Last summer, I started thinking differently about rest.<\/p>\n
Like many people, I had become accustomed to being busy. We live in a culture that often rewards productivity. Being busy can become a badge of honor. We praise people for working long hours, juggling multiple responsibilities, and somehow continuing to show up even when they are exhausted.<\/p>\n
Over time, we may begin to develop rigid and overgeneralized beliefs such as:<\/p>\n
I should always be doing something.<\/p>\n
If I say no, I am letting someone down.<\/p>\n
Other people\u2019s needs are more important than mine.<\/p>\n
Rest has to be earned.<\/p>\n
If I can do something, I should do it.<\/p>\n
These beliefs can make rest surprisingly uncomfortable. You may sit down and immediately start thinking about what you \u201cshould\u201d be doing. You may agree to another responsibility even though you are already overwhelmed. Or you may finally say no to someone and spend the rest of the day feeling guilty about it.<\/p>\n
As an African American woman, I know that there can be additional layers to this struggle as well.<\/p>\n
Historically, Black bodies have often been valued according to their capacity to work, produce, serve and endure. Those messages did not simply disappear. They can show up today in expectations to work harder to receive the same recognition, pressures to prove competence, messages about needing to be strong and the reality that mistakes or perceived shortcomings may carry different consequences for Black people.<\/p>\n
The idea of rest as resistance has been popularized by Tricia Hersey, founder of The Nap Ministry and author of \u201cRest Is Resistance: A Manifesto.\u201d Hersey describes rest as a spiritual practice and invites us to slow down, listen to our bodies, and reject the idea that our worth depends on how much we produce.<\/p>\n
Although sleep is an important part of her work, rest can take many forms. Rest might mean spending time in prayer or connecting with God. It might mean being outside, listening to music, laughing with people you love, sitting quietly, creating something simply because you enjoy it or allowing yourself to have an afternoon with absolutely nothing productive planned.<\/p>\n
What feels restorative will not look the same for everyone.<\/p>\n
Hersey\u2019s work also places rest within a larger social context. Rest pushes against a culture that encourages constant productivity and against a history in which Black people\u2019s bodies were exploited for their labor.<\/p>\n
In that sense, choosing rest can communicate something powerful: My worth does not begin and end with what I can produce.<\/p>\n
One of the biggest lessons in my own journey has been realizing that I cannot create space for rest if I continue giving that space away.<\/p>\n
That means learning to say no. No, I can\u2019t take that on. No, I won\u2019t be able to attend. No, I don\u2019t have the capacity for that right now. And sometimes, simply: No.<\/p>\n
This can be particularly difficult if you are accustomed to being dependable, helpful, accommodating or available.<\/p>\n
The goal is not to stop caring about other people. It is to recognize that caring for other people does not require abandoning yourself.<\/p>\n
And an important part of learning to say no is learning to tolerate the discomfort that sometimes comes afterward. Someone may be disappointed. Someone may not understand. Someone may even be irritated. Because sometimes the hardest part of setting a boundary is not saying the word \u201cno.\u201d It is resisting the urge to take it back. Their reaction does not automatically mean that your boundary was wrong.<\/p>\n
If saying no feels almost impossible, therapy can be a useful place to understand why. A therapist who specializes in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy can help you identify the thoughts and beliefs that make boundaries difficult. Maybe you believe that saying no makes you selfish. Perhaps you feel responsible for keeping everyone happy. Maybe conflict makes you anxious, or you learned early in life that being useful was one of the safest ways to receive approval.<\/p>\n
Learning to rest may therefore require more than changing your schedule. It may require changing your relationship with productivity, other people\u2019s expectations, and your own worth.<\/p>\n
Sometimes, learning to rest is part of how we heal.<\/p>\n
Jane\u00e9 Steele is a published author and a licensed mental health counselor at CBT of Central and South Florida.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last summer, I started thinking differently about rest. Like many people, I had become accustomed to being busy.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":405334,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[483,482,139,141,140,109,76410],"class_list":["post-405333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-commentary","tag-opinion","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-social","tag-social-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=405333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405333\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/405334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}