When Resting Feels Wrong

If resting feels wrong for you, that doesn’t mean you’re bad at relaxing. It might mean that your nervous system has learnt some harsh rules about usefulness, safety, and self worth.

Transcript

Speaker 0:00

Hey there, it's Friday again and it's been a short week for a lot of you, hasn't it? Because there was another bank holiday on Monday, and hopefully you've got some well-deserved rest despite the flipping heat wave. But for a lot of folk rest doesn't feel restful at all. It feels wrong. As if there's something else you should be doing as if you have to justify the fact that you've stopped. As if rest is only acceptable, if you're exhausted enough, ill enough, or if you've somehow earned it. And I think that's really common. Common enough that people often don't even question it. They just assume that's adulthood, that's normal. You sit down for five minutes and immediately remember six things that need doing, and before you know it, that little moment of downtime has gone. Not because someone interrupted you. Because your own brain did. And this shows up in all sorts of ways. Some people can't even watch a film unless they're also folding laundry. Some can't take annual leave without checking emails. And some people feel guilty just for having a lie in. Some people only stop when their body forces them to, they burn out, get ill, and only allow themselves permission to rest then. As if rest isn't a normal human need, but some sort of emergency procedure. Now, before I go any further, there is a difference between healthy rest and plain old avoidance. Sometimes we do procrastinate, sometimes we do put things off and we call it self-care. Three hours of doomscrolling isn't always rest, though. Sometimes it is numbing. But the opposite is true as well. Constant busyness isn't always healthy productivity. Sometimes busyness is avoidance in smarter clothes. It looks better, but It can still be a way of not sitting still long enough to hear ourselves think. 'Cause when rest feels wrong, it isn't actually about rest. It's about what rest seems to mean. For some people that means laziness. For some rest is selfishness, for others, it means not being useful. And if your sense of self-worth has got tangled up with being productive or responsible or helpful, then of course rest is gonna feel uncomfortable. 'cause if being busy equals being good, then stopping starts to feel suspicious. And those rules usually come from somewhere. Sometimes childhood, sometimes praise for being the good one, the easy one, the responsible one, which sounds lovely and it is up to a point. But the flip side is that you can start to feel valuable only when you're useful. Only when you're coping, only when you're carrying on. And sometimes it's the inner critic, that voice that says You should be doing more. You don't deserve a break yet. And the annoying thing about the inner critic is that it often sounds sensible. It calls itself motivation, but actually half of the time it's anxiety. 'cause stillness lets things catch up. When we're busy, we stay distracted, but when we stop, thoughts and emotions get louder. So for some people, busyness isn't just a habit, it's a coping strategy. The nervous system learns that movement keeps difficult things at arm's length. And then when you try to rest, the brain says, oh no, this feels unsafe. Let's reorganise a drawer instead. And of course our culture doesn't help. We live in a world that worships busyness. Busy can sound like success, like importance. So we end up feeling guilty for not constantly doing and fixing things. Now, this isn't an anti effort episode. Effort matters. Discipline matters, purpose matters, but so does rest, recovery, downtime. It's not a reward for finishing life. It's part of how we live it. So if rest feels wrong for you, that doesn't mean you're bad at relaxing. It probably means your nervous system has learned some harsh rules about usefulness, safety, and self-worth. So maybe this week, just notice it. Notice the guilt, notice the twitchiness. Notice the story your mind tells you when you stop. And instead of obeying it automatically, just pause and ask, what if rest is not the problem here? What if the problem is the rule that says I'm only allowed to stop once I've proved my worth? That needs challenging and not just on a bank holiday, but every day. Right, I'll be off. I'll be back on Monday on Patreon if you'd like a bit of extra help with this sort of thing. I'll speak to you then. Bye-bye.