The body sends signals
Picture someone who is simply healthy. There's no special discipline, no heroic act of willpower in the morning. They open their eyes, lie there for a moment, then get up — and the day begins on its own, without a fight. This isn't a rare gift given to the chosen few. This is simply how the body works when nothing in it is broken.
Now picture a different scene: the alarm rings, and the body feels like it's made of lead. The thought "I need to get up" is there, but it doesn't translate into movement. Getting up isn't a physical effort — it's some kind of inner resistance, as if the body says "no" before you've even had the chance to think "yes." This is where it's important to stop and honestly ask yourself: is this just one bad night — or is it already a recurring pattern?
Over forty years of practice, Dr. Saulitis has seen this picture thousands of times in different variations — in people with mood disorders, in people with anxiety, and in those whose lives have simply stopped fitting them. He puts it bluntly and honestly:
"A person falls ill first — there are different kinds of illness — and doesn't even realize they're sick. A bad mood, not wanting to get out of bed — these are manifestations of something broken in the body."
The key word here is "doesn't realize." A person doesn't wake up one morning thinking, "something's wrong with my health." They wake up thinking, "I guess I'm just tired," "Mondays are Mondays," "I need to pull myself together." And that very phrase — "pull myself together" — is the trap. Because if the problem lies in the body, not in character, then no amount of willpower will fix it, just as willpower won't heal a broken leg. A leg heals in its own time, given the right conditions. The same is true of the sleep-wake system: it can be supported, but it can't simply be overpowered.
The mechanism here is actually quite simple once you strip away the medical jargon. Waking up isn't a single event but a cascade: a signal from the body's internal clock, a rise in a certain hormone that's supposed to "switch on" wakefulness, the workings of the gut, the blood vessels, the nervous system — all of this has to kick into motion almost simultaneously. If even one link in this chain is faltering — because of chronic stress, disrupted sleep, emotional strain, or because the body has been running on autopilot for months without recovering — the whole chain starts to stall. From the outside, this looks deceptively simple: "it's hard to get up." But inside, an entire system is sending out an SOS in the only way it has available.
Here's an example familiar to many: someone goes through a difficult period — a divorce, job loss, a drawn-out conflict, a loved one's illness. At first they hold it together, "running on willpower." But weeks pass, and mornings become harder and harder to face, even though there's technically no reason left to be exhausted — the situation has long been resolved. This is exactly that signal: the body hasn't "forgotten" what it went through. It's still processing the aftermath, and morning is the most honest time of day, when this becomes hardest to hide.
A practical step for today: for a few days, honestly note down (you can even jot it in a few words) not just "it's hard to get up," but WHAT exactly feels hard — heaviness in the body, lack of desire, anxiety at the thought of the day ahead, physical pain. This isn't a diagnosis — it's a first step toward telling ordinary tiredness apart from a signal that deserves attention.