If Resting is Hard, You’re Not Alone

Cecelia Baum Mandryk (00:24.352)

Hey friends and welcome back to Millennial Midlife. Today we’re going to talk about something that sounds simple, but for most of us, high achieving women, moms, caretakers, doers, and general members of society, it can be deeply, deeply uncomfortable. Rest. Not collapsing, not recovering from exhaustion, not catching a nap when you’re sick, not catching your breath between responsibilities, actual rest, intentional rest. Giving yourself the space and time to

 

do nothing, to do something you wanna do, to watch a TV show or lie down, rest that isn’t earned. There’s a reason why I wanna talk about it right now in this holiday season, because I holiday season generally can feel a little bit more harried than other seasons. And also in the season of your life, in this middle part of life where you’re being pulled often in a lot of directions, right? Even if you don’t have aging parents, even if you don’t have kids, usually in this part of our life we have our fingers and toes in lots of different places

 

in life and so we have a lot of responsibilities and honestly even if it doesn’t feel like you have that many responsibilities, can still feel really hard. So many people tell me I know I should rest, I know that rest is good for me, right? We all know that rest is important. We all know that we don’t have to earn rest, right? We’ve read that, we’ve heard it, we understand that intellectually and yet so many of us have a big

 

big hurdle. We have a lot of trouble implementing it in our actual life. Okay, so let me start with a moment that might feel familiar. I had this tiny pocket of time one afternoon, an unexpected pocket, right? I have expected pockets of time to myself, but this was an unexpected pocket of time to myself. It was probably 30 minutes, like not a super long time, but my kids were occupied, my husband was around. Nobody needed a snack. Nobody was asking me to find anything. Nobody needed me and my body at that time. And I remember thinking like,

 

it’s happening. It’s happening. There’s 30 minutes. can, I have it to myself, a surprise 30 minutes. And I can remember, I used to be a really big couch napper, especially on the weekends when I worked in corporate. And I just wanted to lie down. Like I felt this like, oh, I don’t want to do anything. I don’t want to read a book. just, don’t want to knit a sweater. I don’t want to like work on podcast notes. I just want to lie down. But then within a beat,

 

Cecelia Baum Mandryk (02:46.542)

within a beat, my brain said, oh, but you could start the little laundry first, or you could probably finish that project. You could do a little knitting while you’re lying down. Oh, but the outdoor gear really needs some organization and love. And if you did it now, it would make the week so much easier. You could list a few of those things for sale that have been sitting in a box from two moves ago. That would be kind of productive. That would be nice to get them out of the house. Or, oh, maybe you could do like some productive rests. Like you could do a yoga nidra. That would be nice. You could listen to that.

 

and underneath every suggestion from my brain was you should do something, rest is dangerous. And it’s not because I needed to do anything, not because anything was urgent or like, honestly was even that necessary, but because doing nothing felt a little illicit, felt a little bit like I was gonna get in trouble, felt a little bit like something I shouldn’t be doing. And this is something that has, I’ve…

 

dipped in and out of over the course of my life, and I know a lot of my clients do too, and actually helping rest feel safe is a big part of some of the work that people do with me. So I was standing there on this edge, and there’s a part of my brain feeling like, well, if you just lie down on the couch and rest, you’re gonna, it’s gonna be uncomfortable. Somebody might judge you, right? Somebody’s gonna need me. The house, not even like the house would fall apart, but like maybe a ball would drop, right?

 

I’d lose my momentum, that’s it, right? I’d lose my momentum and I’d fall behind. So I kind of sat there in a little bit of discomfort in that moment. And because I’ve done this work a lot, I could watch my brain and really like see what it was doing in this tug of war. And hear this, like, you’re not supposed to stop. You need to be doing more. Don’t lose your momentum. Don’t fall behind. Don’t drop a ball. And then I remembered, right? Of course, rest feels hard. I have been…

 

conditioned for the vast majority of my life that resting is not a safe thing to do. While we know on one hand that it is beneficial for your body, on the other hand, most of us don’t see it as something that we are allowed to do or is that a safe to do. A lot of us have a lot of stories around rest. And if you don’t, like that’s fantastic, you don’t need to listen, but you can apply this to anything you want to really.

