It’s a strange and often cruel irony: the very mechanism designed to protect us, our stress response, can become the agent of our body's destruction. I used to think of energy as something simple, a battery to be charged with sleep and food. But I’ve come to see that it’s far more complex and that its depletion is the source of so much of our suffering. Many of our most feared diseases—diabetes, hypertension, gastritis, and eventually, cancer—are not random attacks but the long-term consequences of a body ravaged by distress. If a person does not actively choose to help themselves, no one else can pull them from that downward spiral.

Today, we need to talk about energy. Not just the get-up-and-go kind, but the deeper currents that sustain us. We feel its absence profoundly, that sense of having no strength left to face the day. The primary reason for this loss isn't a failure of the body, but an inability to command the mind. It has been estimated that a person has between 50,000 and 70,000 thoughts a day. How many of those are truly productive? A handful, at best. The rest is noise, a constant mental static that drains our reserves.

Sometimes, the simplest act, like an “information detox,” can quiet this emotional overload. Do you truly need every notification, every news alert, every opinion that comes your way? By consciously filtering the information we consume, we begin to build a coherent “worldview”—an internal framework for how the world works and our place in it. Without this structure, incoming information has nowhere to land. It becomes mental garbage. It’s like reading a book and then tossing it on the floor instead of placing it on the right shelf. When you need that knowledge, you won't be able to find it. A fact found online is just junk if you don’t have a structured mind to know how to use it.

This leads to a dangerous pitfall described by the Dunning-Kruger effect. To imagine things incorrectly is worse than not knowing at all. A flawed understanding gives you a false confidence, leading you to make mistakes that can harm yourself and those around you. It is sometimes better to admit ignorance than to act on a fantasy.

The Two Tides of Energy

Our vitality flows from two sources, and both can be drained.

1. Physical Energy

This is the energy we understand most easily. It’s the potential of our physical bodies. We drain it through obvious neglect: disorganized sleep, a lack of physical activity, or an inability to manage stress. When we don't move our bodies, we don't release excess cortisol. When we don't know how to resolve stressful situations, we remain trapped in them.

Our brain has a structure called the reticular formation, which acts like a radar, constantly scanning our environment for anything important or dangerous. When it detects a significant signal, two other structures, the amygdalae, must decide on a course of action. If there's enough information, they trigger a response: we act, releasing cortisol and adrenaline, using up glucose to power our muscles and mind.

But what if there isn't enough information to make a decision? The amygdalae trigger anxiety and fear. This is the body's stress state. If it lasts for five minutes, it’s no problem. But if it lasts for a day, a month, or a year, it becomes what the pioneering researcher Hans Selye termed “distress.” This chronic state destroys the body. Elevated cortisol, glucose, and adrenaline become the norm. Blood flow is diverted from the internal organs to the muscles, ready for a fight that never comes. This leads to increased blood pressure and a cascade of diseases: diabetes, hypertension, irritable bowel syndrome, gastritis, prostatitis, and dysbacteriosis. Eventually, this chronic internal crisis can lead to oncology. Most diseases that shorten our lives are the direct result of this unresolved tension. In contrast, people who have a clear purpose—a goal they work toward every day—channel this energy. Action, the movement toward a goal, is what sustains and prolongs a healthy life.

2. Psycho-Emotional Energy

This form of energy is more subtle but just as vital. Its loss is often self-inflicted, driven by several key factors:

