‘Work needs rest and rest takes work’: fatigue specialist Vincent Deary on coping with life

Modern life can be exhausting. Psychologist, author and fatigue expert Vincent Deary says the answer is to learn how to rest

Vincent Deary, psychologist, fatigue specialist and author, has been telling me what an “anxious creature” he is. He barely slept last night. The hotel room was unfamiliar and noisy. Worse, the prospect of an interview and of meeting someone new made his arrhythmic heart race.

It’s racing now as we sit together in a London hotel. We’re here to discuss his new book, How We Break: Navigating the Wear and Tear of Living, an exploration of our varying responses to the corrosive pressures of daily life, especially work, and an assertion of the vital necessity of rest, recovery and the lost art of convalescence. The book is the second in a trilogy by Deary, a professor of psychology at Northumbria University and a clinical fatigue specialist at the Cresta Fatigue Clinic, a role from which he has just retired. The NHS clinic, which is closing later this year, is unique in the UK for taking a multi-disciplinary approach to disabling fatigue. Deary goes on to share something else with me: he dreads the intimacy of dinner parties and hates surprises, before adding that his partner of 10 years recently threw a surprise party for his 60th birthday – and he loved it. Proof, it seems, that people can change.