In November 2021, a woman’s autoimmune issues flared up. She and her doctor remain unsure whether rheumatoid arthritis or fibromyalgia was the cause, or if both conditions were acting together. The achiness and fatigue were clear signs that something was more active than usual.
She woke up tired, needed naps, and often ran out of spoons—a term many with chronic conditions know from Christine Miserandino’s essay “The Spoon Theory.” While the reason was unclear, one thing was certain: her body was demanding rest.
Knowing she needed rest did not mean she could actually do it. She would sit down to watch a show and try to multitask. She would put off a nap like a stubborn toddler, trying to push through to finish an email or move laundry. Even with a body and brain crying out for rest, it was hard to allow herself to do it. She had to reparent herself, enforcing stopping times and rest periods.
People in the Western world, especially in the United States, are programmed to be productive. They are told they should be busy with work, errands, and chores. From a young age, they are conditioned to stay busy. They hear phrases like “I’ll rest when I’m dead” and “no rest for the weary.” They are urged to “pay their dues” and “put in the work.”
Even those who avoid direct messages about staying busy often receive them indirectly by watching others. They see parents come home from work with groceries, fix dinner, and put things away. They are asked what they are doing and made to feel wrong if the answer is “nothing.” After dinner, they watch parents do more work, paid and unpaid, or knit, iron, or putter around the house.
People are told they must work hard to succeed, that nothing good comes easy, and that they should not stop when tired, only when done. Sitting down and resting is not prioritized. Those who rest often must justify it, as if they have earned the right to rest.
Rest does not only mean sleep, although sleep is a large part of it. It includes sitting comfortably doing not much of anything. It could mean listening to music, watching TV, meditating, working quietly on a jigsaw puzzle, reading a book, playing solitaire, looking out the window, or journaling.
In the fall, as she struggled with her autoimmune flare, she realized she should rest more. She was so used to overriding her body’s signals that she had not noticed how far she had pushed herself. When she checked how her mind and body truly felt, she was shocked to find they were almost buckling, on the edge of collapse.
She had waited until she was unable to do many tasks at all. A good day during that time might have involved a single load of laundry or cooking dinner. She was so fixated on staying busy that she could no longer honestly assess her need for busyness. She had lost the ability to tune into her body to find out if it needed to move, stretch, or sleep.
Had she continued to push ahead, she is certain she would have fallen ill. She was dealing with brain fog, fatigue, and joint and muscle pain, all of which made life unpleasant. It is easy to see now that she should not have let things get to that state, but fatigue, pain, and brain fog can team up so that a person cannot clearly assess much of anything. When she hit the edge of collapse and burnout, she realized serious rest was in order.
She cleared her calendar for at least three weeks. She cleared her work calendar of appointments, scheduled brief blog posts and emails, and took time off. It was torture at first. Her husband was still getting up and heading out to teach tai chi and qigong classes, modeling proper work behavior. She discovered she was incapable of just resting.
She had to relearn how to listen to her body to discover what it needed. She had to reprogram her thoughts about rest as an inherent right, not a reward for productivity. She also had to learn how to actually do it. She did all the forms of rest, from naps to puzzles to sitting quietly. It was ridiculously difficult.
She had to almost force herself to single-task, doing one task at a time. That was especially hard if the task was mechanically simple, such as watching a television show. Her inner monologue would kick up, chastising her for just sitting there and urging her to be productive. In those moments, she sometimes sat on her hands to make sure she did not pick up her phone or a crossword puzzle. She often put her phone on silent and left it in another room to reduce temptation.
Even with taking steps to single-task, she did not always manage. She did learn through reinforcement that there was nothing likely to arise in an hour or two that required her to give up resting and take immediate action. She realized she was retraining her nervous system to allow itself to relax. It was so used to being in a state of alertness that resting and allowing time off took some getting used to.
When she started to budget rest into her days, she could tell more easily what signals her body was sending. It became easier to converse with her brain and body to find out how they were feeling and what they needed. She has never felt more integrated. At any given moment, she can pause, tap into what she is feeling mentally and physically, and act on her own needs in ways that are more nurturing and caring than before.
When she realizes she is losing focus on a project, she no longer pushes through. Instead, she pauses and checks in with her brain and body. She can quickly ascertain whether she needs a simple break, to get up and walk around, to take a walk outdoors, or to stop for the day. She is learning to embrace the idea that rest is an inherent right, not something that needs to be earned. It is no longer something that occurs only once she has pushed herself to the point of collapse.
The more she leans into rest and builds it into her days, the more energy she has to accomplish all the things she wants to get done. When she adds time off or breaks during the day, she has better focus when working on a task. When she includes rest in her days, she has the energy to exercise in the morning and make a good meal for dinner.
