Rest
Covid got me, hard. I love life, I love people, I love my work, and I’m stuck on the couch feeling miserable. Like many people, rest is a difficult thing for me to do. I don’t buy in to hustle and grind, hyper productivity culture, but it is still hard to slow down while I ride this out. Rest is hard for me because I grew up with a strong Midwestern, Protestant work ethic. For trauma survivors, rest can feel unsafe. Avoiding rest can mean avoiding facing unwanted thoughts, feelings, and memories.
So, why rest? Rest can make you more productive, but it doesn’t have to be about productivity. Rest isn’t lazy. It isn’t a waste of time, and it isn’t selfish. Rest is about restoring ourselves and our energy. You are worthy of rest, even if you didn’t work super hard this week and even if it doesn’t make you 10x more productive next week. When we don’t rest, we can get irritable, fatigued, burnt out, less creative, and less motivated. All though there are other types of rest, here are 5 types of rest that can help restore your energy.
1. Physical Rest
Physical rest means to give your body a break, take a nap, skip a day at the gym, or allowing yourself to sit. You might need physical rest if you’re feeling sick, feeling tired, your muscles are sore, you’re stressed, and if you are noticing muscle tension. To be proactive about this, you can build physical rest in your day by doing something like sitting outside or reading a book instead of looking at a screen.
2. Mental Rest
Mental rest is to give your brain a break. Usually, when we mentally rest, we get clarity or get unblocked. If you’re struggling to focus, getting frustrated, or ruminating, this might be a sign you need a mental break. A mental break could look like taking a 10 minute break from whatever you’re working on, doing something different and coming back to the task, or even watching junk tv that you don’t have to think too much about. Building mental rest in your day could be by having regular breaks in your schedule and having some activities that don’t require intense thought.
3. Emotional Rest
Emotional rest is about caring for yourself and others. If we don’t take emotional rest, we get impatient, burnt out, and less compassionate. Taking emotional rest allows us to show up for ourselves and others in a caring way. Emotional rest might look like therapy, processing your emotions by writing in a journal, or setting boundaries with others.
4. Sensory Rest
Sensory rest is about all the incoming sensory inputs like loud noise, looking at a screen all day, or lots of smells. The sauna at my gym has lots of unpleasant smells and I find myself needing sensory rest after this. You might need sensory rest if you’re feeling annoyed or agitated. Sensory rest could look like finding a quiet place and just sitting. For me, sensory rest is going to the mountains where it is quiet.
5. Social Rest
Social rest is about having a good balance between being around people and being away from people, with yourself. Some people need more me time than others and that is okay. You might need some social rest if you’re feeling disengaged with people, annoyed, judgmental, or meeting with people out of obligation alone. Social rest pretty much looks like taking time to yourself or taking a break. To build this in, you might be more discerning about what social things you say yes to, plan breaks for yourself, or be intentional about taking space if you have to be in a group setting.