Niklas suffers from fatigue syndrome | Aftonbladet

Sick with burnout syndrome

Of: Malin Wigen

Published: Oct 10, 2020 at 1:58 p.m.
Updated: Oct 10, 2020 at 2:34 p.m.

INVESTIGATION: We are looking for parents who have suffered from fatigue syndrome. Share your story with [email protected]

Pang, boom, stop. This is how father of two Niklas Nygren describes the day the brain gave up.

Suddenly he could no longer work. He also didn’t have the strength to be a father to the same extent as before.

– I don’t think I would have been the father I am today if I hadn’t been on sick leave.

Five years ago, Niklas Nygren, 47, stopped today. During a break from work as chief psychiatrist in Halmstad, he sat in his chair and did not get up.

– I sat for an hour and a half. I just looked out the window and couldn’t motivate myself to stand up.

A week later, after trying to work for a few days, he visited the district doctor. Niklas thought he would be on sick leave for a week or two.

– He said he needed to be on sick leave for a month, it was a disaster for me. But then it became a year and a half.

How did it end there? Neither he nor anyone else in the area saw this coming.

– And then I continue working as a psychiatrist. Every now and then no one thought it could stop, there is probably a heightened awareness of this today.

Niklas believes that there are several factors that caused him to hit the wall.

– It was mostly an unfortunate combination of wanting to do my job well, but also an inability to limit myself. In my world where I work in the health area, there is unlimited work all the time, just like in other areas, it means that you can work to death.

– So it was life in general, you try to do everything at once.

The brain could not cope with the children.

At first Niklas was so tired that he just sat in an armchair. When she regained some of her energy, she tried to do housework, but it got worse again. She didn’t even have the energy to spend time with her children, who were then eight and twelve.

“It is not easy being a father in normal cases. It’s not easier with a depleted brain“He writes in a blog post from that period.

It was simply his brain that sometimes he couldn’t cope with children, he explains. When they wanted to invent things, he had to say “no, I can’t, I can’t do this.”

– My daughter used to crochet me like a child does and she said “now dad’s brain is tired again.” But I never got tired of children. I was careful to say that it wasn’t because I didn’t want to, but because my brain was tired and drained.

To help him, he had his wife who had to take more responsibility for raising the children.

– It is a privilege to live in a relationship where there is a possibility that you can get that support. My wife had to pull a bigger load. For example, how to go and swim with them. A bathhouse is a terrible place for someone with fatigue syndrome, the sound is like a mixing rod in the brain.

Although Niklas did not have the same strength to be the father of the children, the relationship with them even improved. He was at home to a completely different degree than before. Overall, sick leave did him good, he says.

– After I went to the district doctor, he stopped. Only then was I able to pause and stop after hunting for so many years. I felt like “damn how cute, I can’t work anymore, the brain put a stop to that possibility.” Once I stopped, it was obvious how broken it was.

You don’t want to go back to your old life.

Little by little Niklas improved with the help of rehabilitation in the form of rest and slow walks.

– I learned to rest during my sick leave. Which is completely absurd. Teach me to lie on a couch facing the ceiling, something that used to unsettle me.

Today, Niklas works less than before and has learned to say no, making smaller commitments, both at work and in private. You feel much better now than you did before your sick leave.

– I consider myself a healthier person, I have a healthier attitude towards life, there are others like things that have become important. I have learned to seize the days. I don’t want to go back to the life I had before. I could not. We only have one life, what we know now.

With your experience of burnout, you think about how you should make the children not follow their previous behavior.

– I have thought about how I should transmit them to my children so that they work correctly. Today there is a grade, already in school age, young people suffer from fatigue when they are pressured by their situation. I don’t mean to say that it is not good to work hard in school and get good grades, but there must be a limit. You can’t just study instead of meeting friends, it should be good to live too.

– I don’t think I would have been the father I am today if I hadn’t been on sick leave. Children who do what they do, not what they say. It is never possible to tell a child that “it is enough” if you yourself work like an animal and hit the wall, there will be double messages.

INVESTIGATION: We are looking for parents who have suffered from fatigue syndrome. Share your story with [email protected]

Nikla’s advice for other parents suffering from fatigue

• Take it seriously

• Talk to someone, like your boss, district doctor, or a good friend

• Get help from someone outside. You yourself are bad at judging how bad the situation is.

• Challenge yourself if you want, there are online self-assessment tests for fatigue syndrome: KEDS self-assessment.

• How open with children. As with any other illness, they realize that something is wrong. Better to be honest and say that your brain has broken down, but that it will repair itself.

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Published: October 10, 2020 at 1:58 p.m.

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