Why telling depleted people to "just relax" is like asking a phone with a flat battery to charge itself
Sarah sits in her GP's office, hands trembling slightly as she tries to explain why her heart races when she's queueing at Tesco, why she can't seem to catch her breath during perfectly normal conversations, and why she feels like crying when someone asks her a simple question. She's tried meditation apps (they made her more anxious), breathing exercises (ditto), and even bought a weighted blanket that now serves as an expensive reminder of another failed attempt at wellness.
The diagnosis comes back as anxiety, the prescription is for breathing exercises and perhaps some CBT, and she leaves feeling like she's somehow failing at being human. The well-meaning advice from friends doesn't help either: "Have you tried yoga?" "Just think positive thoughts!" "You need to learn to switch off!"
Sound familiar? If you've been told your anxiety is something you need to manage better, that you should try harder to relax, or that meditation will solve your problems, you might be dealing with something entirely different from what you think. Your nervous system might not be overreacting - it might simply be running on empty.
This distinction matters enormously, because the treatment for an overactive nervous system is completely different from the treatment for an exhausted one. Getting it wrong doesn't just waste time and money - it can actually make you feel worse.
When Anxiety Isn't Actually Anxiety
In Chinese medicine, what we often label as anxiety can actually be one of two very different conditions. Understanding the difference is crucial because they require completely opposite approaches - and this is where many people go wrong.
The first is what practitioners call Liver Qi Stagnation - genuine agitation where your energy is blocked and needs to move. Think of it like having a river dammed up; the water becomes turbulent and chaotic. People with this pattern often feel restless, irritable, and like they could jump out of their skin. They might pace around the house, feel better after exercise or having a good cry, and find that movement or expressing emotion provides genuine relief. This responds well to breathwork, vigorous exercise, and activities that get your energy flowing.
The second condition, however, is something quite different: Kidney Deficiency or what we might call nervous system depletion. This isn't about blocked energy - it's about having run your energy reserves so low that your system can't maintain normal function. It's like trying to run a laptop on 2% battery; everything feels overwhelming because there simply isn't enough power to cope with normal demands.
People with nervous system depletion often feel tired but wired, exhausted but unable to rest properly. They might feel overwhelmed by normal daily tasks, find themselves getting tearful over minor issues, or experience that peculiar combination of feeling both anxious and exhausted simultaneously. Unlike those with liver qi stagnation, exercise often makes them feel worse rather than better.
Here's the crucial difference: if you have liver qi stagnation, meditation and breathing exercises often help because they create space for the blocked energy to move. If you have kidney deficiency, they might actually make you feel worse because the effort required to "be mindful" or "focus on your breath" draws from energy reserves that are already depleted.
Telling someone with nervous system depletion to "just relax" is a bit like asking a phone with a flat battery to charge itself. The mechanism for relaxation requires energy that simply isn't available. It's not that they don't want to relax - it's that their system lacks the resources to shift into a parasympathetic state.
How We Drain Our Reserves
Modern life is rather brilliantly designed to exhaust our nervous systems. We're expected to be constantly available, perpetually productive, and emotionally regulated regardless of what's happening around us. We drink coffee to wake up, wine to wind down, and wonder why we feel like we're held together with caffeine and good intentions.
The pace of contemporary life would be recognisable to no human who lived before about 1950. We're bombarded with information, notifications, decisions, and stimulation at a rate our nervous systems simply didn't evolve to handle. Our great-grandparents might have encountered a few dozen people in their daily lives; we process more faces in a single scroll through social media than they'd see in a month.
Then there's the emotional labour of modern existence. We're expected to care about global warming, political upheaval, social justice, economic uncertainty, and the personal dramas of everyone we've ever met, all while maintaining professional composure and personal relationships. It's rather like trying to run a small village's worth of emotional processing through the nervous system of one person.
Chinese medicine recognises that we all have what's called Kidney Essence, or Jing - think of it as your constitutional battery pack. You're born with a certain amount, and while you can support and preserve it, you can't manufacture more. Every major stress, every period of overwork, every time you push through exhaustion rather than resting, you're drawing from this reserve.
The trouble is, our culture celebrates this depletion. We call it "being productive" or "pushing through" or "staying strong." We've somehow decided that needing rest is a moral failing rather than a biological necessity. We praise people who work through illness, who sacrifice sleep for achievement, who put everyone else's needs before their own. Meanwhile, your nervous system is frantically trying to keep you functional while running on fumes.
Consider the language we use around exhaustion: "I just need to power through," "Sleep is for the weak," "I'll rest when I'm dead." These aren't motivational slogans - they're descriptions of a culture that has fundamentally misunderstood the relationship between human beings and energy.
The Signs You're Running on Empty
Nervous system depletion doesn't always look like anxiety. Sometimes it looks like:
The inability to make simple decisions. When your energy reserves are low, your brain literally doesn't have the resources for decision-making. That's why choosing what to have for dinner can feel impossibly difficult when you're depleted. Your partner asks what you fancy for lunch and you might as well have been asked to solve quantum physics. It's not indecisiveness - it's energy conservation.
Emotional volatility that surprises you. You might find yourself crying at adverts or snapping at people you love, not because you're losing your mind, but because emotional regulation requires significant energy reserves. When those reserves are low, your emotional responses become more primitive and immediate. A touching John Lewis Christmas advert might trigger tears not because you're overly sentimental, but because your system lacks the energy to maintain its usual emotional filters.
Physical symptoms that don't make sense. Heart palpitations, digestive issues, muscle tension, or feeling cold all the time can all be signs that your system is struggling to maintain basic functions. When your nervous system is depleted, it starts rationing energy for only the most essential processes. Temperature regulation, digestion, and even heart rhythm can become erratic when there's not enough energy to go around.
