The Permission Deficit: Why You Feel Guilty Resting (and How to Reclaim Rest)
Spam Filter For Your Brain - Episode 203
Something that I think most of us have thought at some point or other is, " Why do I feel guilty for taking time for myself?" It's something that we might have said to our friends. It's probably something that you've heard friends say to you. And there's a very clear answer. The reason why we feel guilty for taking time for ourselves is because we are taught that our value lies in our usefulness.
We are taught that rest is a reward once we have done enough things to be able to earn it.
We are taught that our value comes from our productivity. And of course, that means if rest doesn't produce anything, it feels like we're stealing.
It feels like we're stealing from the things that we should be doing, the things that our great big to-do list that we built. It feels like we're stealing from the people who depend on us, and it feels like we're stealing from the version of ourselves that is supposed to be doing more.
And of course, if we've told ourselves there is a version of ourselves we should be doing more, then resting is gonna feel like we're not doing the one thing that gives us value.
And when most of us are so used to criticising ourselves in the first place, anything that is gonna destabilise some of the few marker points that we have as to our identity, like being overwhelmed, over-stressed, over-busy, is gonna feel quite threatening to who we are.
So this week I want to introduce a really gentle concept to you, that guilt is not necessarily a perfect factual indicator that anything has gone wrong.
The likelihood is the guilt actually comes from that feeling that you might have broken a rule. You might have done something which isn't allowed. And my question to you this week is, do you agree with that rule? Is this something that you want to be participating in? Is it something that you wanna be perpetuating?
My personal over-politicised opinion is that the patriarchy demands us to be exhausted. Capitalism is built on this stuff.
Exhausted people don't make demands. we feel guilty about how much we're doing already and we are not well-rested, we don't organise, we don't advocate, we don't take up space, we don't put ourselves in places where we are able to notice who is not in the room and to be able to support more people in marginalised identities.
I don't believe this guilt is an accident. I believe that we are taught to be able to shrink ourselves, keep ourselves busy, distracted, and the status quo can remain where it is.
Now, you might think that that is all very lofty, theoretical, How does it play into your everyday life? But we are born within these structures, and these structures uphold a lot of power and a lot of wealth, and very little of that power and wealth trickles down to us.
So I think that there are some things that we can fundamentally do to try and disrupt some of this stuff so that we can at least reclaim some of the things that we need.
Interestingly, one of the ways that I hear a lot of people trying to dismantle this concept of exhaustion is that lovely little saying That " you can't give from an empty cup". You can't sustainably offer things to other people from a place of depletion.
But the thing is that that framing still makes rest conditional on its usefulness to other people.
The more radical position, I believe, is that you're allowed to rest just simply because you exist. Not because you'll be a better friend or mother or partner or wife or employee afterwards. Resting your value and your worth on top of how much you can then give to somebody else is sort of setting yourself up for, "I'm allowed to rest now because I'm gonna be exhausted again in the future, and that'll make me a good person." It's brain-breaking how we trick ourselves into this stuff.
So my invitation to you this week is to just look at where these voices that come into your head that tell you, you should be doing more and that rest is something that you should feel shame about, whose voice is that? Where is it coming from?
Even though it may be phrased in ways that you say to yourself because it's very familiar, where did that story come from initially? And fundamentally, is it something that you agree with? I find it really useful to get some of these thoughts down, especially about things like we have about rest. Find a piece of paper, write down, do a whole load of free writing. Don't edit it. Just all of the things that come to your head. Like, if I were to say, " Go and have a nap now," what are the thoughts that would come up for you? Fill that piece of paper with all of your thoughts, and you can begin to unravel some of these stories that are going on in the background that are gonna be influencing all of the steps that you take from here on in.
I know it sounds like a wild, wild notion, but you don't actually have to feel guilty about resting. You could just have a nap if you wanted to.
That is my invitation to you this week. Nap more, rest more, and work out who's making probably an awful lot of money off you being exhausted the whole time.
I hope that that has been useful and restful, and I will speak to you next week
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