The elements of energetic depletion and exhaustion for HSPs/empaths

settle in, we're gonna talk about this shit for weeks

hi everybody! thanks for all the comments you’re already putting on the post asking what health/wellness stuff i can help you with or discuss.

today i’m going to touch on energy/exhaustion/burnout/depletion and the multiple areas i see at cause for HSPs/empaths.

settle in because i see at least 8 pillars of possible cause here that i will talk about each specifically in depth in coming weeks. (there are probably tons more and i look forward to your thoughts and contributions on these topics too, because you have just as much insight and knowledge around this as i do, promise.)

medical disclaimer: This content is provided for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute providing medical advice or professional services. The information provided should not be used for diagnosing or treating a health problem or disease, and those seeking personal medical advice should consult with a licensed physician. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health provider regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read here.

If it’s not eminently clear, I have no medical training.

that said, fuck medical disclaimers and fuck a lot of of the medical system too, because they gaslight, dismiss, over-medicate and invalidate your health concerns. they’ve done it to me and i guarantee that they’ve done it to most of you. so little time is spent on root cause stuff. so little time is spent on individual stuff (including aspects of being an HSP, which is only 15-20% of the population, so our health needs are often different). no or little time is spent on the nervous system, nutrition, emotional needs, spiritual needs.

also the western medical system is blatantly racist and sexist. it is a system that has been built under colonization and america, which is to say, it is a system of white supremacy and the patriarchy. oh also capitalism and profit. so it does not serve many of us.

we give doctors and the western medical system WAY too much power in this society. especially as people-pleasers and co-dependents. a lot of us struggling with chronic health issues have to walk a very lonely, very invalidating path, trying a bunch of different things until we find a community or practitioners or our own insight who can really help us.

i also believe that so much of exhaustion/depletion/burnout/chronic health issues ARE NOT MEDICAL. sometimes they’re spiritual. sometimes they’re energetic. sometimes they’re medical in that they might be caused by nutritional issues, but guess what, doctors aren’t trained in nutrition! a lot of the time medical issues are related to emotional repression or trauma. a lot of the time i see the exhaustion being nervous-system related; somebody’s been in fight/flight for years, decades even, and that’s never proposed as a solution. and if you’re a woman going to a doctor talking about exhaustion? i mean, they’ll just tell you it’s aging or menopause or vaguely stress.

i was losing my hair for years and all doctors could give me was “stress.” no shit i was stressed. nobody had me look into my digestion, my hormones, my micronutrients, my diet, my trauma. i solved my hair loss on my own but it took AGES. like, if your hair is falling out, you are physically unwell. if you have lost your period or your period is awful, your body is crying out. your menstrual cycle is the fifth vital sign for women, and its status rarely asked about. and your hair - your hair is only falling out if something significant is happening inside your body.

gah. i could go on. yes, i am very bitter. join me on team bitter against the western medical system. (and of COURSE there are great individual practitioners within the system who care, and want to help, and a lot of the time, do and can help! but that by and large has NOT been my experience.)

so no, i don’t have medical training or experience. nor nutrition or dietary training or formal experience.

what i do have is a ton of lived experience, experimenting on myself, and stories from my clients, who are almost exclusively highly sensitive women.

i am not gonna tell you to medical-medium-celery-juice your way to health, or repeat health affirmations ad nauseum in the mirror, because to me that seems insane.

what i hope to do with this energy series is give you practical ways of thinking about energy depletion/exhaustion and possibly overall physical and mental health issues, and some tools and resources to move forward. always trusting yourself and your experience and intuition ABOVE ANYBODY.

so let’s dive in.

here are what i see as the 8 areas that are most commonly related to exhaustion/depletion in HSPs/empaths (and for most of us it’s a mix of all or many of these):

1. nutrition: i’ll go over this more specifically in coming weeks, but i’m not just talking diet. i’m talking blood sugar, micronutrients, adrenal issues and more.

2. energetic: you have to understand, when an empath goes out into the world without energetic hygiene and boundaries, imagine yourself as going into a coal mine. and when you come out of a coal mine (at least from old-timey photos i’ve seen), you are coming back covered in coal dust - or in our cases, other people’s energy. we have to prevent this and clear this regularly. also, energy vampires.

3. nervous system (chronically stuck in fight/flight or dorsal)

4. spiritual: sometimes exhaustion is a dark night of the soul, meant for a greater spiritual purpose or to wake us up to something we are tolerating in our lives that desperately needs to be removed or addressed. sometimes it’s related to systems like human design (which i’ll explain) which can give us more insight and permission into how we can do less so that we can restore our energy

5. environmental (clutter, feng shui aspects affecting us - clutter absolutely causes exhaustion, subconsciously and physically)

6. just trying to do too much and not accepting our HSP-ness, which means, we really can’t do as much as most people, so having to give ourselves permission around this

7. repressed trauma

8. menopause/peri-menopause/PMDD

so that’s where we’ll start. i’ll start soon with the environmental/physical aspect of exhaustion because that’s something we can usually identify right away in our homes and do something about without needing to spend money (or much money) or talk to a professional about.

this will be a paid-subscribers-only series, so if it’s speaking to you, sign up for the secret soother for $7/month or $77 for a year.

any thoughts? leave them below! *you* also know about what causes your exhaustion, or you have your own stories about what has worked or hasn’t for you. they are all welcome here. also welcome is rants about dismissive, condescending or invalidating medical experiences.

as HSPs and empaths we deserve to live lives of vitality, and GODDAMMIT WE ARE GOING TO FIGURE OUT HOW!!!

* hulks out, smashes table, busts through wall like kool-aid man*