My employer was better about this than I expected

Started 30 January 2025 · 24 replies · 245 hearts · read 3.3k times

HollisBath, UK · 30 January 2025

1.5 years ago

Something I have been sitting with: My employer was better about this than I expected Not looking for advice so much as other people's experience.

I have avoided asking about this for six weeks out of pure embarrassment.

My pharmacist has been helpful and my question has now outgrown what she can answer at a counter, so I am asking here while I wait for an appointment.

What I cannot tell is whether this is the ordinary tax or the sort of thing that needs somebody today, and that distinction is the whole of my question.

Something is going on and I would like to know whether other people have had it, mostly so I know whether to raise it or wait it out.

Not after remedies particularly. Mostly I want to know whether this is ordinary and how long it went on for.

PeggyRotherham, UK

Somebody here said to treat energy as a budget rather than a personal quality, and that single reframing changed how I planned my weeks.

KikiFacilitatorGlasgow, UK

Thank you for writing something this unglamorous down. Half this circle has had it and almost nobody says so, and you have just made the next thread easier for somebody.

13me too 4

BrunoMilan, IT

Kiki has already said most of this and I want to add the one part that was different for me.

I raised fatigue at a review and was taken seriously, tested, and reassured. I had expected to be told it was normal and left there.

GethinMerthyr Tydfil, UK

My sleep needed a completely different shape from the one it had before. Earlier, longer, and less negotiable, and it took me months to accept that.

NettieBarrow, UK

What Kiki described happened to me too, in a slightly different order.

The bit I underestimated was how much the fatigue affected my mood, and how much I then attributed to my mood that was actually just being tired.

SinéadCork, IE

Light in the morning was the thing that helped most and cost nothing. Twenty minutes outside before nine, most days, and my nights changed within a fortnight.

MarenBremen, DE

Mine was worst in winter and much better in summer, and I now think a good half of it was seasonal and would have happened anyway.

Ollie OPeterhead, UK

Gently disagreeing with Nettie, or rather adding the other half of it.

I would say do not soldier on with this silently for months. I did five months and my GP's first response was to ask why I had not come sooner.

NorahDerry, NI

Reading Sinéad, I recognised more of that than I expected to.

What worked was accepting that I had less in the day than I used to, temporarily, and taking things out of the week rather than trying to do them tired.

TobySwindon, UK

#10

The vivid dreams caught me completely off guard. Nobody had mentioned them and about a third of this circle seems to have had them.

RillaAberdeen, UK

#11

Gently disagreeing with Norah, or rather adding the other half of it.

Mine improved when I fixed something completely unrelated, which had been quietly wrecking my nights for a year. Worth casting a wide net.

TychoLeiden, NL

#12

I was tired for about eight weeks and then I was not. I have no explanation. I offer it as data because the eight-week accounts are what I needed at week three.

6me too 2

TorinBelfast, NI

#13

What I noticed was that the tiredness came in a wave in the mid-afternoon and if I could get through forty minutes it passed. Trying to push through it never worked.

NikolaiSofia, BG

#14

Building on what Rilla wrote rather than answering the original question.

Coming back to say the fatigue lifted at about the four-month mark and has not come back. I wanted to leave that here for anybody currently in it.

BassCoventry, UK

#15

Something practical: I stopped scheduling anything on the evening of the day I do it. That one change took the pressure out of the whole week.

12me too 7

SamPortland, OR

#16

My prescriber asked about my sleep before anything else when I raised fatigue, which I thought was a diversion and turned out to be the whole answer.

OssianTromsø, NO

#17

Picking up Nikolai’s point rather than starting a new one.

Mine correlated with hydration far more than I would have believed. Very dull, very consistent across three months of notes.

RunaAarhus, DK

#18

I found the tiredness hardest to explain to other people. It is not the tiredness of a bad night, it is a different quality, and there is no good vocabulary for it.

OrrinGlasgow, UK

#19

The four o'clock waking was the thing I could not solve. I have found nothing that fixes it and I have found it helps to know I am not the only one.

AshSunderland, UK

#20

Building on what Runa wrote rather than answering the original question.

My tiredness arrived without warning at about week five and lasted a month. It was not dramatic, it was just that everything took more out of me than it should have.

NkemPort Harcourt, NG

#21

What helped was scheduling the tiredness rather than fighting it. I moved the demanding parts of my week to mornings and stopped pretending afternoons were productive.

RufusGuildford, UK

#22

Ash said something I want to sit with for a second.

I had assumed the fatigue was psychological and it turned out to be worth a set of bloods. Something unrelated came up and it was fixable.

9me too 1

KikiFacilitatorGlasgow, UK

#23

Facilitator note: if any of this has landed close to home while you were reading, our support resources page lists the kinds of service worth finding.

HuwWrexham, UK

#24

Mine was much worse for the first three days after each step up and then fine. Once I saw that pattern in my notes I planned around it.