Emotional exhaustion happens when your nervous system never fully exits survival mode.

Before you take a moment to fully understand this title, I want to ask you this: have you ever come across a situation that has really triggered you?

But not to the point that you’re angry. Well, maybe angry, but after the anger, it leaves you feeling really shite afterwards?

Maybe even to the point of tears for days. Maybe even weeks.

And then all you feel you do is cry, and you don’t know how to move past it.

Well, this happened to me a few years back.

I didn’t realise how much emotional pain I was holding onto in my body after nearly 20 years until I lashed out at a family member and cried for two weeks straight.

And I’m not even exaggerating.

I’d not long started dating my current partner, and I remember he didn’t really know what to do or say. So instead, he just gave me that safe space to cry it out.

He didn’t question it.

He just held me and told me it was okay.

The whole point of this blog isn’t to whine, or for it to turn into some sort of bitching sesh about this particular family member. It’s really to hone down on the reasoning and the process of what’s happening behind the anger, behind the trigger and behind the tears and more importantly, behind the exhaustion.

Because what people might not realise is that emotional exhaustion can stay with you for years.

It can become the ‘norm’ of being automatically tired.

So, can you actually tell the difference between emotional and physical exhaustion?

Can you learn how to understand your triggers and not let them completely overwhelm you?

Truth is, emotional exhaustion isn’t always about being tired.

Sometimes it’s what happens when you’ve been carrying unprocessed pain for years.

“I didn’t realise how much emotional pain I was holding onto in my body until I cried for two weeks straight.”

Here’s the science behind it.

When you suppress emotions for years, in my case, nearly 20, your body can remain in a heightened state of stress. I’m not just referring to ONE thing that might have happened in your life. It could be a build-up of many things.

Things that happened years ago, things you never dealt with, things you thought you had moved past or maybe things you simply hadn’t even processed because you didn’t feel ready or safe enough to process.

Eventually, all of that can build up to a point where something triggers a much bigger emotional response than you expected.

Think of it like a dam. Imagine how it works, and imagine that we all have one and when we keep suppressing emotions, it starts to build pressure behind that dam. At some point, it just won’t be able to hold it anymore.

And then it breaks.

Sometimes, it breaks when you finally feel safe enough to let go.

In my case, the family member I lashed out at had started to show a bit more compassion rather than going straight into defence mode.

And the result of this?

A massive, prolonged release of anger, crying, shame and basically every emotion I’d been holding onto.

Polyvagal Theory

A helpful way to understand the relationship

Image credit: Empowered Life Counselling.

between our nervous system, safety and threat is through Polyvagal Theory, developed by neuroscientist Dr Stephen Porges.

The theory describes different autonomic states, including:

Ventral Vagal: Safety & Connection

You feel grounded, open and socially connected. You feel safe enough to engage with the world around you.

Sympathetic: Fight or Flight

You feel anxious, irritable, panicked or reactive. Your body is preparing to defend itself or get away from a perceived threat.

Dorsal Vagal: Shutdown/Freeze

You might feel numb, heavy, disconnected or completely overwhelmed. Instead of fighting or running, your system essentially shuts down.

For me, I was in that reactive, angry state when I spoke to my family member. And then I crashed. I couldn’t really speak about what I was feeling.

 I just cried. And cried. And cried. For two whole weeks!

So what actually helped?

I didn’t need someone to coach me through it, I didn’t need someone to tell me what I should do. And I definitely didn’t need someone to give me their opinion.

I needed to feel safe. My partner gave me that space for two weeks. Whenever I wanted to share something, he just listened.

Sometimes it was a minute. At times it was five minutes. He didn’t try to fix it. He just listened.

The same happened with the family member involved. They didn’t react to my explosion. They gave me space.

And what’s interesting is that I didn’t actually need to sit down and go through every single detail of the past.

I didn’t want to.

But I needed to be heard.

I needed to show that after all those years, I actually wasn’t okay.

And in some strange way, I think I finally did.

It was never really spoken about afterwards, but after crying for two weeks, I honestly felt a little more healed.

Crying as an emotional release

Looking back, crying for two weeks straight felt terrifying.

However, crying itself isn’t something we necessarily need to be ashamed of or immediately stop.

Emotional tears are different from the tears your eyes produce to keep themselves lubricated, and crying is associated with changes in the body's stress and emotional regulation systems.

There’s also evidence that crying can be followed by a feeling of emotional relief, particularly when we feel safe and supported while doing it.

But I think we sometimes put too much pressure on ourselves to stop crying.

Sometimes your body is simply saying: ‘I need to let this out.’

Basically…I needed that good old cry, even if it was for two weeks!

The Safe Haven

Suppressing emotions or trying to forget about them doesn’t necessarily make them disappear.

Sometimes, what we don’t process can show up somewhere else; through stress, irritability, anger, emotional overwhelm or a reaction that feels much bigger than the situation itself.

And if you do find yourself lashing out or becoming extremely emotional, maybe instead of immediately judging yourself for it, pause and ask:

What is this reaction trying to tell me?

Because sometimes the reaction is pointing towards something underneath it.

That doesn’t mean we get a free pass to hurt other people. We’re still responsible for how we behave. But we can also become curious about what’s happening underneath the behaviour.

For me, feeling safe around people I trusted helped me begin to come back down from that heightened emotional state.

Talking helped. Being listened to helped. Journaling can also help. Breathwork can help. Doing things that genuinely make you feel safe, calm and connected can help too.

And sometimes, you just need to cry.

So if you’ve been feeling exhausted for what feels like forever, maybe ask yourself:

‘Am I physically tired?’

Or ‘am I emotionally exhausted?’

Because they aren’t always the same thing.

And finally, remember this:

Crying isn’t a breakdown - It's a break-through.

Sometimes, it’s your body asking for a release.

You don’t have to apologise for having emotions.

You don’t have to rush yourself through them.

And you certainly don’t have to pretend you’re okay when you’re not.

Thank you for reading.

Share this with anyone who might need to hear it.

You’ve got this.

Until next time!