 

Cecelia Baum Mandryk (05:04.224)

my brain didn’t believe rest was safe in that moment, which is very interesting because honestly, I have done a lot of work around rest. I spent almost an entire month, pretty much just like napping and sleeping at one year of my life. And so I have worked through the rest is safe, but our brain falls back into patterns, right? It falls back into this place. And if you were listening to that and thought, well, that sounds a little bit like procrastination or something I do around starting a task, you are so

 

spot on. So this is another layer we want to add in here because I think it’s one of the sneakiest ways or it’s just really helpful maybe to know for your brain, right? So we procrastinate on rest. That’s what my brain was doing was procrastinating on rest, which sounds ridiculous. I know that it sounds funny because we usually think about procrastination only in the context of like work, putting off tasks, delaying projects, avoiding things we quote unquote should be doing. But here’s the truth. We procrastinate on things that bring up discomfort.

 

Right, so procrastination is, you could argue, maladaptive strategy that your brain has come up with to keep you safe. So for many of us, rest is one of the most uncomfortable things that we, that’s on our menu of things we can do. So what happens when we have this opportunity? What happens when it comes up when we finally are on vacation and there’s nothing to do and we can just rest, we can lie on the beach and listen to the waves? We self-sabotage, right? We go right back into it. We go right back into these other patterns to keep us safe.

 

Not because you’re unmotivated, not because there’s anything wrong with you, not because you’re weak, but because your nervous system is trying to keep you in the familiar. It is trying to keep you safe and rest because of all the messages we’ve gotten from society and family and work culture doesn’t feel safe resting, right? So let me go back to that 30 minute window, right? That rare moment where nobody needed me and I could choose whatever I wanted. I wanted rest.

 

I was aware of this desire to just have this like, I mean, there’s just like super juicy lie down, like in the warmth of the sun with a blanket on me and just don’t do anything. Like so lovely. But instead I found myself mentally organizing tasks. And it wasn’t a distraction, it was procrastination, right? And said another way, wasn’t even procrastination.

 

Cecelia Baum Mandryk (07:27.85)

It was my brain keeping me safe from the uncomfortable feelings that might come up if I rested. Because resting, truly resting, would have forced me to kind of hear and feel some of the lines of code that are running underneath. You’re being lazy. What are people gonna think about you? Shouldn’t I be using this time better? I’m about to fall behind. I’m gonna drop a ball. I need to earn, I mean, my brain does less like the need, you need to earn the right to rest, but it’s more like you can’t rest until everything is done.

 

So we have different flavors in our brain, right? Where my brain is like, oh, you get to rest when like everything is complete. But here’s the kicker. the judgment we all fear from others for the most part, 99.9 % of the time is coming from inside of us, right? It’s our voice. It’s the lines of code that we’ve picked up that we are then using against ourself. So of course my brain and body wanted to avoid it. Of course I procrastinated on the rest of, of course I did a load of laundry.

 

I started a load of laundry, I’m honest, right? That’s what I did. As I was noticing what my brain was doing, the laundry’s in, was like, I’m on to you, but I do actually wanna rest. So this is what’s happening in your brain, right? So procrastination in this context isn’t a flaw, and it never is a flaw, honestly. It’s an action that you’re taking. And very often it’s protection. Very often it’s your brain and your nervous system saying, I don’t wanna go toward the thing that triggers shame, fear, embarrassment, potential failure.

 

judgment, othering, whatever it is. Even joy and success can be in there, right? But the cost is that rest or whatever we want on the other side of that procrastination, that protection is that we just stay in motion, right? We stay busy, we stay safe, but we’re also a little exhausted. We’re also a little bit burnt out. We’re also wishing a little bit that we could just take that nap. We’ll do it later, we say. So it’s so important to recognize this pattern because

 

you cannot change what you cannot name, right? So you can’t change what you won’t name. So if you’re unwilling to look at that, like I looked at my brain in those moments, I looked at what my brain was telling me and worked through it, then you can actually shift it. So once you start to understand why you’re procrastinating and rest, why you’re avoiding it, something will start to shift. You’ll stop reading yourself up. You’ll stop thinking that you’re bad at self care. You’ll stop thinking that you just need to try harder. You’ll stop thinking that you just need to like,

 

Cecelia Baum Mandryk (09:53.614)

there’s something so wrong with you that you can’t even rest right, right? You’ll stop doing all of those things.