The feeling that everything is "too much." When people describe feeling overwhelmed by normal daily tasks, it's often because their nervous system genuinely doesn't have the capacity to process normal amounts of stimulation. The sound of the dishwasher, the neighbour's music, the texture of certain fabrics - things that wouldn't normally bother you become intensely irritating because your system lacks the resources to filter and process sensory input effectively.
Sleep that doesn't refresh. You might sleep for eight hours and wake up feeling like you've been hit by a bus. This happens because depleted nervous systems can't achieve the deeper stages of restorative sleep that actually rebuild your energy reserves. You're going through the motions of sleep without getting its benefits.
The paradox of being "tired but wired." Your body is exhausted but your mind won't switch off. You're physically depleted but mentally agitated. This is your nervous system's equivalent of a car engine that's overheating but won't turn off - the system is too dysregulated to rest properly even when it desperately needs to.
Why Rest Isn't Laziness
If this sounds like you, the most important thing to understand is that you don't need to try harder - you need to rest deeper. Real rest, though, isn't just collapsing in front of Netflix (though that has its place). It's about actively nourishing your nervous system rather than just stopping the activities that drain it.
There's a difference between passive rest and restorative rest. Passive rest is stopping. Restorative rest is rebuilding. Scrolling through your phone isn't restorative - it's still processing information and making micro-decisions. Watching the news isn't restorative - it's feeding your nervous system more things to worry about. Even reading can be draining if you're depleted enough, because following a narrative requires cognitive energy.
True nervous system restoration might look like sitting in silence without trying to meditate, taking a warm bath without bringing your phone, or lying on the floor and doing absolutely nothing for twenty minutes. It's the kind of rest that feels almost uncomfortably boring to our stimulation-addicted brains.
Chinese medicine approaches nervous system depletion by nourishing what's called Kidney Yin and Yang - essentially, rebuilding your reserves rather than just managing symptoms. This might involve warm, nourishing foods rather than raw salads, gentle movement rather than intense exercise, and early bedtimes rather than late-night stimulation.
The foods that support nervous system recovery tend to be the ones our culture has demonised: warm soups, slow-cooked stews, gentle carbohydrates, and foods that don't require much digestive energy to process. When you're depleted, your body needs easily accessible fuel, not complex raw foods that require significant energy to break down.
It also means being rather more selective about where you spend your energy. When you're operating with limited reserves, every interaction, every commitment, every bit of mental stimulation draws from the same depleted pool. Learning to say no isn't selfish - it's essential maintenance.
This includes emotional energy. If you're depleted, you might need to temporarily step back from being everyone's therapist, from following every political development, from trying to solve other people's problems. It's not permanent withdrawal - it's strategic conservation while you rebuild.
A Different Kind of Healing
The beautiful thing about understanding nervous system depletion is that it offers hope. You're not fundamentally broken or suffering from some mysterious disorder that requires lifelong management. You're tired. Profoundly, constitutionally tired in a way that rest can actually address.
This reframe is revolutionary for many people. Instead of thinking "I'm broken and need to be fixed," you can think "I'm depleted and need to be nourished." Instead of "I should be able to handle normal stress," you can think "I've been handling more than normal stress for longer than normal time periods, and now I need recovery."
Understanding depletion also explains why so many conventional treatments for anxiety don't work for exhausted people. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, for instance, requires significant mental energy to examine and restructure thought patterns. If you don't have that energy available, CBT can feel impossibly difficult or even make you feel worse about your inability to "think your way out" of the problem.
Similarly, exercise is often prescribed for anxiety, and while movement can be wonderful for liver qi stagnation, it can be depleting for kidney deficiency. This is why some people feel fantastic after a workout while others feel wiped out for days. If you're in the latter category, it doesn't mean exercise is bad for you - it means you need gentler, more nourishing forms of movement while you rebuild your reserves.
This doesn't mean the solution is simple or quick. Rebuilding depleted reserves takes time, often months or years depending on how long you've been running on empty. The deeper the depletion, the longer the recovery. This isn't a failure of treatment - it's the realistic timeline for genuine healing.
But it does mean that every choice to nourish rather than deplete, every early night, every boundary you set is actually medicine. Every time you choose rest over productivity, warmth over stimulation, nourishment over restriction, you're actively participating in your recovery rather than just managing symptoms.
The process isn't linear either. You might have a few good days followed by a crash, not because you're getting worse, but because your system is learning to regulate again. Think of it like physical therapy after an injury - there's often temporary discomfort as the system rebuilds its capacity.
Moving Forward
Your nervous system has been working overtime to keep you functional while operating with insufficient resources. It's been doing an extraordinary job under impossible circumstances. Rather than asking it to work harder or differently, perhaps it's time to ask what it needs to recover.
The answer might be surprisingly gentle: warmth, rest, nourishment, and the radical act of treating exhaustion as information rather than inconvenience. It might mean going to bed earlier, saying no to social obligations that drain you, eating warming foods even if they're not trendy, and accepting that recovery takes time.
Most importantly, it means understanding that needing this level of care doesn't make you weak or broken. It makes you human. Your nervous system is trying to tell you something important about the pace and demands of your life. The question isn't how to silence that message, but how to listen to it with the respect it deserves.
After all, you wouldn't keep driving a car with the petrol light flashing and expect it to perform better. Your nervous system deserves at least the same consideration. The good news is that unlike a car, your nervous system has a remarkable capacity to heal and regenerate - given the right conditions and enough time.