Permission to rest - taking care of yourself

In a world built on hustle, grind, and the endless pursuit of productivity and production, rest is a radical act.

A revolutionary act.

So many of us have been indoctrinated by the systems around us. We believe that our worth is based on our ability to get things done. And over time, we may have internalized this so deeply that slowing down, resting, or taking a break doesn’t even feel safe in our bodies anymore. Our minds refuse to stop – constant motion is familiar, even when it’s detrimental.

We might name discipline, commitment, productivity, reliability as our ‘core values’, and many clients do. Society will have taught us that those are the things that other people value in us. That we are worthy if we fulfill these obligations to family, to friends, to employers. But they rarely account for how we treat ourselves.

Now, I want to be clear, I’m not only advocating for individual self-interest. Collective care, community care, reciprocity, are incredibly important. And, we can only continue to contribute to those if we have the energy to do so. If we take equally good care of ourselves, and allow (or request) those around us to care for us as we do for them.

Consider what your relationship to rest looks like.

When are you ‘allowed’ to be soft with yourself?

When are you ‘allowed’ to take a break? Do you have to earn it?

Do you feel guilty if you rest? Does some part of you say ‘but OTHERS are doing more’? Or does it say ‘If you rest you’re lazy. You’ll get in trouble’.

Your body might be running on autopilot – if you pause, slow down for a moment to notice what’s happening, what can your body tell you? Maybe it’s desperate for a rest, but other parts of your system can’t slow down. Or maybe you can’t even feel that need for rest – the drive to keep moving (whether towards or away from something) is so strong and familiar that to slow down feels threatening in your nervous system.

Maybe you try to rest but it’s punctuated by scrolling Instagram, or numbing out with substances, or watching TV. None of these is inherently bad – but they create different states in your body and nervous system. Next time you reach for a familiar tool or pattern like this, notice whether it’s actually meeting your body/mind need (it could be!) or keeping you an arm’s length away from the true deep rest you actually need.

I also want to acknowledge the very real burden of labour on all of us trying to exist in a system that always requires more – especially of women and mothers. You may very well not have time to rest – especially if the systems or people around you have benefited off your non-stop labour and can’t or won’t contribute to sharing the load.

If this isn’t the case for you – if you know you could and should rest, but struggle internally to do so – here are a couple questions to check in on:

What beliefs do you have about rest?

What are you trying to avoid or get away from?
What are you trying to achieve? And if you achieve that, what do you believe it means about you?

Where did you learn these patterns or beliefs? Which parts are driving the behaviours?

There are so many kinds of rest: physical, emotional, mental, creative. Rest doesn’t have to just mean lying on the floor staring at the ceiling.  

Play with incorporating rest and nurturance into your life. Part of this is learning the language of your body: noticing what it needs, experimenting with how to meet those needs, and calling it in/creating it for yourself, or enlisting others to help you.