Im on leave for the next couple of weeks. (Well, sort of, – I have a patient to see next week and a few shifts in urgent care the week after. But leave as much as general practice ever allows!)
and I am under orders from my own personal care term to “rest”.
now I don’t know about you all. But resting is one thing I find really hard to do.
It will likely come as a unsurprising to many of you that I am a little quirky myself, (the social media feed is practically diagnostic I suspect, and those who know me in person will pick me a mile a way I reckon. I like to *think* I mask well. My loved ones laugh very, very hard when I suggest this).
Resting with a restless brain is difficult and it’s something that the *normal* strategies just don’t work for.
there may also be an overlay here that you might have some fairly rigid rules around earning rest. It’s complex how this works and why. Western societies, which is my personal sociocultural context have ideas around rest, often ingrained from childhood which is that we have to get the chores done first. Then we can take a break.
The thing is as an adult – the chores are not finite . They don’t ever finish!
For people with ADHD, or even with a restless brain we also know that stimulus or a dopamine hit (although again you may have heard me say that the dopamine thing isn’t entirely settled because we can’t cut open a brain and see it working in real time but that’s me overthinking) is sometimes more restful than sitting on a couch seeming to be resting but with a brain working at a million miles an hour too paralysed to move and feeling guilty for not being productive and not resting *properly*.
for me some of my learning has been that to tune out what other people tell me what rest *should be* and learn what recharges me best.
- Sometimes for me “rest” is movement. It’s walking, or cycling, or swimming in solitude. With my own thoughts (with Pokémon go). Away from work and people.
- Sometimes “rest” is sensory input and peopling. It’s noisy, and loud and involved, and a lot of stimulus!
- Sometimes “rest” does involve getting some housework done. It needs to happen, it’s fairly mindless. It’s productivity and a dopamine hit when I finish it, with a low cognitive load. I feel better when it’s done.
- I need to sometimes slow down and identify what kind of rest I need – is it cognitive overwhelm? Is it sensory overwhelm? Is it physical? These kinds of inputs will need different kinds of “rests”. – brain breaks/time off work, dial down on sensory input, sleep etc. sometimes it’s mix of all three. A generic “just take time off” isn’t always the answer. Sometimes continuing to work is good for me. This is a hard one to identify and is a work in progress!
- Allowing myself to have multiple sensory inputs while I “rest”. Eg knitting in front of the tv, reading with music on. Folding the washing while listening to lecture.
- Giving myself permission to define rest for myself and experiment rather than allowing others to define it for me
Unfortunately there isn’t much in the literature (I’ve looked) about how human beings rest at all really other than you know the usual motivational quotes and suggestions of putting your feet up. So I’m very happy to own that this is entirely anecdotal thoughts based on, reasonably educated inputs.
When you’re driven by an internal motor, I don’t think the traditional suggestions work – hence I sit here writing a blog post when I’m meant to be “resting” 🤣.
Rest is so important. We need to let go of the guilt and shame somehow. And experiment on what makes our brains work better.
except if you’re my dog apparently, he’s got it sorted
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