The Two Kind of Exhaustion No One Admits To.
The Emma Guns Show
Emma Gunavardhana
4.8 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 4 December 2025
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Let's talk about the different kinds of exhaustion, from the emotional and mental fatigue that comes from life's sudden curve balls to the physical strain that can flatten your energy reserves even when everything else feels pretty steady.
For me, 2024, brought a sudden, sink or swim situation that left me emotionally depleted and mentally drained. I managed to appear, in fact I wanted to appear 'fine' to the outside world and somehow managed just that. Recently though, a short virus flipped everything on its head. My mind was clear and calm but my body was limp.
In this episode, I explore:
- why exhaustion is more than just being 'tired'
- the difference between surviving something heavy and recovering from something physical.
- how the body and mind take turns 'carrying us' through.
- why different forms of tired ask for different kinds of rest.
- what both types of tiredness taught me about listening to myself sooner.
Let's face it, we've all been there and it can be rough, but we're all human and we all have limits.
If you're going through your own version of tired right now, I hope this episode helps you feel a little more understood, or at least a little less alone.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, hi and welcome to another episode of The Emma Gunn Show, and this is not me trying to be sexy. I am on the out of a virus and my voice is doing some strange and peculiar things it's very |
| 0:25.1 | Phoebe buffet when she, remember when there was that episode of friends where she had a cold |
| 0:29.3 | and so she sang anyway. I'm also delirious apparently, no I'm not. I'm just coming out of a virus |
| 0:37.4 | and I still feel a little bit wibbly wobbly, but I realized I |
| 0:40.1 | haven't spoken to you for nearly two weeks, which is the longest I haven't, which is the longest I've |
| 0:46.2 | ever gone without publishing a podcast and it's felt very strange and very bizarre. And so I wanted to do a little episode, a fairly short one, |
| 0:57.2 | because also I know that we're all quite time poor at the moment. Christmas is hurtling towards us. |
| 1:01.9 | This was supposed to be my busiest work social calendar, probably of the year. Last night I was |
| 1:09.3 | supposed to be at an award ceremony for cosmetic executive |
| 1:12.3 | women. Tonight I'm supposed to be at a cocktail party for the new launch of Enushka's bespoke |
| 1:20.1 | boutique and then also a Christmas drinks with a brilliant agency called Brandstand. |
| 1:25.4 | And then tomorrow evening I was supposed to be at a dinner with |
| 1:27.8 | wonder skin but I'm going to stay away because I don't want to potentially pass on this |
| 1:33.7 | horrible bug to anybody else even though I am feeling better and on Friday as also I've got |
| 1:40.0 | meetings in the daytime and work things I've got to do but then on Friday I was going to meet |
| 1:43.9 | up with the people I went to California with a few weeks ago but I think I'm going to have to just |
| 1:48.9 | except anyway I'm now just using this as a therapy session what I wanted to talk about is the |
| 1:55.4 | types of tiredness because I have been lying here in my in my home thinking about tiredness and the differences in the types of |
| 2:06.5 | tiredness we can experience because you know sometimes you think you understand what tired means |
| 2:11.9 | and then life hands you a completely different sort of flavour of exhaustion. And I should say here that exhaustion |
| 2:20.1 | is a word we all casually throw around like, I'm exhausted, I'm tired, I'm done. But if you look at |
| 2:25.8 | the actual definition, exhaustion is a state of extreme mental or physical fatigue. It's not just a |
... |
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