Help! I tried resting but just felt guilty.
Learning when and how to rest takes practice — and trust.
Recently, a friend and I were talking through our respective exhaustion — because everyone is tired and burned out and scared these days. I shared that some days the idea of a phone call, let alone leaving the house, feels harder than expected. My friend’s response: “Yeah it’s a total catch-22 where the more Gollum-y I feel, the more Gollum-y I act.”
As it turns out, shrinking ourselves makes us feel more shrunken.
But here’s another example: on a different Saturday, I decided I would connect with my social, active, most vital self. I saw three friends — one for a long walk and another for a 5+ hour hang — then took another long walk that night. It might not come as a surprise that I woke up Sunday with a very cranky ankle that took days to heal. I had pushed past my need for rest.
Many of my messy perfectionists will recognize what my therapist and I call the bulldoze/collapse binary. And both are exhausting. Staying small, shrinking, playing it safe all deplete us because there’s nothing life-giving in those states. But bulldozing past our limits and needs also is depleting.
So when is it rest and when is it avoidance?
Let me be clear: rest is essential and not something you earn. Our society focuses on the health benefits of exercise — and movement is certainly one of the most efficient ways to regulate a nervous system — but sleep deprivation is actually dangerous to our bodies. So you probably need more rest than you give yourself.
But if you’re like me, you’re trying to create a life that includes deep rest alongside vitality, adventure, and sustainable activity. And that’s where things start to get confusing. Guilt shows up when we are avoiding important parts of our lives, but it also shows up when we rest and break the rules our culture has around constant productivity.
Imagine a Saturday where you cancel all plans, nestle into the blankets in a cozy part of your home, and make yourself tea. Maybe order takeout and watch a movie (or three). You read a book that is purely pleasure reading.
If this scenario feels farfetched from the constraints of your life, still try to imagine it, just for a minute.
Do you imagine waking up the following Sunday, recharged and ready to jump back into your responsibilities and meaningful activities?
Or do you imagine waking up feeling strangely hungover?
One experience is deep rest. The other one is collapsing and hoping you wake up a different person. Same day, wildly different consequences. And maybe what starts as needed rest — one movie, a cup of tea and a nap — turns into collapsing — cancelling all plans, couch rotting.
And guilt often comes with both experiences. You likely know the guilt of collapse: the tight, constrained feeling that you’re missing something, that you’re going to get in trouble, that you’re breaking yet another commitment to yourself.
Unfortunately, that same voice shows up when we are practicing something new. When you choose rest after a lifetime of white knuckling and effort and showing up for everyone else, you will likely have that old programming telling you that you’re doing something wrong.
So on this mythical Saturday morning, you can’t know how you’ll feel come Sunday — recharged or depleted — and the guilt showing up either way makes it hard to tell the difference too. So how the hell do we know what we need when we have the weight of expectations and exhaustion and worries quieting our inner voice?
The bad news: there isn’t a magical shortcut to figuring out what we need. I’m pretty sure we have to just make a choice and then take notes on how it plays out for us. Really pay attention. I haven’t figured out another way through.
It’s helpful if you already know your default direction on the bulldoze/collapse spectrum. If you know that collapse is your go-to, finding active ways to rest (slow walks, quiet moments making art that no one will see, talking to someone) might challenge you in the right way. If your natural inclination is to push through, your challenge might be finding ways to slow down — yes, it will feel uncomfortable.
But if you’re like me, you might find your default is to swing between the two. I find it helpful to ask myself: is this sustainable to do most days or most weeks?
The work starts by shifting away from our unworkable default.
And then we just have to do the damn thing — take the day off and couch rot, go to bed early, do a gentle walk instead of a run — and see how it feels in your body, in your chest.
Collapse feels like constriction to me. It feels tight and pressured and its own kind of exhaustion. It lives in my chest and throat. But rest? That feels like answering a call I’ve been putting off for too long. Even when there’s guilt, there’s also bone-deep relief, a sense of rightness. It feels open, a little optimistic. It feels like trust.
This week, I had a meaningful conversation with a friend that brought us closer. I went on my first run in a month, but kept my pace slower than I wanted. I went to bed early. I walked to a cafe and chatted with humans in my neighborhood even when I felt awkward. I wrote this piece and allowed some emails to stack up. I’ve learned that movement and leaving the house every day matters. I’ve learned that I need more wind down time than I usually give myself. The point isn’t perfection, it’s sustainability.
You have the same needs for connection, community, movement, nourishing food, play, sleep, and active rest. Maybe the point isn’t to Figure It All Out™, but to approach ourselves like a wild garden that has different needs in different seasons, that needs tending and attention. But also let some of those weeds live a little; let’s not optimize out the wildness.