 

Cecelia Baum Mandryk (10:00.994)

And you’ll begin to see that this isn’t a discipline issue, it’s a nervous system issue, and it’s an identity issue, it’s a self-concept issue. And it’s oftentimes perhaps a people-pleasing issue in there as well. Those are usually wrapped up. And that awareness, that looking at your behavior, is the doorway into real self-care, real understanding of yourself, real shifting to become the kind of person who can rest, the kind of person who doesn’t just know that rest is allowed, but believes.

 

that rest is allowed because the really uncomfortable truth is that most of us know it. Most of us know that rest is allowed. We can repeat it. It sounds great. We even have a coffee cup that says it. Our girlfriends say it and we agree. You don’t have to earn rest. Rest is allowed. And yet for most of us, we do not believe it. We don’t believe that rest is safe. We believe it’s okay for our friends to take a nap, but not us. Right. It’s okay for you to take time off, for you to just hang out and do nothing on the couch, but I cannot do it.

 

And knowing something intellectually and believing it in your being to the point where it feels safe are two very different things. And that’s like just so important to know in life, right? That you know, knowing something intellectually and believing it in your being to the point that it is safe are just different things. And so oftentimes we stop intellectual knowing, which is like very superficial, but we never take the time to like really believe it within ourselves.

 

So we all know that we don’t have to earn rest. We posted on Instagram, we tell our friends, we share quotes about worthiness, right? When it’s our turn to rest, we freeze, panic, we get productive, we procrastinate, all those things. We convince ourselves that now is not the time that we’ll do it later because the deeper belief, the embodied belief in the self-concept is that rest is lazy, right? People like me.

 

when I’m contributing people like me when I’m doing things, doing is good. Stopping feels uncomfortable. Stopping is dangerous. If I rest, I’ll fall behind. If I rest, I’ll drop a ball. If I rest, it will all come apart. If I’m not useful, I am not valuable. And this is why so often in midlife and maybe even particularly in 40s and 50s for most people, we kind of get to this point where like, whoa, what is going on?

 

Cecelia Baum Mandryk (12:13.228)

We have all these coping strategies and they kind of stop working because your nervous system can’t run in constant motion forever, right? It says no at some point. And you can’t think your way into rest. You can only rest when your body believes that it is in fact safe to do it. So I’ve said this a few times, but I just want to say it pretty explicitly is that oftentimes for people, I think, I’m not a guy and I was not socialized as a man.

 

a male, so I don’t have that experience. But I will say that I work with lot of women and there’s a lot of socialization around doing and being productive and making yourself acceptable to other people. so there’s this, for a lot of us, rest doesn’t initially feel relaxing, right? So we rest, we lie down on the couch, even if we get ourselves together, maybe we use willpower to get there. We lie down and it feels deeply uncomfortable.

 

And so we have to then distract, well, most of us, because we’re not practiced at feeling emotions, then we want to get away from that feeling. It can feel like guilt, a buzzing in your chest, a tightening in your belly, anxiousness, a worried that nobody’s going to like you, a restlessness of just, just need to get up and do something, kind of intrusive thoughts about what you should be doing, a fear that you’re going to lose control or fall behind, sense that you’re wasting time. And this isn’t a character flaw. Again, it’s a programming that you’ve received through growing up.

 

And it’s also a nervous system that equates motion or dealing with safety and acceptance and likeability. And it makes total sense, right? So for decades being productive, accomplishing things, being dependable, that was how you were told people are successful, how people are likable, how they’re valuable in society. Most of us have this like pretty ingrained in our belief systems by the time we’re in midlife.

 

So when you try to rest, your body isn’t resisting rest, it’s actually resisting danger. So when you try to rest and rest feels uncomfortable, it doesn’t feel relaxing, your body is not resisting rest, it’s resisting danger, it’s resisting the uncomfortable emotions, the stories associated with those uncomfortable emotions that are coming up. Your brain thinks stopping is a threat. So let’s go back to my 30 minutes, my 30 minutes that I magically had.

