Breaking generational patterns of guilt-ridden rest

and reclaiming my calm in the process

My dad has always felt guilty when he’s seen to be ‘doing nothing.’ For him, in the summer, this looks like sunbathing in the garden for hours on end. It blew my mind when he told me about his propensity to be so self-critical for daring to rest, particularly because most of what we saw him do during our childhood was working very, very hard.

And yet, I can relate to this feeling. I have inherited it along with the compulsion to always be doing, striving and achieving something. Anything.

This is, however, a pattern I’m trying to break. I don’t want my children to feel even an ounce of guilt for taking time to rest.

It would be a lie to declare I don’t rest. Not a day goes by where I don’t have at least one hour on the sofa. On a good day you’d find me watching a TV show or perhaps a YouTube video and on not such a good day, scrolling on my phone. I’m not even sure the latter constitutes as rest. Not for me at least.

I arrive at that hour of sofa time feeling pooped in every sense of the word. This isn’t purposeful rest. It’s rest out of necessity. I quite simply can’t keep on doing. My productivity quota is well and truly shot and my mind and body have nothing left.

What I’m coming to realise though is that this strategy of push push push all day long to then finally allow myself the ‘luxury’ of one hour on the sofa is just not cutting it.

Between work and caring for two young children, whilst also running the house and keeping us all fed, rest is hard to come by, yet it feels like an even more urgent necessity.

Since having my son in 2023 my days have become busier and demands on my time are much more intense and, with that, it’s often felt hard to keep a lid on my stress levels. There is always something to be done. This makes for a fast paced life and - because I’m my father’s daughter - I have to keep on top of it all. I have to get stuff done.

But what I’ve noticed is that my capacity to deal with all these demands of life, especially when you throw in the often constant over-stimulation of mess and noise which children bring, it can feel like I’m in a pressure cooker with no means of escape.

Consequently the outside chaos replicates in my mind and it can be so loud and so messy in there - even more so than my living room floor covered in toy cars and pieces of lego.

So I find myself in a situation where the need for rest feels urgent but being able to truly switch off feels impossible. What a conundrum!

An hour is just not enough.

And I wonder why I wake up at 4am with a mind swirling with to-do list items. It’s like my mind is protesting to all the demands and sneakily tries to find some time when I’m not working or caring for young children where it can ‘be freeeeeee.’

Yet, this feels the furthest thing from mental freedom I can possibly imagine.

So after some really insightful therapy last year, and digging into how I actually want to exist in the world, and show up for my family, I finally felt motivated to create change.

I needed to find a way to create some of the zen I used to genuinely feel in my life pre-kids (you can read about how that looked for me here)

In January of this year my friend and I went to a mindfulness workshop and at the end we were invited to write down some takeaways and things we wanted to focus on for the year ahead and here is what I wrote.

I keep this note in my drawer and rarely look at it and I don’t need to because this intention is so strong that I’m now actually living it.

It’s not necessarily about rest per se (particularly if that looks like mindless scrolling on my phone which only serves to rev up an already busy mind) - it’s more about resetting my nervous system at regular intervals throughout the day and week.

This can look like -

• Breathing - simple techniques to ground me and bring me back to the present moment

• Noticing when I’m doing everything at a hundred miles an hour and purposefully shifting gear and doing things a little slower

• Getting out in nature with my toddler (instead of the soft play which is a full on attack on my nervous system if I’m already feeling on the edge)

• Spending ten mins journaling instead of scrolling

• Watching a YouTube video whilst doing my skincare routine

• Yoga Nidra + power nap + timer set for 25 mins

• Playing my labour soundtrack in the car whilst breathing and surrendering to the present moment - accepting what is

• Getting out for a walk to do a voice note to a friend which feels like true connection as opposed to hurried messages whilst cooking the dinner

I guess it’s not about rest. It’s about a way of living. A way in which calming my nervous system and aiming to keep level, as much as possible, is the priority.

And crucially, when I’m doing anything that vaguely resembles rest, such as yesterday when I sat in the sunshine watching my children play, it’s about learning to reward myself for taking the pause, rather than berating myself.

I’d love to hear if this resonates. What’s your relationship with rest? How does it look for you?