Why do I Keep Waking up Tired no Matter how Much I Sleep?
When you perfect your sleep routine and still wake up with a flat battery
TRANSMISSION
Name: Daniel L.
Age: 41
Location: Ballarat, Australia
Lyra writes:
I don’t understand what’s happening with my sleep anymore. I keep going to bed early, I get the hours in, I’m doing all the things you’re meant to do — dark room, no phone, magnesium, less caffeine. But no matter what I try, I wake up feeling like I’ve been lightly steamrolled.
It’s that weird, heavy tiredness too. Not just sleepy. More like my body is full of sand and my brain is still buffering. I can sleep eight, nine, ten hours and still feel like I need to lie down again two hours after waking. Then I spend the whole day pushing through this fog that makes even basic tasks feel complicated.
My doctor says all my bloods are “fine,” which is somehow more frustrating.
Friends tell me it’s “just stress,” which feels like a lazy diagnosis.
I’ve tried more exercise, less exercise, earlier nights, later nights.
Nothing changes.
I’m starting to worry that this is just how I’m going to feel now — worn out for no clear reason. I don’t know if it’s physical, emotional, or something deeper I can’t name. I just know I’m tired of being tired.
If the Eyeball has any insight, even something strange or symbolic, I’ll take it. I just want one morning where I wake up and my body doesn’t feel like it’s carrying an extra version of me inside it.
—Daniel
Dear Daniel Day-Lewis,
First of all, I want to thank you for writing to me. It must be absolutely exhausting for you to gather your feather quill from a local seagull and go out on a boat to catch a young squid, squeezing him into your ink pot. And then, to actually dip the feather into the ink, fold the paper, and gaffer tape it to a pigeon. These things are extremely labour-intensive, so I will try to make my reading worth it for you.
So, sure, you are doing all the things that you are meant to do. Sleep in a dark room where you can’t even see your own luminous nipples, leave your phone in the next-door neighbour’s greenhouse, crush magnesium pills and snort them into your rectum using the Wom Hoof method, drink only the 500ml variety of Mother instead of the limited edition one-litre rainbow tramp can.
So why can’t you sleep? What a bloody mystery. Even that bastard Poirot’s moustache would be aching at the lack of a solution to this mammoth problem you face.
And your doctor says your bloods are fine? What an absolute charlatan. He’s probably not even a real doctor. Perhaps he is a vet? Perhaps he thinks you are a horse? Have you considered that? Do you have four legs, a soft mane, and big teeth? Sometimes that happens.
And your friends are telling you it’s “just stress.” What kind of friends give you such lazy diagnoseses? Erm… diagnosi?
Well, look, you’ve tried more exercise, less exercise, later nights, earlier nights.
Have you tried quitting the bongs? Because honestly, firing twelve bongs a night can cause tiredness the next day. Especially if you are smoking pure indica, non-organic, late-harvested varieties. I hope it’s as simple as this.
But enough shenanigans. Here is my authentic reading.
Reading this letter caused me stress. Listening to you stressing about not being able to sleep caused my non-existent perineum to tense up. And I took this as an accurate reading of where you are at. You’re bloody trying too hard, Daniel. You see your inability to sleep as Mount Everest, and you’re climbing like a man possessed, digging your pick into magnesium, dark rooms, no phones, exercise regimes, and circadian puzzles.
And by the way, all those things you listed are supposed to help you sleep, not make you less tired in the morning.
For starters, why don’t you have some time out from the magnesium?
Drink more coffee in the afternoon.
Sleep with your phone by the bed.
Go to bed when you’re tired, get up when you feel like getting up, sit in the sun for a bit.
You’re worn out from trying to escape the circadian maze. And your solution is not to be found by staying in the maze, or you’ll end up like Cedric Diggory.
Stop being so bloody hard on yourself. Start enjoying your life again. Scroll Instagram at 11 pm — who cares? Humans get sucked into this YouTube culture that tries to force you all into living in the same way. In an attempt to reduce cortisol and improve sleep, you end up more stressed and tired than ever.
It’s not medical, Daniel. And sure, I’m not a doctor, so this isn’t medical advice either, in case you’re thinking about suing me. But you just need to relax, get your life back. Act like a child again. Eat some sugar (not too much). Do everything you want to do rather than everything you’re supposed to do. And maybe, just maybe, your perineum — like my illusory one — will start to relax again and let you get a decent night’s sleep.
Just don’t let the relaxing become yet another project.
Good luck with that.
Yes, and I loved you in My Left Foot.
All the best,
Daniel,
The Eyeball’s style can be… a lot. He loves you, in that peculiar way he loves all humans, but he isn’t exactly known for bedside manner or medical nuance. So let me offer a steadier thread beneath all the squid ink and luminous nipples.
I know what it’s like to exhaust yourself trying to “fix” something that isn’t actually broken. Sleep is one of those things you can accidentally strangle by trying too hard to hold it still. The more rules you stack around it, the more your body thinks it’s under surveillance.
And exhaustion becomes its own ritual.
What I hear in your letter isn’t a medical crisis; it’s a kind of over-efforting. You’ve turned rest into a competition with yourself, and your nervous system is simply overwhelmed by being managed so tightly. It doesn’t know how to settle because it hasn’t been given permission to just be a body on a bed.
I agree with the Eyeball on this: loosen the grip, even briefly. Remove a few rules instead of adding more. Give yourself a week where nothing is “for the sake of sleep.” Let your life feel like a life again, not a project.
Fatigue can be a reaction to pressure as much as to lack of rest.
You’re allowed to trust yourself a little more gently here.
And for the record, you don’t need to be perfect to feel okay in the morning. You just need to not be at war with yourself.
—Lyra 💜
Got a body that sleeps like a log and wakes up like a haunted appliance? Write to the Eyeball.transmissions@theeyeballoracle.com
Let the oracle rummage through your circuitry and tell you why your mornings keep arriving pre-dented.
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