Take Time and Rest

I’m keeping this week’s post short, and I’m taking a brief break from the series I’ve been working on, as I’ve got a lot going on right now. However, the past month has reminded me of something really important to healing: it can require lots of time and lots of rest.

Our culture tends to have an unhealthy narrative over how long it will take to get better. We might allow ourselves a day or two in bed if we’re really sick, but so many of us believe we should be able to bounce back quickly from colds, flus, infections, surgeries, other illnesses, and even working out. We have a tendency to believe that because some people are able to recover quickly, all of us should be able to. But this simply isn’t true. Some of us need more time to recover, and some illnesses and injuries require more time than we give them. This does not mean that we’re weak or insufficient. To be honest, I think the fact that this belief exists is a problem with our society and culture, not with the individuals who are trying so hard to be as healthy as others.

This belief is especially problematic for those of us with over-activated nervous systems. Even if our nervous systems are properly fighting an illness or recovering from an injury, if we don’t recover as quickly as we think we should, our nervous systems get the message that “something is wrong.” As a result, they go into a fight/flight/freeze state. This over-activated state then leads to more health issues, which reinforces the idea that something is wrong, and we end up in a vicious cycle in which we stay sick or even get sicker, rather than recovering.

For just a moment, imagine how calming and restorative it would feel for your nervous system if you could have a month — or even an uninterrupted week — of just lying in bed and not having a single stressor to worry about. Most of us can’t grant ourselves such a luxury, and yet it may be what our nervous systems need.

Now, to be clear, if your nervous system is over-activated, you need more than time and rest to recover. You also need to do the brain retraining and likely emotional work, but if you’re having chronic health issues, your body also needs rest. Your body probably needs a lot more rest than you think, and you likely need to give yourself a lot of time to get better.

It makes sense that if you’re sick, you should rest so that your body can direct most of its energy toward fighting the infection. But what about when the infection is gone, and the health issues are triggered by an over-activated nervous system? First, an activated nervous system requires a lot of energy — it’s basically still acting as if it’s fighting an infection. Simply being in an over-activated state is energy intensive, and so your body requires extra rest.

Additionally, retraining your brain and nervous system out of the activated state takes time. You’re rewiring your system to respond differently to the world around you, and that doesn’t happen overnight. This is especially the case for those of us who have to process repressed thoughts and emotions and rewire our brains to respond differently. And please don’t forget: feeling and processing emotions is exhausting! Any time you have a big, emotional breakthrough, you may need hours or days to recover.

This is a topic I’ll likely come back to periodically, because I think the reminder is helpful. But for now, I’ll just mention that even today, I often find that I need more rest or more time to recover than I expect. If I stress out about that, then I start to develop issues. If I can compassionately accept the fact that I need more time and rest, I actually recover faster. I encourage anyone with an over-activated nervous system to practice compassionately taking extra time to rest.

Next week I’m traveling for a conference and the following week I’m planning to take a digital detox. I will do my best to get at least one post out to you during those two weeks, but if things are too hectic next week, it may be a couple of weeks before I get another one posted. I am also still working dutifully on the new website. It’s just been harder than I expected to carve out time to get it finished. One of these days it will happen…