"I need to rest but I don't know how": A guide to rest for the ambitious

The other day someone said to me, "I know I need to rest, but I don't think I know how!" It's a predictable outcome of our always on, always online lifestyle. When work and leisure all take place in front of a screen, it gets harder and harder to get rest that really feels restful. If you've just come out of a weekend spent rotting in bed with your phone and are facing a week ahead that feels overwhelming, it might be helpful to learn a little more about rest and how we really feel refreshed.

When You Need to Rest But Don't Know How: What Even is Rest Anyway?

What is rest? The most basic definition is that rest is a break from work. If you think about doing a workout, rest periods are the time in between sets when you're not lifting any weights. It's time for our muscles, cardiovascular and nervous systems to come back to baseline before we push and stress them again.

Rest is a time for resetting, refuelling and repairing. We have to sleep and take rest days in order to repair and build muscle after our workout. We have to stop driving the car in order to put gas in the tank, and we have to take the sweater off in order to mend the hole. If you do manage to stop driving but don't refill the tank, it's going to be hard to keep going.

This is where rest can be tricky for folks, especially people who have a hard time recognizing their own needs or taking action to meet them. We can struggle both with giving ourselves permission to rest and with knowing what do to do during that rest time in order to take care of ourselves and feel rejuventated.

Meeting Your Needs: The Core of Rest

An easy place to start identifying what needs you may want to fill during your rest time is to look at what you have to put aside while you're working. For example:

• if you have to be seated at a desk while you're working, you may have needs for movement that are unmet.

• if you work with abstract ideas all day, you may need to spend time doing things with your hands and real world objects.

• if you spend your days caring for others, you may need time to do things just for you.

• if you have to be serious and careful while working, you may need to spend time being playful, silly or expressive.

We all have a wide range of needs, including physical needs like food, water and sleep, emotional needs like expression and receiving care, relational needs like feeling understood or belonging, and many more.

When Rest Feels Out of Reach: Where Therapy Can Help

If rest feels impossible, there's probably a good reason for that. This is one of the places where therapy can help. Having someone else who can offer a different perspective or bring some curiosity to your challenges around slowing down or attending to your needs can help open up some new possibilities and understanding.

Hard work is often necessary and important to not only surviving in this world but also having a sense of agency. Work is often the one place we feel we have some security or control in the face of often bewildering realities. And it can be so, so exhausting to always have your foot on the gas and your eyes on the road.

Want to learn more or ask questions? Feel free to book a free 30 min consultation. I'd love to meet you.