I'm always exhausted!

I was working a very high stress job, and began to feel very tired and run down.I was moved to a less stressful posistion,I started feeling extreme fatigue, my body aces all over, my joints knees the most.  The doctor gave me trazadon to sleep and this does work, but i still feel extremely fatigued. I feel like i could colapse at any time sometimes i sweat for no reason ever in ac, and cant take to much more, i think i have burnout and this has been going on  for 8 months please need help,!!! The serious fatigue came on like a frieght train once i was starting to relax on the new job.

CAN YOU HELP!!!!!!!.

Docpotter's Reply:

From your brief description it is difficult to get a clue as to what is going on with you.  I suggest that the first step is a complete physical exam.  You sound like you have some kind of serious systemic problem.  It could be nutritional, chemical - who can tell?

I also suggest that you be very careful with prescription drugs - this is the slippery slope.  As a short-term intervention during a crisis, yes.  But, too many people get "hooked" drugs to sleep and drugs to wake up, etc becomes a lifestyle - and they are not healthy!!!!

After you rule out physical problems, then you must determine what is causing your distress.  You do this scientifically.  Get a notebook.  Each time you experience the distress, rate it from 1 - 10 in severity.  Write this plus a description AND what happened just prior to the distress - what do you think triggered it.  Write this down diligently.  After doing this for several days for a few weeks, then read your data notes, looking for patterns.  This will point to causes.  Then you can make a plan for correction.

How to do this self-observation is described in my books, Overcoming Job Burnout and Preventing Job Burnout.  You might take the test, "Am I Burning Out?" which can help you to think about lyour symptoms more specifically.

-docpotter