Why Rest Feels So Hard
(Even When You’re Exhausted)
If rest feels uncomfortable, guilty, or oddly anxiety-provoking, there’s a good chance you’ve wondered what’s wrong with you.
You’re exhausted. You know you need rest. And yet when you finally slow down, your mind races, your body feels keyed up, or a quiet voice starts listing everything you “should” be doing instead.
That doesn’t mean you’re bad at resting.
It means your nervous system learned something very specific about safety, usefulness, and worth.
And it learned it well.
When Rest Doesn’t Feel Restful
Many people assume rest should feel obvious—like relief. But for a lot of burned-out women, rest feels anything but calming.
It can show up as:
Guilt the moment you sit down
Anxiety when there’s “nothing productive” happening
The urge to distract instead of truly rest
A sense that you need to earn rest before you’re allowed to stop
For years, my own “rest” often looked like collapsing. I’d land on the sofa with my phone, scrolling endlessly, or binge-watching something I didn’t even care about. Technically, I wasn’t working—but I wasn’t really resting either.
At the time, I didn’t name it as rest. I told myself I was just “wasting time” or “checking out.” And underneath that was guilt.
Looking back, I can see it clearly: my body needed rest, but my nervous system didn’t know how to allow it openly.
I’ve written more about when exhaustion becomes something deeper.
Collapse vs. Rest (and Why Your Nervous System Cares)
There’s an important difference between collapse and rest, especially when your nervous system has been under chronic stress.
Collapse is what happens after prolonged pushing, overriding, or holding everything together. It’s often numbing, foggy, or dissociative. The body shuts down because it has no other option left. It doesn’t reset the system—it just pauses it.
Rest, on the other hand, helps regulate a stressed nervous system.
True rest sends a different message to the body: You are safe enough to slow down.
It allows the nervous system to shift out of survival mode and begin settling—sometimes subtly, sometimes slowly.
This is also why many people say, “But I sit down and I still don’t feel rested.”
Not all activities that look like rest actually help the nervous system settle. High-stimulation scrolling or zoning out in front of something you don’t even enjoy can keep the body in a low-grade state of alert—even if you’re technically off your feet.
Gentler, lower-stakes forms of rest often feel different. Quieter. Less numbing. Sometimes even a little uncomfortable at first—because your system isn’t used to that kind of slowing yet.
Learning to Name Rest Out Loud
A few years ago, I started making a very intentional shift.
Instead of collapsing and feeling guilty afterward, I began telling myself—sometimes out loud—“I am resting now, and this is okay.”
That might sound small, but it wasn’t.
It required effort. It required reframing. And it also required boundaries.
I had to learn how to say—sometimes repeatedly—“I’m resting now.”
Not as an apology. Not as a negotiation. Just as a statement.
That meant letting my family hear it, learn it, and slowly adjust to it. They don’t always respect it perfectly. Sometimes I still have to repeat myself more than I’d like. But over time, it has helped. Naming my rest made it more real—not just for me, but for the people around me too.
I still bargain with myself sometimes.
“I’ve done this, this, and this—so now I can rest.”
The idea that rest has to be earned runs deep.
That bargaining isn’t a failure. It’s often a bridge. A way the nervous system experiments with safety before it fully trusts rest without conditions.
Rest doesn’t have to be perfect to be helpful.
Why Guilt Shows Up Around Rest
Guilt around rest usually isn’t about laziness. It’s about conditioning.
If you grew up needing to stay alert, responsible, emotionally attuned, or productive, your nervous system may have learned that slowing down meant risk. Being “on” became protective.
So when you rest, your body doesn’t immediately relax—it scans for danger.
That doesn’t mean rest isn’t working.
It means your nervous system hasn’t learned yet that rest can be safe.
Rest as a Nervous System Reset (Not a Moral Test)
Rest isn’t a reward for finishing everything.
It isn’t a moral failing when it feels hard.
And it isn’t something you have to master overnight.
Rest is one of the ways a stressed nervous system recalibrates.
It helps your body remember how to come down from constant vigilance—little by little, over time. Often with support.
I wrote about this more during the holiday season.
Therapy can help with this gently. Not by forcing rest, but by helping your nervous system relearn safety, permission, and regulation—without collapse.
If this resonated, you’re not broken.
You’re tired. And your system has been working very hard.
You don’t have to figure this out alone.
