"This past weekend, I woke up to that rare, unremarkable silence - the easy kind that doesn't ask anything of you. The house was still in that way it only ever is when no one is waiting and no plan has yet claimed the day. The dog was asleep, the light coming through the window was gentle, and the hours ahead stretched open without instruction."
"I made breakfast and sat down with a book I'd been meaning to read for weeks, assuming this was what rest would feel like when it finally arrived. Instead, within minutes, I was back on my feet, glancing at my phone, moving a half-finished load of laundry, checking where my son was on his college campus map as if he were a small blinking dot in The Sims, his well-being somehow tethered to whether I was actively doing something on his behalf."
Many people experience rest as unsettling because their nervous systems learned to associate motion with safety, causing stillness to feel provisional or suspicious. Intermittent reinforcement—brief rewards like urgent notifications—keeps attention hooked on tasks and urgency. Individuals praised for capability often develop identities tied to usefulness, making rest feel unearned and prompting busywork instead of calm. Familiarity with chaos perpetuates motion as reassurance, producing habits like checking phones or organizing trivial things during quiet moments. Recognizing these conditioned responses clarifies why rest can feel uncomfortable and suggests that cultivating acceptance of stillness requires counterconditioning and intentional practices that separate identity from constant productivity.
Read at Psychology Today
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