I’m very good at resting once everything is done.
The problem, of course, is that everything is never done.
There’s always an email I could answer, something sitting on the kitchen counter that belongs somewhere else, a load of laundry to throw in, an appointment to make, or some random thing I suddenly remember at 9:47 p.m. that no doubt needs my immediate attention.
For years, I didn’t really question this. I just assumed this was what being a capable adult woman looked like. You handled your shit. You kept things moving. And then, when you had sufficiently handled all the things, then and only then, you got to relax.
You can probably see the problem here.
Because there’s no magical moment when life announces, Congratulations! Everything is officially handled. Please proceed to the couch.
And yet, for a lot of women, rest can still feel strangely uncomfortable when there’s something left undone. We can be exhausted and still feel like we should be doing something. We can finally sit down and immediately start mentally scrolling through everything we haven’t gotten to yet. (Me!)
So why is it so hard to rest, even when we know we need it?
I’ve come to believe that, at least for some of us, it has less to do with whether we’re tired and much more to do with what we’ve learned to associate with being productive…..and, dare I say, ‘good.’
Why Rest Can Feel So Uncomfortable
I used to think I had a time-management problem.
Maybe if I got a little more organized, worked a little more efficiently, or finally figured out the perfect system, I’d reach the mythical land where everything was finished and I could rest without feeling guilty about it.
Welp.
What I eventually realized was that I wasn’t simply trying to get things done. Doing things made me feel good about myself.
Productivity made me feel capable. Responsible and in control. It gave me the reassuring sense that I was keeping up with my life rather than being obliterated by it.
And that, folks, is a very different problem. Because if getting things done makes you feel like you’re doing life “right,” —like you are “right”— what does it mean when you stop?! For me, stopping felt weirdly irresponsible. Maybe even a little lazy? There could be six perfectly legitimate things I could be doing, and I was…sitting there?
Who did I think I was?
That’s the part I think we sometimes miss when we talk about rest. We tend to treat it like a scheduling issue: You need more downtime. Take a break. Practice self-care.
Okay. Sure.
But what if you finally get the downtime and you still can’t actually settle into it?
That’s where things get more interesting.
When Productivity Starts to Feel Like Self-Worth
So apparently there’s a difference between enjoying productivity and needing productivity to feel okay. And I didn’t recognize that distinction for a very long time.
Checking things off a list gave me a tiny hit of reassurance: Good. You’re on top of things. You’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing. You’re good…safe.
And because I’d spent so much of my life being the capable one, the responsible one, the one who could handle it, productivity fit very nicely into my identity. (Have I mentioned I’m the oldest of three children?)
This is part of what I call Good Girl Conditioning: the deeply ingrained belief that being capable, accommodating, productive, and low-maintenance makes us good. Makes us worthy.
It’s also a big part of what I explore in my book Good Girl, Bad Mom. So many of us learn very early how rewarding it can be to be the woman who doesn’t need much, doesn’t make things harder for anyone else, and can always be counted on to get it done.
The trouble is, you become so good at being capable that you stop noticing what capability is costing you. (I’m tired for my old self just writing this.) And rest becomes particularly tricky because rest asks you to stop performing the very behavior that has helped you feel responsible, successful, and, in some cases, worthy. SHIT.
If productivity has become one of the ways you reassure yourself that you’re okay, doing nothing isn’t going to feel like nothing.
It can feel like you’re doing something wrong.
Your Body Can Stop While Your Brain Keeps Going
There’s another piece of rest that I didn’t understand until much later: physically stopping and psychologically resting are not necessarily the same thing.
You can sit on the couch while your brain is still at work.
Did I answer that email? What time is the appointment tomorrow? We need toothpaste. Did I sign that school thing? What are we eating for dinner?
Researchers actually have a term for part of this: psychological detachment, or mentally disengaging from the demands that have been occupying us. A meta-analysis of 86 publications involving more than 38,000 employees found that greater psychological detachment from work was associated with less exhaustion and fatigue, better sleep, greater well-being, and better self-reported recovery. I’ve failed this miserably because, if it isn’t overtly obvious, I’ve had plenty of experiences where my body was technically doing nothing…I was sitting, but certainly not resting.
And once I started noticing the difference, I realized that sometimes what I needed wasn’t merely more free time. I needed to practice not immediately filling the free time with another form of doing.
Yikes.
Good Girl Conditioning Gets Even More Complicated in Motherhood
Motherhood certainly didn’t invent this pattern for me, but holy shit did it give it somewhere to thrive. Because one of the problems with Motherhood is that there is virtually always something you could be doing.
Someone needs something washed, bought, signed, scheduled, remembered, researched, packed, replenished, answered, or anticipated. And even when nobody needs anything at this exact moment, there’s a pretty good chance you’re already thinking about what they’re going to need tomorrow.
That’s part of what I call The Motherhood Setup: the collision of the Motherhood Fantasy, Good Girl Conditioning, and Invisible Labor that leaves so many Mothers overwhelmed—and then wondering why they can’t seem to handle it better.
So now take a woman who has already learned that being capable and productive makes her good, and hand her a job with no clear beginning or end.
You see where this is going.
For Mothers in particular, “I’ll rest when everything is done” can become an almost impossible bargain because Motherhood is never done.
There’s also research suggesting that actual recovery involves more than simply having a few minutes when nobody is asking you for something. One study examining work and family time pressure described downtime as involving both physical relaxation and psychological detachment from stressors and found that downtime could be particularly beneficial under conditions of high time pressure.
Which brings me back to something embarrassingly simple that has taken me years to learn:
Rest has to happen while something is still undone.
And there really isn’t another option.
Learning to Rest Before Everything Is Done
This is the part I’m still practicing.
I’m not interested in pretending that women can solve structural overload by taking a bubble bath or meditating for ten minutes. Sometimes there genuinely is too much to do. Sometimes you need more support, a more equitable division of labor, better childcare, fewer demands, or somebody else to take ownership of the damn thing instead of asking you how they can “help.”
But I also know that I spent years waiting for circumstances to give me permission to rest, and they rarely did. So now I’m trying something different. Sometimes I sit down while laundry sits there two more days. Sometimes something gets to be good enough for today. Sometimes I notice I’m tired and take that information seriously instead of requiring my body to submit seventeen additional pieces of evidence before I’ll believe it.
And yes, sometimes I still catch myself bargaining: Just finish this. Just send that. Just put this away and then you can sit down. The difference is that now I recognize what I’m doing. I can hear the old rule underneath it: Finish everything first. Then you’ve earned it. And every once in a while, I don’t obey it.
Turns out, human beings need rest. (No!) I don’t have to justify it with exhaustion or prove I’ve accomplished enough to deserve it. Sometimes I’ve simply had enough for today, and that alone is reason enough to pause.
Danielle xx
She is the creator of The Motherhood Setup, a framework for understanding how the Motherhood Fantasy, Good Girl Conditioning, and Invisible Labor collide to leave so many Mothers overwhelmed. Her work asks what changes when we begin to make the invisible visible, Count the Work, and recognize Motherhood as both a joy and a job.
Explore Dr. Dowling's work on modern Motherhood