Mental fatigue

“ The college student who is "too dead tired" to stay up studying trigonometry will, though in the same condition, stay up studying football strategy, rehearsing for a varsity show, or getting out the next morning's edition of his college paper. "If each man did the mental work for which he was fit, and which he enjoyed, men would work willingly much longer than they now Page 79 do." [1*] The effects of mental fatigue are, when analyzed, due chiefly to the physically injurious effects that do, but do not necessarily, accompany mental work. ”

“ You should always be engaged in some work that affords considerable exercise to the mind—some book over the sentences of which you are obliged to pause, to ponder—some kind of study that will cause the feeling of almost physical fatigue; when, however, this latter sensation comes on, you must rest; the brain is of too delicate a texture to bear the slightest over-exertion with impunity. [74] Premature decay of its powers, and accompanying bodily weakness and suffering, will inflict upon you a severe penalty for any neglect of the symptoms of mental exhaustion. ”

“ So far from the mind being weakened by total rest, or the energies diminished, both wake after a time fully recovered, and repossessed of the old readiness to exert themselves to fatigue. 'I am tired,' says the cured man to himself, 'of doing nothing'—that is, he has recovered the power to do things easily, which is the mark of mental health. ”

“ Why this mental method of curing physical ailments is better than yielding to the feeling of tired, and taking a respite from labor, is because it is the science of being, that Spirit should control matter; action or sensation belongs not to matter, independent of mind, and when you conquer through mind, the next occasion for fatigue will find you less apt to feel it, and you will not suffer from fatigue as you did before; the belief that body has a sense of fatigue independent of what mind says, is error, that the opposite Truth of being will destroy. ”

“ Perhaps physical fatigue lets down the mental and moral tension and makes the conflict too strong to be controlled. Perhaps an external problem presses and arouses the old habit of fleeing from disagreeable reality. Any or all these factors may cooperate, but not one of them is anything more than a last straw on an overburdened back. No calamity, deprivation, fatigue, or emotion has been able to bring about a neurosis unless the ground was prepared for it by the earlier reactions of childhood. ”

“ We have every reason to think that fatigue is everywhere and always one and the same state, that mental and muscular fatigue, for instance, are identical; if we are mentally fatigued, we get rest neither by a change of mental work nor by physical exertion. ”

“ The connection of thought is readily broken, and is hard to get at again. There may have been very little mental work, but somehow the fatigue of the general physical system is reflected through our central nervous system on the mind as well as the body. ”

“ The study of the conditions of mental work seems to reveal, in brief, that the conditions of fatigue are essentially physical in character. Given adequate physical conditions, in particular guarding against eye-strain, over-excitement (which means distraction from the work in hand) , and loss of sleep, mental work is itself peculiarly unaffected by fatigue conditions. ”

“ Fatigue of mind brings about lack of concentration, an inattention; and this brings about an inefficiency that worries the patient beyond words as portending a mental breakdown. Fatigue of purpose brings a listlessness of effort, a shirking of the strenuous, the more distressing because the victim is often enough an idealist with over-lofty purposes. Fatigue of mood is marked by depression of a mild kind, a liability to worry, an unenthusiasm for those one loves or for the things formerly held dearest. ”

“ Unusual tiredness, or some special exertion of the muscles, may produce a sense of fatigue readily exaggerated by attention to it, into severe pain. This condition is not a voluntary simulation, but is due to lack of diversion and a certain inborn tendency in these people to pay attention to anything that is the matter with them. Very seldom does the physical condition need much treatment, though nearly always something can be done for it with advantage, but the mental state needs alteration and, above all, the patient needs to be diverted from over-concentration of mind. ”

“ A sense of fatigue is unknown to me. I seem to be as one apart from the normal life of men, untrammelled by human necessities and unconscious even of mental effort. Perhaps the subsequent collapse is the more absolute when it comes. ”

“ We have evidently tapped a level of new energy, masked until then by the fatigue obstacle usually obeyed. There may be layer after layer of this experience. A third and fourth wind may supervene. Mental activity shows the phenomenon as well as physical, and in exceptional cases we may find, beyond the very extremity of fatigue distress, amounts of ease and power that we never dreamed ourselves to own—sources of strength habitually not taxed at all, because habitually we never push through the obstruction, never pass those early critical points. ”

“ It is often thought that the best means of recuperating after a day's hard mental labor is through the performance of physical exercise. A temporary change of occupation may, indeed, be of great benefit, by relieving an exhausted organ and an exhausted focus of attention. But physiology tells us that a tired brain means a tired body, and that with the brain fagged there is nothing culpable in a desire for not only mental but physical rest.
But there is another aspect of personal fatigue which we can not neglect. Our sensations become our servants or our masters, according as we will. ”

“ I suppose some mental scientists would say that I forget my fatigue because I focus my attention and interest on something else, which may be true to a certain extent, but not wholly, because it does not explain the sudden clear vision and physical freedom of which I immediately become conscious. ”

“ It is not, however, necessary to believe that fatigue, in the ordinary sense of the word, whether physical or mental, is the invariable accompaniment of paramnesia. If it is the presence of a condition resembling that of sleep or the hypnagogic state which predisposes to the experience, that condition may be produced by other circumstances. Distraction, excited hyperaesthesia simulating increased power, and various chronic psychic states due to a highly-strung or over-strained nervous system may all tend in the same direction, even though no sense of exhaustion is felt. ”

