When Rest Feels Restless: Why Your Nervous System Resists Slowing Down
We often think of rest as something simple: sit down, take a nap, switch off. Yet, for so many high-achieving women, rest doesn’t feel simple at all. It can feel uncomfortable, even threatening. You might try to slow down, only to find yourself agitated, restless, or suddenly thinking about all the things you “should” be doing. This isn’t a failure of willpower, it’s your nervous system. Here are three important things to understand if you find yourself resisting rest:
1. The Nervous System Can Sabotage Rest
When stress becomes your norm, your body becomes wired for productivity and survival. So when you pause, your system interprets it as “unsafe.” Instead of relaxing, you feel jittery, your thoughts race, or you suddenly get the urge to clean, check emails, or plan tomorrow. Your nervous system isn’t broken, it’s doing what it thinks will keep you safe.
2. Disconnection From Your Body
When you’ve spent years in “survival mode,” achieving, doing moving onto the next thing, so much of your time is spent living in your head, disconnected from your bodies’ cues. We don’t always recognise the signals of stress until we crash, nor do we notice what rest actually feels like in our bodies. Without this awareness, you keep cycling through overwork and collapse, never quite reaching true restoration.
3. Resting With a Perfectionist Lens
Even when we do attempt rest, we can bring the same performance mindset to it: “Am I meditating properly?” “This blog says I should do these 5 things so I have to do all!” This turns rest into another task on the to-do list, rather than a personal, intuitive and embodied experience.
The shift starts here:
- Recognise that agitation in rest as feedback not failure.
- Begin to gently notice your body’s cues for stress and release.
- Approach rest as practice, not performance.
Rest isn’t something you earn. It’s something you were born worthy of! If this resonates with you and you’d like support in making rest feel safe again, I offer therapy and spaces for healing. You’re welcome to reach out and see if working together feels right for you.
When Rest Feels Restless: Why Your Nervous System Resists Slowing Down
When rest feels restless, it isn’t because you’re lazy or failing at self-care. For many Black women and women of the global majority, stress has been the baseline for so long that slowing down feels unsafe. The nervous system can push you back into overthinking or over-doing, your body can feel disconnected from its own cues, and even rest itself can turn into another task on the to-do list. True rest begins when we see this not as failure, but as feedback; an invitation to relearn what safety, softness, and enoughness feel like in our bodies.
Protected Title ≠ Protected Client: Why Regulation Alone Can’t Guarantee Safe Therapy
Protecting titles like “psychologist” or “counsellor” is often seen as a way to make therapy safer. Regulation does matters, it sets training standards and creates accountability. But a protected title doesn’t always mean a safe practitioner. Many clients still experience racism, exclusion, or harm in regulated spaces. This article explores why regulation is important, where its limits lie, and what else to look for when choosing a therapist, so safety is defined not only by credentials, but by humility, cultural attunement, and accountability.