You're Not Tired, You're Disconnected (and It's Destroying You)

I woke up with no energy, no will. And when I stopped to think about it, I realized this is far more common than it should be among the Brazilian immigrants I know here in Vancouver. It’s not laziness. It’s not just work fatigue. It’s something deeper. It’s the feeling of being disconnected from yourself, from others, from God. And most people who feel it can’t name it. They blame the job, the rent, the cold, the CRS that won’t go up. But the real problem is invisible. It’s the silent disconnection, and it’s costing you more than you imagine.

It’s not exhaustion, it’s fenesin

We live in a constant state of busyness. It’s not productivity, it’s fenesin, compulsive busyness with no purpose. You wake up, check your phone before you even get out of bed. You go to work. You come back. You check your phone again on the way. You have dinner while the other person stares at their phone. You sleep. And at no real moment in the day did you actually stop to be with someone. I live this myself, even though I try to monitor it. I pick up the phone without noticing, open Instagram for the fifth time that day, close it without having seen anything useful.

To be honest, lately I’ve been questioning my decisions here in Vancouver a lot. I arrived in September 2024, I’m 7 years into the immigration process counting from my first US visa, and some days I look at my routine and ask myself if it’s right. For a long time I thought it was immigration that was wrong, that it was the cold, the CAD 1,500 rent, the job that takes forever to show up, the homesickness. Today I see that it wasn’t things going wrong, it was my connection being weak. Connection with God, with Clara, with the family that stayed in Brazil, with myself.

The blame we put in the wrong place

We are masters at putting the blame in the wrong place. We blame the job, the economy, the lack of money, the cold, the CRS, the rent, the knot in your stomach after a 10-hour shift. But the real problem is invisible. For a Brazilian immigrant in Canada, the translation is direct: we blame the CRS stuck at 580, we blame the CAD 1,500 to CAD 2,500 a month rent in Vancouver, we blame the entry-level job at CAD 20-23 an hour, we blame the cold that lasts 6 months here. And all of that is real, all of that weighs on you. But often what’s pulling the ground out from under us is one floor lower: the silent disconnection.

When you’re connected, the rent still hurts, but you have the strength to negotiate, to look for another place, to split it with someone. When you’re disconnected, the rent breaks you. The difference isn’t the number, it’s the ground beneath the number.

Why do transactional friendships hurt immigrants?

Few people like to admit this, but it’s true: a lot of the friendships we have today are actually transactional. You get close to someone because that person can give you a job lead, help you with the car, refer you to a consultant. That person gets close to you for the same reason. And almost everyone feels it, even without naming it. There’s that bad feeling of “I’m being used, I’m using, this isn’t a real friendship”.

We treat people like apps. Like Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp. You open it, see what you need, ask for what you want, close it. “That person over there is going to give me some joy or a job lead or help with my problems”, you open that person like an app, extract what’s there, and close it. Either you give a shallow like, or you delete the app altogether. This is turning us more and more into robots. Connections with family get colder, with friends they turn into an exchange of utility, and in the end we have a lot of weak connection and not one deep one.

For someone who’s an immigrant in Vancouver or Toronto, this paradox hits even harder. You join a WhatsApp group of 200 Brazilians. You go to an immigrant networking event. You swap contacts at a church meet-up. You’re there, it looks like community. But on the day you’re sick, on the day Clara needs someone to vent to, on the day the heavy homesickness hits on your dad’s birthday 11,000 km away, who shows up? Man, weak connection won’t hold you when life gets heavy. And when disconnection is the general rule, you feel it. Even surrounded by people, you feel alone.

The solution isn’t complicated, but it takes courage

That’s when I realized something: the solution isn’t complicated, but it takes courage. It’s what our grandparents called “having some shame”, the ability to recognize that you’re wrong and change direction. It’s not a new technique, it’s not a productivity hack. It’s deciding to change three things, and accepting that change is uncomfortable. The three moves that follow are all simple to describe and brutally hard to do.

1. Reconnect with God (or with your purpose)

First, you need to reconnect with God. And here I’ll be direct about where I stand: I’m a Christian, and this part of the text reflects my faith. I’m not talking about performative religion, going to church for appearances, posting a verse on Instagram, putting on a devout face with no real prayer. I’m talking about genuine prayer, the kind where it’s just you on your knees asking “why am I here? what is my purpose? what am I doing with my life?”.

And for those who don’t share my faith, translate it however you want: stopping to ask yourself your purpose, what the meaning of the routine is, what you’re actually building. It doesn’t require conversion, it requires a pause. One hour a week of honest silence, no phone, no distraction. I’m not trying to convince you of anything, I’m talking about my own life. In Luke 6:35 Jesus says something that stopped me cold the last time I read it: love even your enemies, do good, and lend expecting nothing in return. Expecting nothing in return. That’s a brutal standard.

2. Be intentional with people

Second: be intentional with people. It’s not about the time you spend with someone, it’s about the quality of that time. You can spend 4 hours with Clara watching a series and scrolling on your phone, and not have actually talked about anything. Or you can have 30 minutes with your mom on a video call, no phone next to you, really listening, and that half hour is worth more than a whole month of “I’m busy, I’ll call you later”.

Practical move: turn off the phone when you’re with someone. Not silent mode, turn it off, or leave it in another room. Listen to what the person is saying without thinking about the next point you’re going to make. Love expecting nothing in return, just like the standard in Luke 6:35. And ground this in the immigrant’s reality: that Christmas tree here in my living room in Vancouver is full of photos of people I can’t hug, my dad, my mom, siblings, friends in Brazil. Call those people, even when you’re tired. Even at the end of the day. Even when you’d rather have the couch. That’s the investment that pays off.

3. Courage to change

Third, and maybe the most important: courage to change. Change doesn’t happen overnight. Change means saying no to the insignificant so you can say yes to what matters. In practice it means waking up earlier and doing what has to be done in the first hour, before checking the phone, before opening email, before reading the news. The important thing first.

It’s going to be absurdly hard. I know because I’ve been trying this for months and I still slip. It’s hard for everyone. You’re no different. When you act with real purpose, you take your life back. Otherwise, you become a slave to yourself, to your urges, to the impulse to check the phone, to the impulse to watch one more episode. You regret it over and over. You set aside what matters, time with God, time with family, real rest, to feed something that drains you without giving anything back.

Disconnection is silent, reconnection is transformative

Back to the personal: over the last 6 months living in Vancouver, I’ve questioned my decisions a lot. Some days I look at the immigration process and think “is this right? is it worth it?”. Today I see it wasn’t because things were going wrong, it was because my connection was weak. Connection with God, with Clara, with family, with myself. When I reconnected with what matters, the CAD 1,500 rent went back to being just a number, not a sentence. The CRS of 580 went back to being a challenge, not a condemnation. Vancouver’s cold went back to being just weather, not oppression.

Immigration tests your connection in a way that a comfortable life doesn’t. There’s no default support network, no familiar routine, no familiar face at the bakery. Everything is construction work. Disconnection is silent, but reconnection is transformative. It starts today. Reconnect with God, with the people you love, with yourself. Forgive whoever needs to be forgiven, including yourself. When you do that, life has meaning again.

I got your back

Man, I know reading this is one thing and living it is another. I’m writing it and I’ll still slip on the phone two hours from now. But the difference between the person who reconnects and the person who stays disconnected isn’t the size of the step, it’s the first step. Point to the one concrete first step for this week, not the whole month’s plan: a call to someone who matters, an hour without the phone, ten minutes of silence before bed. Drop a comment below telling me what yours will be. I got your back.