Do you get rest guilt?
I’m laying here in bed writing this post.
The last month has been a flurry of launching my website and ebook and then a 12 day holiday with our 3yr old. Not relaxing at all!
Every day just seems to be so busy and I’ve had a very stressful week and I am blooming well exhausted. So I decided to give myself the morning to do nothing. But I find it very hard to do nothing. There’s washing to be done, emails to be responded to, marketing, shopping etc etc.
But the main source of my discomfort is the fact I feel like i don’t deserve it. I SHOULD be working on my biz, exercising, tidying up. “Who am I to be resting? I won’t achieve anything laying in bed. I’ll get left behind. This successful person would never rest like this. Get up and attack the day”. There’s a whole lot of should-ing on myself going on.
Round and round it goes until I get up and start being “productive” even though I’m dragging myself around with the weight of the exhaustion I feel.
But I’ve come to realise that this is programming! We have been trained to be worker bees, stemming from the industrial revolution. We are not meant to work 40 + hrs a week and look after the family/home/socialise. When we lived in tribes there would always be downtime and a sleep in the afternoon. Life was simple and to be enjoyed with community, singing and dancing. They lived in the present moment and had a village to support them. We don’t have that in these modern days. We are nuclear families often living far away from our relatives. “Doing it all” but feeling completely frazzled.
Our nervous system comprises of the Sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight) and the Para-sympathetic nervous system (rest and digest). Every system in our body works better when we are rested and in our Para-sympathetic nervous system. Especially our gut which turns off where we are stressed as it thinks it will need to run or fight a big scary animal at any moment. If you are constantly on the go or stressed, your food doesn’t get properly digested and can cause issues with picking up gut infections. It sounds gross but the food just sits there and rots in your large intestine, which is a great food source for bad bacteria.
So today I am going to let that guilt go, honour what I need and (as soon as I finish writing this blog post) rest until I feel like my batteries are re-charged. And I give permission for you to do the same, you deserve it 😘
Bring back the duvet day!
Please note all the information above is intended as health education only, it does not treat, cure or prevent disease.
- rest - nervous system - vagus nerve - guilt - stress - sleep - slowing down - wellness - self care - duvet day - gut health - integrative health practitioner - mindfulness - me time - peace