Learning to Rest: A how-to guide for the depleted

Part 1: Trying on new beliefs

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of a two-week break from work. One week was a company-wide shutdown that we do each summer (a practice I wish all companies would adopt as it feels like a spacious and collective pause for the company). The other week was a vacation that I added to the shutdown – knowing it takes me a week to begin to slow down, this additional week allowed me a longer reprieve from what has been a pretty exhausting year on many fronts.

In this time of resting and slowing down, I noticed how foreign my slower pace felt as if something was wrong with me and I had to “fix something” to get back to my normal frenetic pace. I shared this concern with my husband, who simply offered that maybe there wasn’t something wrong with me, rather it was just my body shifting into a different gear – ?one that was slower, with more of spaciousness and no agenda. And right away, like the many beautiful truth bombs he drops on me in my times of struggle, I knew he was right…

As a recovering over-achieving, get s#%$ done people pleaser, a slower pace feels quite foreign to me given the many things I manage at work and home. When I am not in a hyper-productive state, it feels like I am doing a disservice to myself, my work, my life, and letting everyone down. And yet, after years of battling thyroid illness and adrenal fatigue, I know that this hyper-productive and high-alert state is depleting me and burning me out – a lesson I seem to need to learn every year when the demands of life and work are high.

Whenever I feel the symptoms of depletion and fatigue creeping in, I know the drill: get my lab work done and wait for the results – results that I know will confirm that my system is depleted, but having the data helps me see to what extent. The funny thing is when I see this confirmation in my lab results, my initial reaction is anger because I haven’t hacked the whole energy management thing yet and have, in a sense, “relapsed.” But I also get angry because the demands and responsibilities that come with my life are non-negotiable – and even when I get down to the most essential things like family, work, and my marriage, and focus solely on those, it’s still a lot of things I am responsible for!

But here’s the thing: what I have come to learn recently, in my latest bout of adrenal fatigue over the last two months, is that it’s not so much the number of things I am holding in my life, rather it’s HOW I am holding the things in my life.

To be honest, I hold most things in my life, big and small, with a sense of urgency and death grip, when in fact most things can be held more lightly, or dare I say, put down for a moment, so I don’t have to carry them 24/7. If I am to truly learn how to rest and embed this simple yet oh-so-hard practice into my very full life, I need to start by adopting a new set of beliefs that will ultimately open up new actions to take in order to help me learn to rest.

Here are some new beliefs I have been trying on over the last month that may seem super simple, but in truth, they have been hard for me to realize and embrace fully – and as I keep learning, sometimes it’s the simplest things that are the hardest to do.

1. Belief #1: Resting is my right. I so often feel the need to justify sitting down or God-forbid lie down for a few minutes. I will find all sort of reasons to keep me active and fully engaged in everything around me, so I am in a constant state of productive motion. But when I tell myself that I have a right to rest, I feel like my wiser self takes over and gives me permission to do what my body is begging me to do: sit down, take a break, kick my feet up, and chill out for a minute. When I listen to that voice, instead of the frenetic “can’t stop, won’t stop” voice, my nervous system calms down, and I actually feel worthy of resting, knowing that I am enough, as is, and can take a pause.
2. Belief #2: Listening is a form of resting while being fully engaged. I notice how many times I’m in meetings or conversations, and instead of fully listening, I’m making mental or written to-do lists so as to not lose an action item or forget a thought, but in the process, I’m not actually present to what is happening in the conversation. When I practice deep listening though, I notice that not only am I fully present in the conversation, my mind isn’t wearing me out trying to capture everything and bouncing all around. Furthermore, this way of deep listening helps others feel seen and heard, and ultimately, makes for a more productive discussion for all involved.
3. Belief #3: Resting is a pathway to joy. When I take time to rest, even for a few minutes, I find that I’m more present to the simple and profound joys in my life. Things like watching my kids fly a kite at the beach, laughing at our goofy dog chase butterflies, or looking at clouds with my daughter and sharing what we think they look like. I found these little moments – when I slow down enough to appreciate them – fill my heart with so much gratitude and appreciation for the simple joys that are around me every day. Joys that I often am too exhausted to experience because I’m in a constant frenetic state.
4. Belief #4: Resting is essential for my vitality: I learned in my first go-around of thyroid illness and adrenal fatigue that sleep is essential for my health and vitality. But what I didn’t understand until recently is that moments of rest during the day are also essential. It’s not enough for me to go 65 miles an hour all day, every day and then catch 7-8 hours of sleep. I need intermittent renewal throughout the day as well, even if it is a moment here or there to pause, take a breath, sit down, and close my eyes for 1 minute. By reframing daily moments of rest as essential as sleep, I am able to prioritize it in my day and be intentional about taking it.

While these beliefs are the start of my journey of learning to rest, they are coupled with some practices I have been adopting as well. So, in an article next week, I will share Part 2 of Learning to Rest, which will include some habits I have adopted to build more intentional rest into my life.?

If you have struggled with burnout and depletion and found helpful mindsets or practices for your life, please include them in the comments, as we can all benefit from supporting each other in learning to rest.