Running on Empty: Fatigue, Overwhelm and Life in Survival Mode
Many people live with ongoing fatigue and overwhelm and ask the same thing: should it really be this hard?
They watch others keep up with work, relationships, and daily life while they feel drained, overloaded, or shut down. Over time, exhaustion starts to feel personal, like evidence of weakness, laziness, or “not coping well enough”.
This course looks at fatigue and overwhelm through the lens of Complex Trauma. It explores how growing up under chronic stress, pressure, or lack of support trains the body to stay alert, push through, and ignore its limits. Rest doesn’t arrive naturally. Stress never fully turns off. What looks like low energy or poor tolerance is often the result of years spent managing without relief.
Across the lessons, you’ll examine how overwhelm builds up behind the scenes, why it escalates so fast, and how shame becomes part of the spiral. You’ll look at how fatigue stopped registering as a signal and started feeling like a problem, and how the body can begin to feel like something to fight, override, or escape.
Rather than focusing on motivation or productivity, this course emphasizes the patterns underneath. It helps you understand how survival mode became normal, why calm can feel unsettling, and what it takes to relate differently to energy, capacity, and rest. Fatigue is a fact of life, but this course will help you learn to recognize it sooner, respond with less self-criticism, and begin creating a pace of life that doesn’t require collapse to be allowed to stop.
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Course Curriculum
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“Why am I so tired?”
Not tired in a way that resolves with rest, but a deeper fatigue that affects focus, emotions, and daily functioning. You might feel overwhelmed by ordinary demands, depleted even when nothing obvious is wrong, or confused by how quickly your energy disappears.
Over time, fatigue and overwhelm can start to feel personal. It’s common to assume they reflect laziness, weakness, or an inability to cope.
This course begins by questioning that assumption.
Rather than treating exhaustion as a character issue, it looks at fatigue and overwhelm as patterns shaped by long-term stress and adaptation.
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This module examines fatigue and overwhelm as nervous system responses rather than personal shortcomings. It looks at how early environments shaped beliefs about effort, rest, and “not coping,” and how those beliefs continue to influence how the body responds to stress today.
In this module you’ll:
Understand how early stress shaped your relationship to effort and rest.
Identify shame-based beliefs connected to fatigue and overwhelm.
Recognize fatigue as a signal rather than a failure.
See how survival-mode patterns still show up in daily life.
Begin separating self-worth from energy and productivity.
Lesson • Video • Journal
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This module explores how overwhelm accumulates rather than appearing suddenly. It focuses on stress layering, lack of recovery, and how small demands can tip the system when capacity is already strained.
In this module you’ll:
Recognize how overwhelm builds over time, not in isolation.
Identify early warning signs your system is nearing overload.
Understand why “small things” can feel unmanageable.
Notice how pressure compounds when rest is delayed.
Begin tracking patterns rather than blaming yourself.
Lesson • Video • Journal
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This module focuses on stress tolerance and how it develops through support. It explains why limited stress capacity is not about weakness, but about missing tools, and how early aloneness with stress shapes adult overwhelm.
In this module you’ll:
Understand how stress tolerance is built and why it may be limited.
Identify shame-based beliefs around “not coping.”
Recognize overwhelm as a reminder of unsupported stress, not incapacity.
See how low tolerance affects daily functioning.
Begin reframing overwhelm as a skill gap, not a flaw.
Lesson • Video • Journal
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This module examines why slowing down can trigger guilt, anxiety, or fear instead of relief. It looks at how rest became associated with danger, loss of worth, or responsibility for others.
In this module you’ll:
Trace how rest became linked to guilt or threat.
Identify false guilt and shame around slowing down.
Understand why pushing feels safer than stopping.
Recognize how identity can become tied to productivity.
Begin questioning beliefs that make rest feel unsafe.
Lesson • Video • Journal
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This module explores burnout and shutdown as protective nervous system responses. It focuses on why collapse happens after prolonged survival mode and how shame often mislabels these states as failure.
In this module you’ll:
Understand burnout and shutdown as signals, not breakdowns.
Recognize warning signs that collapse is approaching.
Identify shame narratives that appear when energy disappears.
See how over-functioning leads to eventual shutdown.
Begin reframing collapse as information rather than defeat.
Lesson • Video • Journal
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This module challenges the idea that capacity grows through endurance. It looks at how pushing narrows tolerance over time, and how real capacity develops through consistency, regulation, and containment.
In this module you’ll:
Understand why pushing creates short-term output but long-term depletion.
Identify beliefs that equate worth with endurance.
Recognize early signs your system is being overextended.
Explore healthier forms of rest and regulation.
Begin redefining capacity as something flexible and relational.
Lesson • Video • Journal
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This final module focuses on why calm can feel unfamiliar or unsettling after long-term survival mode. It explores how the nervous system pulls back toward urgency, and what it means to slowly anchor a more sustainable internal baseline.
In this module you’ll:
Understand why stability can trigger discomfort.
Identify beliefs that pull you back into survival mode.
Recognize regulation as connection, not constant calm.
Explore how language and being seen support regulation.
Begin integrating a new relationship to rest, effort, and capacity.
Lesson • Video • Journal
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This section offers optional books, courses, practices, and support options related to fatigue, overwhelm, and nervous system regulation.
