Is this exhaustion and worry normal?

[Gertrudejekyll23]

I don’t know what is ‘normal’ and what’s not normal in how I’m feeling.
I don’t have a bad life, I have a good life in so many ways. I just find life so incredibly hard. I enjoy things - like when I meet with friends, or having a day out with my mum etc but the majority of time I just find life such a slog through the mud.
At the moment, if I let myself have my own way, once I’ve dropped my 9 year old off at school I would just come home and go back to bed for the day.
I never let myself do that and I’m a good Mum but I’m just so exhausted in every way and nothing seems to help. I do have rheumatoid arthritis and increasingly limited use of my dominant hand which doesn’t help.
I am consumed with worry so much of the time. I feel like I’m clinging on to keeping on top of things all the time, yet I have plenty of time to get things done? I find basic tasks like emptying the dishwasher or sorting the washing so difficult to do. I do it and to anyone on the ‘outside’ they would assume I’m really capable, coping and happy but I can’t work out how so many people function seemingly so easily?
To anyone else, I’m super chatty, positive, helpful and organised but my head just doesn’t match up with that.
I just don’t know how much of this is part and parcel of being a parent? Although at 9, my child is much more independent than a toddler so I don’t think that can be it.

How old are you? Could this be peri menopause! I recognise a lot of what you’re saying…

Aw. I didnt want to to leave this message unanswered. No, this isnt normal and you deserve to feel well.

It's definately worth a visit to the GP for an MOT

I don't think its normal but you've just described me except I do get back in bed I need a lot of sleep. I just blame depression and medication side effects. But I don't actually know

I’m 39. I had full blood done about a month ago for something else and everything came back good, including blood pressure. I hadn’t considered peri menopause.

OP I'm sorry to hear about what you're going through, it sounds like you're really struggling with yourself and what day to day life requires/demands of you. Living like that without any sign of it letting up, or feeling like you know what to do about it, is demoralising and lonely.

My first thought was dysthymia, which you could Google. That might explain some of what you're experiencing, but I also wondered how long you've effectively been masking what's really going on and how you really feel. Can you trace that back to your childhood/adolescence at all, as a coping strategy? Because back then it might've helped you manage better for a while but it runs out of road in the end and becomes ineffective, but you still take refuge in it because you don't know how else to be, and that's when it starts to exhaust you.

How much effective support would you say you have? All that worrying you mentioned is likely to be some form of anxiety, which might be particularly difficult to manage if you feel overburdened. And being a parent of a child at any age, toddler or 9, comes with it's own set of challenges and responsibilities, so it's important not to underestimate how that might be feeding into your anxiety.