“ Because of the prominent place occupied by fatigue in thus being responsible for our diminished output, we shall briefly consider its place in study. Everyone who has studied will agree that fatigue is an almost invariable attendant of continuous mental exertion. We shall lay down the proposition at the start, however, that the awareness of fatigue is not the same as the objective fatigue in the organs of the body. Fatigue should be regarded as a twofold thing—a state of mind, designated its subjective aspect, and a condition of various parts of the body, designated its objective aspect. ”

“ The fatigue, pains and aches, changes in mood and emotion are born of this reaction, except in those cases where they arise from definite bodily disease, and even here a vicious circle is established. The weakness and fatigue state, the consciousness of impaired power brought about by sickness, are reacted to in a neurasthenic manner. It is not often enough realized by physicians that a physical defect or a physical injury may be reacted to so as to bring about nervous and mental symptoms; may cause the emotions of fear, hopeless anger, and sorrow; may cause an agony of doubt. ”

“ Though fatigue is thus so much like an emotion that it fits under our definition, it is not called an emotion, but a sensation or complex of sensations. After hard muscular work, the state of the muscles makes itself felt by "fatigue sensations", and the sum total of these, coming from many different muscles, makes up the complex sensation of fatigue. After prolonged mental work, there may be fatigue sensations from the eyes and perhaps from the neck, which is often fixed rigidly during strenuous mental activity ”

“ If fatigue were nothing more than the natural and logical outcome of sound and healthy exercise of mind and body, the question would be simple enough, and we could take it offhand as one of nature’s danger signals, enjoining rest. For it is one of the primary postu{274}lates that exertion must be succeeded by rest, and thus fatigue would be only the instinctive demand of the tired organs. But it will occur at once to most readers that the feeling of fatigue, anyhow, is in no way proportionate to the amount of exertion, bodily or mental, that has been undergone ”

“ Such failures of the nervous system are usually the result of overwork of some kind; it is simply tired out, and insists upon rest. The fatigue may be direct, from overeating or improper food, or it may come from general exhaustion from dissipation, worry or mental or physical overexertion. ”

“ Sitting still, making efforts to apply their minds to lessons for more than a short time, accentuates the tendency by nerve fatigue. In reaction against fatigue the mind falls into a vacant state and that is the best condition for the growth of eccentricities and other mental troubles. If their attention is diverted from themselves, and yet fixed with the less exhausting concentration which belongs to manual work, this diversion into another channel, with its accompany bodily movement, will restore the normal balance, and the little eccentric pose will be forgotten ”

“ Still more important and conclusive is the occurrence of fear as the result of shock or long-continued strain and fatigue which lower the efficiency of the higher controlling levels of mental activity. ”

“ The fatigued [54] person remains fatigued, consequently, until the accumulations of waste matter are removed by the normal action of the lungs, skin, and kidneys.
Fatigue is caused by both mental and physical work, and when excessive, affects the nervous system most disastrously. The body can and should respond to occasional extra drafts on strength and endurance; its flexibility and power of adjusting to varying conditions may even be stimulated thereby. But even slight fatigue, if continued and especially if associated with anxiety or worry, has caused many nervous and mental breakdowns. ”

“ Fatigue produces mental depression. An accumulation of uneliminated waste darkens all our horizons; irritability of mind and soul attend physical irritability; any unhappy modification in the balance of the physical registers automatically an equally unhappy modification in the balance of the psychic. Most of us, as we come to know ourselves better, recognize marked alterations even in spiritual states which we are taught to refer to physical condition, but just as truly altered spiritual conditions produce altered physical states. ”

“ But by subtracting an hour a day from the present amount of purely intellectual fatigue, and inserting that quantum of bodily fatigue in its place, you begin an immediate change in your conditions of life. ”

“ This kind of "tire" is a chemical condition, but it is produced not by work but by an emotion. He who learns to take his fatigue philosophically, as a natural and harmless phenomenon which will soon disappear if ignored, is likely to find himself possessed of exceptional strength. We can stand almost any amount of work, provided we do not multiply it by worry. We can even stand a good deal of real anxiety provided it is not turned in on ourselves and directed toward our own health.
"Decent Hygienic Conditions." If fatigue products cannot pile up, why is extra rest ever needed? ”

“ Mental disturbance—grief, worry, excitement—produce immediate physical effect in headache, palpitations and the like. Physical exhaustion—privation, hunger and over-work—on the other hand produce mental depression and collapse. ”

“ Perhaps he happens to be tired when the conflict first gets beyond control. So he seizes the idea of fatigue to explain his illness. He develops chronic fatigue and talks proudly of overwork. In every case the symptom serves a real purpose, and is, despite its discomfort, a relief to the distressed personality.
A neurosis is a subconscious effort at adjustment. Like a physical symptom, it is Nature's way of trying to cure herself. It is an attempt to get equilibrium, but it is an awkward attempt and hardly the kind that we would choose when we see what we are doing. ”

“ It is shown, too, by some investigators [13] that fatigue produces a melancholy, depressed feeling; causes one to turn his thoughts in upon himself, and to become morbid and gloomy if this self-consciousness is long continued. ”

“ The lack of proper nutrition or circulation, the state of depressed vitality resulting from want of fresh air, exercise, or sleep, are important factors in the production of insanity and crime. Over fatigue means a weakening of the power of attention, and hence of will, a paralyzing of the highest brain centers, a lowered resistance to the more primitive instincts and passions. ”

“ Probably on account of such an influence upon the vaso-motor nerves, the blood vessels, and, consequently, the processes of nutrition, the evolution of emotions is attended with much greater fatigue than is that of thought. The fatigue that may follow a prolonged intellectual operation is, moreover, distinctly localized in the head, and exists in various degrees, from simple inability for further attention, to decided sensation of weariness, or even pain. ”