Rest - It’s harder than it looks!

One of the things that I've needed to do a lot of work around in order to heal my nervous system is learning how to rest. Rest is hard! Especially if you get a lot of your self worth from doing. As soon as you stop “doing” it's so easy to feel worthless or be filled with shame.

Do you have a hard time resting?

Last week I got really sick. Three days of a terrible fever, then a cough that didn't allow me to say more than a few words at a time. I know that the biggest part of healing is resting so I did my best, but it was hard!

Getting physical rest is a lot easier for me. I understand the body well enough to know that the more energy you're expending physically, the less energy your body has to focus on healing. If you over do it physically when you're sick, it just means that sickness is going to stick around longer. And thankfully I have a family who is willing and able to pick up the slack when I'm not feeling 100%.

But getting mental rest is a lot harder for me. I had to consciously decide to put aside some projects I've been working on. Which was especially hard because I was just sitting here doing nothing, shouldn't I be at least a little productive? Isn't this the perfect time to get caught up on everything I haven't had time for?!

No, it's not the perfect time. The perfect time would be when I was mentally and physically most capable. While my body is fighting a virus, that's what needs to be my focus.

Work is a good thing. Being motivated is a good thing. But “doing” with the risk of negatively impacting your well being is not a good thing.

So why do we do it? Most of us know better, but we continuously push past burn out or exhaustion.

 It's important to look at the deep underlying motivations. 

For a lot of people, their drive to pursue all of the things is motivated by a need to be loved or accepted. Maybe when you were a child, the way you received or felt the most loved is when you achieved something. You got good grades, you cleaned your room, you won awards. You showed yourself to be capable, and that's when you felt the best about yourself, you felt safest when you had accomplished things.

Or maybe your caregivers weren't physically or emotionally available, and so you developed the story that you only had yourself to depend on. So “doing” turned into a need to prove to yourself that you could accomplish anything, that you didn't need anyone else, that you were okay on your own. You needed to be capable in order to survive.

We all have stories that we developed throughout our childhood. It was the way we made sense of the world. These specific actions will equal these specific outcomes: I am loved if I'm funny, or capable, or quiet, or smart. People are a certain way, so I need to be a certain way in order to receive love.

Those stories were likely a big part of our survival. We needed them in order to feel okay. But once we become an adult and we're no longer dependent on our caregivers for our survival, then often those stories or “truths” can cause us problems.

If I believe deep down that the only way I'll receive love is if I'm super capable, then slowing down becomes impossible. Doing anything less than perfect will come with immediate shame and fear.

So how do you move past that? You learn new truths.

Your brain never stops learning. Those old stories can be tough to root out, but it's definitely possible! It can speed up the process to work with a trauma informed therapist that uses modalities like EMDR to retrain the brain, but there's a lot of work you can do on your own too.

Start by just paying attention to your thoughts and actions. What are your motivations? What are your reactions? What are the thoughts that come up for you around this?

But it's important to remember: Your thoughts aren't you, your feelings aren't you. There is no reason to fear your thoughts or feelings. They are outside of you, you don't need to claim the ones that aren't benefiting you. Notice that they're there, even acknowledge them, but understand that you don't need to claim them. 

When I have shame pop up from not being productive, I just notice the feeling with a sense of curiosity. Where is that coming from? Is it appropriate for me to feel shame? Is that an emotion I want to take on and wear? Or can I just let it float by? If it's buried deep or feels slippery, can I journal about it or talk about it with a friend? Is there anything underneath it? What is it that I'm actually afraid of? Do I have any newer truths that I can sit with and reflect on that prove the opposite?

And just be patient with yourself. It took me years to get to this point. I used to be terrified of my feelings. But that only kept them buried and meant they had a lot of control over me. And that kept me stuck in behaviors that had become destructive to me. But that isn't my truth anymore. I'm not longer afraid of my thoughts or feelings.

 Change is possible. You are not stuck. Just remember that.

A book that helped me a lot in understanding my deeper motivations is How To Do The Work by Dr. Nicole LePera. I highly recommend it! 

And if you want some guided help in understanding your emotions and motivations, I've been loving these Journals from Wave of Mind. They are 6 months worth of journals developed by clinical psychologists to help you to dig deeper into your emotions and learn how to process through them. Every day you get a different prompt that will help you to rewire your brain.

You can get them HERE.

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