The Part of You That’s Tired Isn’t the Problem - It’s the Messenger

We live in a culture that treats tiredness as a personal failing. Didn’t get through the to-do list?Feel uninspired? Dragging yourself through the week?

The standard response is: try harder. Push through. Don’t be weak.

But if you’ve been around this space for a while, you’ll know I have absolutely zero interest in pushing through anything - especially not yourself.

Because here’s what I see again and again in my work:

The part of you that’s tired isn’t the problem. It’s the messenger.

It’s the one waving a tiny, frayed flag saying, “Hi… this life is a lot. Could someone please check on me?”

Tiredness - the deep kind - is rarely about sleep alone. It’s the accumulation of years spent managing, masking, coping, holding, fixing, performing, tending, absorbing, and caring. It can feel like bone-deep exhaustion. It can feel heavy or stuck. It can feel like a 'nothingness' or emptiness, or inability to feel anything.

It’s the part of you who never got to set anything down.

What if exhaustion is a form of communication?

Internal Family Systems (IFS) teaches us that every inner experience is a conversation - a part of you trying its absolute best with the tools it has.

A tired part is often one that has been:

• holding responsibility for far too long

• running interference to keep you safe

• absorbing stress before it reaches your conscious awareness

• bracing for impact from old wounds or familiar patterns

• keeping you functional when your system actually wants rest, softness, or change

When we ignore this tired part - when we override, caffeinate, pep talk, productivity-hack - it doesn’t disappear. It just gets louder.

First with sighs and heaviness. Then with procrastination. Then with numbness, irritability, shutdown, illness, or absolute “nope.”

And none of that is a failure. It’s a tired guardian saying: “I cannot be the only one carrying this anymore.”

The shift happens when we stop pathologising tiredness

Instead of making ourselves wrong, we get curious.

What is this tired part protecting me from feeling?

What burden has it been carrying alone?

What would it need from me to soften, even a little?

Sometimes the answer is practical support (sleep, food, boundaries, a break).

Sometimes it’s emotional truth-telling: “I’m overwhelmed. I need help.”

Sometimes it’s grief finally having space to breathe.

Sometimes it’s the first whisper that something in your life needs to change.

And sometimes it’s simply this: You have not been listened to in a very long time.

IFS gives us a way to turn inward with compassion rather than criticism. To meet the tired part not as the obstacle to your life, but as the doorway back into it.

What becomes possible when we listen

When you sit with a tired part - not to fix it, but to understand it - you often discover:

• clarity where there was confusion

• softer rhythms replacing the frantic ones

• energy that returns naturally once the burden is acknowledged

• creativity resurging without force

• decisions coming from a place of self-leadership rather than survival mode

Tiredness becomes less of a wall and more of a guide.

A messenger.

A boundary.

A truth.

A request.

And the more you respond with care, the more your system learns that it doesn’t have to scream to be heard.

If you’re reading this and thinking, “It’s me - I feel this.”

You’re not alone, and you’re not failing. You’re showing signs of a nervous system that wants - and deserves - gentler contact.

If you’d like support in meeting your inner world with more understanding, I offer 1:1 IFS sliding-scale sessions where we explore these tired, overworked parts together and help them finally lay something down.

You don’t have to carry it all by yourself anymore. Not every part was meant to do this alone.

If you'd like to book in or find out more, you can do that here.