• Communication with Toxic People: There are individuals who seem to exist in a perpetual state of complaint and helplessness. Trying to save someone who refuses to grab your outstretched hand will only pull you into the water with them. Recognizing when to step away is not an act of cruelty, but one of self-preservation.
• Unfinished Business: Every task left undone, every decision postponed, creates a small, persistent stressor. It’s like an open loop in your mind, a signal that circles endlessly through your nerve cells because it never receives the "task complete" message. This constant internal hum drains your energy and fuels a low-grade anxiety.
• Hidden Burdens (Resentment and Grudges): We often carry past hurts and resentments like stones in our pockets. We might even forget they are there, but their weight is undeniable. They make every step of life heavier, demanding more energy just to move forward. These burdens accelerate our decline toward illness and aging. The worst part is feeling the hurt but doing nothing about it, allowing that toxic emotional circuit to drain you for the rest of your life.
• Lying: Lying to others is draining, but lying to yourself is catastrophic. This happens when we pursue goals that are not our own, when we adopt the stereotypes and desires imposed on us by society—what are known as introjections. When you are not living authentically, your subconscious knows. It will try to stop you, first with small acts of self-sabotage—losing focus, being late, forgetting things—and then with larger ones, like stumbling, breaking things, or worse. It’s the self’s desperate attempt to get you to listen to your own needs.
• Guilt and Shame: These emotions are forms of self-flagellation. Guilt is often directed toward another person, while shame is directed inward at ourselves. It’s a state of constant worry and self-recrimination, a reliable source of elevated cortisol and a common cause of neurosis.
• Fear: Fear arises when we don’t understand what is happening or what to do. The key is to challenge the fear. Ask yourself: "What is the absolute worst that could happen?" If you're terrified of an exam, the worst outcome is failing. You won't die. You’ll have to retake it. The moment you create a backup plan—"Okay, I might fail, but then I'll have two weeks to study properly for the retake"—the fear subsides. A plan of action appears, and the amygdalae calm down.
• Exaggerated Expectations: Our emotional state is often a product of reality minus our expectations. Motivation is the gap between where you are and the bright, shiny future you imagine. The worse you feel now and the better you imagine it will be, the higher your motivation. But emotion is what happens when you get there. Emotion is the difference between what you got and what you expected. Imagine you’re freezing and miserable, dreaming of a 30-degree tropical paradise. Your motivation is sky-high. You spend time and money to get there, only to find it’s a rainy 15 degrees. You might think you should be happy—it’s better than freezing—but you’re not. You’re disappointed. The math is simple: 15 (what you got) - 30 (what you expected) = -15. You feel negative because you misunderstood how the world works and weren't prepared for a reality that fell short of your fantasy.

Understanding these mechanisms is the first step. Working through them—either on your own or with the help of a professional coach or psychotherapist—is the path to reclaiming your energy. Learning to work with your emotions, to let go of guilt and resentment, and to set goals that align with who you truly are is how you find yourself, preserve your energy, and replenish the vital resources you need to live fully.

References

• Selye, H. (1976). The Stress of Life (Revised ed.). McGraw-Hill.

  This foundational book introduces the concept of stress from a physiological perspective. Hans Selye, known as the "father of stress research," explains the difference between eustress (positive stress) and distress (negative stress). He details the General Adaptation Syndrome, a three-stage process (alarm, resistance, exhaustion) describing how the body responds to chronic stress. This directly supports the article's core thesis that prolonged, unresolved stress leads to physical disease by depleting the body's adaptive energy.

• Kruger, J., & Dunning, D. (1999). Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(6), 1121–1134.

  This is the original academic paper that identified and described the Dunning-Kruger effect. The research demonstrates that individuals with low ability in a specific domain often possess a concurrent inability to recognize their own lack of skill, leading to inflated self-assessments. This publication confirms the article's point that "it is wrong and incorrect to imagine things incorrectly," as this cognitive bias gives people a dangerous and unfounded confidence in their flawed knowledge and decision-making.

• Burns, D. D. (1980). Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy. William Morrow.

  A landmark book in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), it provides a practical framework for understanding and managing psycho-emotional states. Dr. Burns outlines common "cognitive distortions"—such as all-or-nothing thinking, overgeneralization, and emotional reasoning—that directly cause negative feelings like guilt, shame, anxiety, and fear. This work validates the article's sections on psycho-emotional energy drains, showing how our internal monologue and unchallenged beliefs create the very distress that depletes our vitality. It offers methods for challenging and restructuring these thoughts.