Learning to rest without earning it
If you can only sit down once everything is done, you will never sit down. On rest as a right, not a reward.
5 min read
Many of us learned early that rest comes after. After the homework, after the chores, after everyone else is settled. It is a reasonable rule for a nine-year-old, and a quietly ruinous one for an adult whose list never ends.
The rule underneath
Listen for the sentence that arrives when you try to stop. I have not done enough. Other people have it harder. I will relax when this is finished. These are not facts about the world. They are old instructions, and they can be examined like any others.
Practise on purpose
Choose ten minutes a day to do nothing useful, and notice what comes up. Guilt usually arrives first, then restlessness, and then, if you stay, something softer. You are not being lazy. You are teaching your body that it is allowed to exist without producing anything.
Rest is not the prize at the end of a worthy life. It is one of the things a life is made of.
A note on this writing
The journal is general information, not medical advice. If you are in crisis, call or text 988 in the US, or go to your nearest emergency room.
Keep reading
More from the journal.
New pieces every few weeks, written by the people you would meet in the room.
Anxiety
6 min read
The 3 a.m. mind, and what to do with it
Why everything feels unsolvable in the small hours, and a kinder plan than lying there arguing with yourself.
Grief
7 min read
Grief does not move in stages
The five stages were never meant to be a staircase. A truer picture of what mourning is actually like.
Relationships
5 min read
Same fight, different day
Why couples have one argument in a hundred costumes, and how to step out of it mid-sentence.