Gemma Speck

We resist actually resting because it makes us feel uncomfortable from a survival lens.

If all your life you have been taught that opportunities are fragile, that progress is really easy to lose, that you're only allowed to feel calm when you're ahead, then rest actually feels right.

more dangerous than restorative.

That's a huge psychological switch up.

It honestly feels like sometimes when you rest these days, it's like putting your bag down in a crowded place and hoping nobody's going to take it.

That's what it feels like.

Rest feels like giving somebody else an opportunity.

Maybe on a more fundamental level as well, I think it's because, again, it's about survival.

It's about survival and about the sense of not dropping the ball and

And then as we've worked harder and rested less, our lives have become emptier.

We've ignored a lot of stuff that we probably needed to address.

How we've kind of learned that being busy is a form of emotional regulation.

It stops us from having to do the uncomfortable inner work that comes with learning to be truly content with who you are and comes with learning to slow down and

It's deeply psychological here that these social changes have pushed us into such a hypervigilant stress state that we literally see rest as a threat.

And we also see it as something that's going to be really emotionally revealing, so we avoid it.

I think if this resonates with you, it's likely that you've been on this high alert for a long time and that you are filling your time with busyness to keep up a sense of functioning.

So really, again, this is all coming down to discomfort and how rest is going to allow your mind to relax enough to maybe question some of these life choices, question the system and also let the anxiety start to creep in because things get a little bit calmer.

So planning and monitoring and not taking holidays and not taking sick leave is

It gives you something to focus on, which is a lot more pleasant than thinking about bad experiences or thinking about how exhausted you are or thinking about how uncomfortable this is.

Rest removes that coping mechanism that has been building up for a while, that has been holding you together.