Why can't we rest anymore?

Not without guilt anyway...

Loving this image that came up when I searched ‘no rest’ in Unsplash! - Photo by Paul Levesley on Unsplash

It’s early on a muggy Sunday evening and I have the infamous ‘Sunday dread’ or ‘Sunday scaries’. It’s not because I’m anxious about starting the working week, but the guilt of not feeling like I’ve been productive enough this weekend!

I have a packed July with plans every weekend, which is making me feel quite overwhelmed, so I had always planned on having a chilled weekend for the last weekend in June. So why do I now feel guilty?

I have guilt that I haven’t published a Substack this week - which I’m now compensating for - but I’m not sure what else I feel like I should have been doing. Is this something that is ingrained in us now? To fill every moment with being productive or achieving something?

But then I’ve only started to feel guilty as evening has approached and the weekend is nearing its end. Like I’m now putting pressure on myself to cram in a last scramble to feel like I’ve achieved something this weekend.

This is something I have talked to my counsellor about too. The guilt for resting. Like it’s something we only allow ourselves when we’ve worked ourselves so hard that we burn out. Rather than allowing ourselves to fully rest to avoid burn out.

I talked with her about the guilt when I watch TV, whilst both scrolling on my phone and berating myself for not doing something more productive. So I’m not really ever resting in the true sense of the word.

Now there could be a multitude of reasons for this.

One is my personal obsession with always having to prove myself - something that is very common with women who have ADHD apparently. But another that would apply to so many of us is the glamourisation of ‘being busy’.

There’s nothing exciting or fun about saying you did ‘nothing’ all weekend in answer to the predictable and repetitive Monday morning question of ‘how was your weekend?’. Or when someone asks ‘how’s things?’, the standard answer tends to be ‘so busy’. We wear it as a badge of honour. Why do we equate a life of fulfillment with being busy/full? And why do we care what someone else feels about how fun our life is - admittedly this is something I don’t care about much now as I’ve got older but it was definitely something that used to play on my mind.

As I (typically) dip in and out of writing this I have just scrolled past a note by Sophie Francis on Substack that talks about ‘Our obsession with productivity is destroying our health’ - going on to say how rather than waking up at 5am we need more sleep; we need a slower pace rather than hustle etc.

So many ‘self-help/care experts’ talk about all these extra things we should be doing, like getting up earlier to move, meditate, drink lemon water - maybe we just need that extra hour or so to sleep and recharge and not put that pressure on ourselves to tick off all these contradictory self care tasks that are spouted to us on a daily basis. And that’s even without all the talk of extra-curricular activities to boost your professional career, side hustle or creative passion.

Maybe it’s the Sunday scaries that are projecting on me, maybe it’s my inherent need to be doing something for the dopamine, or do other people get this too?

Anyway, I’m off to allow myself to enjoy doing nothing for a few minutes…

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UPDATE: so i posted this, felt the dopamine rush of achievement I had been craving and got excited about receiving a comment that it resonated with someone else (thanks Caitlin McColl :)). Then as my strict bedtime was approaching I went upstairs to realise I still had to make my bed. Remembering I also have to exfoliate and fake tan. Panic/rush to get to bed and sleep!

So, exfoliator on my face, I’m making my bed whilst sweating in the heat and feeling slightly nauseous. Narrating this all to myself and contemplating whether to write this out as an update to the post, a comment or a note…and not forgetting the accompanying head music of the one line from Ride by Lana Del Ray (ironically) ‘I’m tired of feeling like I’m fucking crazy’ and the tune to an Olivia Dean song I can no longer remember.

Retrieved my chamomile tea (to calm me down) that I had forgot to pour and back up to write this all out…so maybe it’s just been a bad evening for the ADHD?

Not that I want to say it’s bad - just a representation of how the hyperactive side of ADHD can present in the head and not necessarily as someone jumping around being externally hyperactive.