Why does rest feel so complicated?
Please tell me I’m not the only one who feels they have a strange relationship with rest. I have no qualms telling my clients to rest or resting myself when I’m physically unwell, but when I’m just vaguely tired it starts to feel complicated.
Firstly, what kind of tired am I? Have I been accidentally under-eating? Have I been doing too much on my ADHD medications? Am I just tired from lack of sleep?
Even the sleep picture is not easy. I know I’m tired when I manage to go back to sleep after my partner leaves for work at 5.20am, but this can quickly turn into a habit and I don’t know when it stops being supportive. Sometimes those extra couple of hours in bed don’t feel like they help. It feels like I should’ve just got up, taken my medication, eaten something and gone outside.
I also think our relationship with rest and fatigue is so personal based on our history. As someone who’s been autistically burnout and fatigued to the point of suicidal ideation, it makes sense my nervous system is primed to overanalyse a drop in my energy.
Some days certain tasks will increase energy (e.g. walking, cooking a nourishing meal) and other days they may decrease energy (e.g. putting in effort to cook a meal that isn’t worth the trade off or doesn’t turn out good and I can’t even eat it).
Then of course there’s the complication that we can’t just infinitely reset. Apart from needing to take care of ourselves, all of us need some sort of income to keep a roof over our heads. I never imagined that at 34 years old I would be financially dependent on my partner, but here we are. And even that’s a layered conversation. I could work more in my retail job, but it is exhausting and despite being an essential service the pay does not reflect that.
Another layer is beyond just survival: it’s capitalism and neuro-normativity telling us our worth is tied to our productivity. As much as I don’t believe that, I still feel that pressure. And like everyone else, I have my own baggage there. I had a previous partner tell me our relationship could only work if I started working 4 days a week as a nurse (something I’d never done in our relationship). And I had my own grandma write a book about my life that included all the ways I wasn’t living up to my potential - just floating around the hospital working casually as a nurse, not progressing my career (or getting married or having children).
So it’s no wonder I have these mixed feelings about rest but something has to change because I can’t keep battling these thoughts and imbalancing my life. I even told myself (and my Instagram following) that after our trip to Carnarvon Gorge I was determined to stop rushing. I am so fortunate to have a partner financially supporting me and I’d realised on that trip how calm my nervous system felt away from life’s demands (despite the demands of hiking 100kms in a week).
And for awhile it worked. I slowed down, my business income increased. But then of course I wanted to maintain that income the next month, and when I started falling behind on my daily income goal, I stopped doing things to look after myself (mostly going outside and moving my body). It’s of course no surprise that this approach not only resulted in fatigue but did not result in maintaining my business income.
I wish I had a magic answer here but I don’t. So I hope at the very least I’ve helped someone feel seen.
My renewed focus on food, nutritional supplementation and movement has been helping. I’ve been theming my blog posts this way each month (1 blog per topic) and implementing into my life.
So what this has looked like is:
setting an alarm to eat every 3 hours (on hard days this might be liquid calories such as milk or juice)
having my PHGG consistently, which seems to be supporting my bowel motions and gut bacteria
aiming for 5000 steps/day and bringing back the morning walk (this one has been less consistent as it’s new and I have been on my menstrual bleed which honestly sometimes makes me want to hide inside all day and that’s ok too)
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