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We rarely experience exhaustion neutrally; we interpret it through stories.

Self-blaming, structural, and neurological explanations can all help us make sense of our fatigue.

Metaphors matter: Depleted batteries, empty tanks and burnout metaphors may not always help.

The stories we tell about exhaustion shape our experience of it and what kinds of cures we seek.

I have always been fascinated by the stories and metaphors we use to describe our inner lives. Often things of beauty, they are also highly revealing. We reach instinctively for story and metaphor because what goes on inside us can be difficult to describe in plain language. Stories and metaphors allow us to translate sensations and moods into shared images. They help us communicate what is otherwise diffuse, slippery and elusive. They illuminate the shifting weather systems of our inland empires.

But stories and metaphors don’t merely describe experience. They also shape it. This matters profoundly when it comes to exhaustion.

The stories we tell about our energy – what gives us energy, what drains it, and why we struggle to replenish it – are rarely neutral. Most of us inhabit one of several dominant exhaustion narratives, often without realising it.

Many of us tell self-blaming stories. We tell ourselves that we are simply not productive enough — that we are inefficient, badly organised, lacking in discipline. We believe we are poor time managers, hopeless procrastinators constitutionally incapable of keeping up with life’s demands. If only we were more focused, more resilient, more consistent, less distractible, and more optimised, we imagine, we would not constantly feel this tired.

We may also tell world-blaming stories about the causes of our exhaustion. In this narrative, exhaustion becomes the fault of toxic bosses or........

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