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Listlessness causes and overcoming
contents
- causes
- Mental problems
- Physical causes
- Prevention and overcoming
We feel energyless, our need for sleep paralyzes every action - we lose the initiative. Our environment regards us as lethargic. Many assume that we lack the will to implement projects.
Listlessness can really plague sufferers. The causes can be temporary, mental or even organic. Overcoming the condition can be easy. Sometimes regular exercise helps. Image: RioPatuca Images - fotolia While we set ourselves to do the tasks of everyday life, we hardly manage anything: the refrigerator remains empty, the unpaid bills pile up, the living room, which we wanted to clean up long ago, sinks into the garbage. To outsiders, that looks like simple laziness. But there is a difference: Lazy does not disturb her condition. You feel good when the daily shopping is waiting, because the bed is comfortable.
Driveless people, however, suffer from their condition; They want to do more than they can do. They have a guilty conscience because they do not realize the things they are doing. Her condition is a symptom of mental or physical problems.
causes
Transient lack of energy can have trivial causes, and we should be aware of these before we suspect that we have serious mental health problems or serious illnesses.
Two major causes are stress and lack of exercise, often in combination. When we have to cope with many needs, do a workload that overwhelms us, while at the same time the partner feels neglected, we feel like we are in the hamster wheel, and what we do is never enough, that means stress.
Our nerves are overwrought, we are tense inside, we do not really come to rest. Even if we push that out of consciousness, the body announces itself. The listlessness shows the way to what we need.
The excessive need to sleep says: Rest, think about what's important to you, relax, think about how to better structure your work, your life, and your relationships.
Lack of exercise turns our body functions on a back burner. If we do not ask the body a bit, the muscles of our skeleton are suffering. We lose our physical strength and our stamina. Climbing, running or lifting stairs is difficult. We feel impulsive, because even small movements mean effort.
Relaxation exercises such as yoga or autogenic training, walks in nature and light sports help against stress. In particular, a targeted strength training helps against lack of exercise. It's not about building muscle but using the neglected muscles.
For those who prefer to work, weight training replaces activities that were self-evident just a few decades ago. Those who milk the cows, bring in hay, chop wood or repair the roof, put in a lot of muscle without even thinking about it. Anyone working on the computer today will not train abdominal, thoracic, leg or pelvic muscles.
Already one hour of weight training a week takes the tired muscles. After the first hours of practice everything hurts, but soon the body feeling improves, and the lack of drive disappears. Well-trained muscles "want to work".
Small exercises also work wonders if we run them regularly. A few minutes of dumbbell training in the morning breaks through the sluggishness. Cycling trains many muscles, the back as well as the arms, the buttocks as well as the legs and stomach. In the city more often to do without the car, hardly costs time. On the bike, we become more alert because we have to focus on our surroundings, we get more oxygen, and we move.
Hiking and jogging can also be integrated into everyday life. The external stimuli stimulate unused synapses and thus we also promote our mental work.
After all, swimming requires almost all the muscles, but then we feel exhausted, so we should do it outside our normal working hours.
However, we should look carefully why we are moving too little. Is it really just our computer job or convenience? Or is there general frustration behind it?
Mental problems
Lack of exercise and lack of motivation are often due to general frustration about one's own life. Why should we implement goals if we feel we can not reach them anyway? Why should we work on a job we consider futile? Why should we, literally, move if we do not know where to go, or see any way that gives us perspective?.
Then we are without motivation, because we lack goals that could drive us. Every therapist knows people who lethargically let everything rush by and considered this to be the normal state, and were hardly recognizable after successful treatment.
After completing a stressful relationship, getting out of a hated job, moving to a better home, they found passions they did not even know they had.
Mental complaints are often associated with other problems that paralyze the drive. Frustrated people grab the bottle and for the time being find happiness that compensates for missing love relationships, the Extasy pill replaces the body's own drugs after a mountain hike.
We also become impulsive when the vitamin B12, iron or iodine is missing. The cause can be physical problems such as high blood loss during menstruation or problems with the thyroid gland.
Harmful behavior as a result of general frustration, depressive phases or stress but also promote such a deficiency: who replaces meals with fish, egg or nuts with the liquor bottle, which suffers from certain after a certain period of iron and vitamin deficiency.
Addictions, all forms of schizophrenia and clinical depression are psychological problems associated with lack of drive. There are no simple exercises like cycling or walking, but detox programs and psychotherapies are in order.
Against iron deficiency, there are drugs or these home remedies.
Iron deficiency is a common reason for a lack of drive. This condition can be overcome with a small diet change to ferrous foods. Picture: Kitty - fotolia The burnout syndrome affects the psyche, but is a psychosomatic disorder, so it also shows in the physical suffering. Often misunderstood, burnout is not generally the result of overwork, but of meaninglessness. Artists who paint their pictures for nights without sleep, writers who have to force themselves to sleep and even dive into their novel in a dream hardly complain about burnout - this also applies to political activists who are on vacation as on hot coals because they can not participate in demonstrations.
However, those who are bullied on their jobs, accepting assignments without any sense, who see a wall between what he lives and who he wants to live, are candidates for a burnout. The listlessness here is rather a helper, because a damage: It rings the alarm bells to change something in life.
Physical causes
Sex in percent
Men 3,369
Women 4,309
It looks quite different with physical causes of drive weakness. Cancer in its many forms announces itself through energy loss. For example, a lung tumor often shows up when the sufferer quickly runs out of breath while jogging, and a brain tumor has difficulty coordinating everyday work.
Prevention and overcoming
For all serious physical illnesses, the disease itself must be treated. In a general lack of drive without a hidden lurking tumor or infection helps but a more conscious lifestyle.
Rest, fresh air and exercise are accompanied by a balanced diet. This means, above all, enough iron, vitamin B12 and iodine. Daylight helps against the feeling of lethargy.
Is lack of sleep the cause? The body needs at least six hours of sleep to regenerate it. Constant tiredness and listlessness are almost equally important. So make sure you have enough sleep.
Essential is also enough liquid. Especially when we barely move, we often drink too little. While we fight fatigue with coffee and cigarettes, the body actually demands a glass of water.
It sounds banal, but often the problem disappears if we make sense: call an old friend we have not seen in a long time, go hiking in the woods, plan a weekend break or visit a city where we've always wanted to go.
Lack of exercise and frustration often go hand in hand. When we tackle meaningful goals, we automatically move, feel better and experience something - and experience is the opposite of lethargy. (Dr. Utz Anhalt)
Specialist supervision: Barbara Schindewolf-Lensch (doctor)