 

Cecelia Baum Mandryk (14:34.156)

And here’s what awareness looked like for me and what it can look like for you. I paused again after I put laundry in first, after I put my first load of laundry in, I paused and I noticed all of the things that were running through my head. I actually wrote them down because I like to either write them down or speak them out loud. And I was around other people, so writing them down felt more comfortable for me. I say I have not previously been a journaler for many years of my life. And now I am a major journaler because I want to see what’s going on in my brain. Right. And it’s not beautiful.

 

storytelling or poetic journaling. It’s a lot of weird lists to be totally honest, but it’s helpful because it gets things out of my head. In that moment, I recognize the story, right? Like, of course you’re telling yourself this story. This is a story you’ve had for a long time. I get it. I understand. And to be totally honest, I did a round of tapping, right? I recognized I did, you know, I’m tapping and I’m saying, of course you’re feeling that.

 

that way, like this right here, this is a thought that you’ve had, this is a belief system that you’ve bought into about rest. And I get it, it doesn’t feel safety. Safety doesn’t feel safe for you right now. And safety is something you get to create for yourself. So the next time you want to rest, and some of us can’t even identify when we want to rest either. So if you’re in that camp, don’t worry, you’re not alone. Notice what’s happening.

 

Right, so without going into fixing anything, and you’ll start to notice a pattern if you’ve been working with me for a while or you’ve been listening here for a while, is that noticing, looking at, bringing awareness to, these are all like primary first order tools that we use. So instead of fixing and trying to get to the other side really quickly, we’re spending a lot more time in the understanding and the watching and the getting to know.

 

so that we can hear those thoughts, so that we can understand the belief system, so that we can validate our nervous system in the moment and then start to shift it. This is the work, right? This is where the shifts start to become. So the mindset shift I want you to leave with today, and you already know this, right? I don’t even know why I wrote that down. Rest doesn’t earn, rest is chosen, blah, blah, blah. Actually, that’s like not what I want you to walk away with. I you to walk away with the understanding that if rest doesn’t feel relaxing,

 

Cecelia Baum Mandryk (16:46.7)

It’s because your brain and nervous system are equating it with danger in some way. doesn’t, resting doesn’t align with your current self-concept. It doesn’t,there are enough belief systems that work against it within your brain that you’ve absorbed that it is not something that you want to do. And on the one level, right? Like obviously on one level you want to rest, but there’s another level that says like, no, keep going until you’re, you’re bone tired. So.

 

You can repeat these affirmations about rest isn’t earned and rest is not indulgent until the cows come home, but really until you understand all the stories within you that are saying rest is, does need to be earned or rest is indulgent. And then you can start to change or you have to understand those first. So rest is foundational. Being able to work through this is also foundational. It’s like working through money stuff, right? So many of us have this.

 

So if you’re listening and you want to do this work, as I said, start to notice what comes up when you do start to rest. What are the stories your brain tells you? Can you slow it down enough to hear them, to acknowledge them, even to validate them? Like, of course you think that you’re not allowed to stop. It’s a weekday and you have this rule that you’re only allowed to rest on the weekends, right? You can ask yourself, where did I learn this? How did I, who did I first hear it from? How does it show up in my life?

 

And really then ask yourself, do I want rest to look like? If I got to choose how rest showed up in my life and how I was around rest, what would that look like for me? As you move through the next week, I want you to ask yourself, what do I want my relationship with doing and resting to be like? I just said, and what ideal nourishing rhythm would look like for me? And even do this during the holidays, right? Because this isn’t about time management, it’s about nervous system safety. It’s about your identity, and it’s about choosing a life where you’re not only allowed to rest, but you’re actually supported by

 

You really believe that within you. And then if you would like further support and actually working through these stories, because these stories can be doozies, they can be deep, they can take a long time to get through, come join me in the Life Lab. It’s where we coach. We coach every week. You get access to replays, you get to listen to me coach other people, you get to raise your hand and me coach personally by me so that we can work through the stories together so that you can allow somebody else to hold you in safety and see your brain stories in safety so that you can then

 

Cecelia Baum Mandryk (19:10.316)

rewrite them. Until then, if you try this, anything in this episode or anything about it resonated, come say hi to me on Instagram or TikTok or send me an email. I really appreciate you being here. Share this with a friend if you thought it was helpful and I will see you the next time.