack this mess now:
- Start by challenging the idea that success is all-or-nothing.
What if it’s layered? What if it’s cumulative? What if it’s allowed to be messy? You can still move closer to your dream even if today is imperfect.
You can still be making real progress even if it’s slower than you wanted. - Build tiny, daily wins that you get to define.
Not fake-perfect-life Instagram wins. Not other people’s wins.
Your wins.”Today I opened my laptop even though I wanted to hide.“
“Today I wrote one paragraph even if I didn’t finish the whole post.“
“Today I chose kindness instead of panic.“
Small wins are not pathetic.
Small wins are how the real, lasting stuff gets built.
You don’t climb out of survival mode by leaping to the top.
You climb out by stacking tiny stones, one at a time — until suddenly, you’re standing somewhere new.
We’re diving deeper into why tiny wins matter so much in this post: [Tiny Wins Are Big Wins: Why Every Soft Step Toward Calm Matters More Than You Think].
Hidden Energy Drain #4: Emotional Bottlenecking
Sometimes the reason you’re tired isn’t because you did too much.
It’s because you felt too much — and you didn’t let any of it move through.
You swallowed your anger because “it wasn’t the right time.”
You shoved down your sadness because “there’s no point crying about it.”
You ignored your overwhelm because “you just need to get it together and push through.”
And from the outside, maybe you look fine.
Calm. Focused. Normal.
But inside?
You’re jammed up.
You’re carrying emotional tension like a dam about to burst.
Your nervous system isn’t just tired from “life happening.”
It’s tired from holding back wave after wave of emotion that you never gave yourself permission to feel.
And here’s an ever deeper layer to it: your nervous system is tired from having held back emotion after emotion when you were young, ’cause guess what? You we taught to be “strong” by stuffing down your emotions. Especially the uncomfortable ones like sadness, anger, fear.
Oh yeah. You weren’t allowed to feel that way. It wasn’t accepted.
🙁
Now, here’s the thing no one really says out loud:
Emotions are energy.
If they don’t move, they get stuck.
And stuck emotions turn into chronic exhaustion, irritability, numbness, and that heavy “I can’t even” feeling you can’t always explain.
It’s not that you’re broken.
It’s not that you’re dramatic.
It’s that you’re bottlenecking the very thing that was built to help you release stress — and it’s costing you more energy than you even realize.
So if you want to get back your energy, you’ll have to unlearn the very thing you were taught to do whenever you’d experience uncomfortable emotions.
It goes like this:
- Start practicing 2-minute emotional check-ins.
Not therapy. Not fixing. Not journaling for an hour.
Just a simple, honest question:”What am I feeling right now, underneath the numbness or noise?” Name that emotion. Don’t go into thinking about why you have it — just name it and acknowledge it. - Give the answer permission to be ugly, incomplete, or uncomfortable.
You don’t need to analyze it.
You don’t need to solve it. It’s enough to name it: “I feel frustrated.“
“I feel scared.“
“I feel so damn tired.“
That alone — naming it — gives your system a chance to breathe again.
You don’t have to perform your emotions for anyone else.
You don’t even have to explain them.
You just have to let yourself be honest inside your own skin.
Because the truth is:
You’re not heavy because you’re failing.
You’re heavy because you’re full.
And little by little, you can start letting that pressure drain out — without exploding, without falling apart, and without apologizing for needing space.
Final Thoughts
If you’re seeing yourself in these hidden energy drains —
the mental overloading, the self-criticism loops, the all-or-nothing panic, the emotional bottlenecking —
I want you to hear this:
You are not failing.
You are carrying invisible weights you were never meant to bear alone.
You are not behind.
You are not broken.
You are human.
And the minute you start naming these drains?
You’re already taking your energy back.
Softly. Gently. On your own terms.
Next Steps:
Want to go deeper into reclaiming your energy and treating yourself like someone worth standing with — not standing against?
You’ll love the next post: Progress, Not Punishment: How to Heal Your Nervous System by How You Talk to Yourself
Let’s walk toward freedom — one real, human step at a time.
