Relax already! If you are one of those people that just can’t seem to allow yourself to rest, well rest assured (haha) that you are not alone.
Maybe you've finally got some time off. Nothing urgent needs your attention. Your calendar is clear. You could sit down, read a book, go for a walk, take a nap.
And yet, you're looking for something to do.
You tell yourself you'll rest after you've finished a few things. One more email. Tidy the kitchen. Make a list. Get ahead on tomorrow. Check something you've already checked twice. Before you know it, your day off has become another day of doing.
If this sounds familiar, it may not be because you don't know how to relax. Sometimes, rest itself feels surprisingly uncomfortable.
We live in a culture that rewards productivity and makes it easy to believe our value is tied to what we accomplish. For some of us, the difficulty with rest goes deeper than culture, though. Staying busy can become a way of managing discomfort, staying ahead of anxiety, or maintaining a sense that we're in control.
The extra layer, if you're neurodivergent
For neurodivergent women especially, there's often more going on underneath this. If you've spent years adapting to environments that weren't designed with your brain or sensory system in mind, you may have learned to compensate without ever realizing how much energy it takes. You might spend your day managing noise and other sensory input, monitoring how you're coming across, staying organized enough to keep up, or pushing through tasks that quietly require more effort from you than they seem to require from everyone else.
By the time you have a chance to rest, you're already running on empty. And instead of resting, you find yourself trying to catch up on everything you couldn't get to earlier.
When stopping doesn't feel good
I often hear some version of, "I know I need to rest. I just can't seem to let myself."
Sometimes what makes rest difficult isn't the absence of a relaxation technique. It's what happens when you stop doing all the things that have been keeping you moving. When you're busy, there's always something to focus on, a sense of purpose and momentum. When you finally slow down, you may become aware of how tired you actually are, or of feelings you've been too occupied to notice.
Staying busy can become a protective pattern. Being productive, responsible, prepared, or useful may have helped you feel safe, connected, or in control at some point. These patterns aren't inherently bad. They may have served you very well. The difficulty comes when the strategy continues long after you need it in quite the same way, when you say yes before checking whether you actually have the capacity, or keep pushing through because stopping brings up guilt or the feeling that you're falling behind.
For some people, these patterns are connected to earlier experiences of threat or overwhelm. You can learn more about Deep Brain Reorienting (DBR), an approach that works with the body's responses to stress and trauma.
Sometimes you don't recognize any of this is happening until you're completely depleted.
IIf you're curious about exploring this kind of work in therapy, learn more about my approach to somatic therapy for neurodivergent women
When rest feels like falling behind
For many of the women I work with, rest brings up the feeling that you're falling behind. You watch other people move through their days and wonder why everything seems to take so much effort for you. So when you're not being productive, it can feel like you're losing ground.
If you've spent years feeling like you need to work harder just to keep up, resting can almost feel like giving yourself permission to fall further behind. You've learned to compensate by doing more, over-preparing, constantly monitoring yourself, anticipating what other people need so nothing gets dropped. Eventually, over-functioning stops feeling like a strategy. It just feels like who you are.
But there's a difference between doing what matters to you and constantly pushing yourself because slowing down feels unsafe.
Your body may have a different response to rest
This is one of the reasons I approach this work somatically, rather than only through insight.
If you're interested in approaches that work beyond talking and understanding, you can also learn about Brainspotting and how it can support deeper emotional and nervous system work.
Many of the women I work with are already highly insightful. They understand their patterns. They know they over-function, know they have trouble saying no, and can often trace exactly why they learned to be so responsible. And yet, knowing all of that doesn't necessarily change what happens in the moment.
This can be especially hard to recognize if you've spent years overriding sensory or physical signals in order to function. This is a familiar pattern for many neurodivergent women, who may have had to push through input, demands, or expectations that take a real toll. What feels like I just need to push through this may actually be your body telling you it's had enough. Enough input, enough decisions, enough people.
Instead of only asking why you can't rest, you can get curious about what happens inside you when you try. Maybe you notice tension in your shoulders or a tightness in your chest. Maybe there's a sense of urgency, as though you need to get up and do something. Or maybe you feel very little, and realize you've become disconnected from your body because you've been overriding its signals for so long.
None of these responses need to be forced to change. They're information. Over time, becoming aware of these signals can help you notice when you're moving into over-functioning, rather than only realizing you've gone too far once you're exhausted.
Rest isn't something you have to earn
I think the answer is often presented as simply convincing yourself that you deserve to rest. And of course, you do. But telling yourself to relax isn't particularly helpful when some part of you may have learned that stopping isn't safe, productive, or comfortable.
The work can be more curious than that. What happens when you aren't accomplishing something? What do you imagine might happen if you stopped trying to stay ahead? What does it mean to you to be "behind"?
These questions aren't about finding something wrong with you. They're about understanding the patterns that got you this far. Patterns that, for many neurodivergent women, developed as a way of coping with a world that wasn't designed with their brains or sensory systems in mind.
Perhaps you don't actually have a problem with rest. Perhaps you've become very, very good at not stopping.
If you've been living that way for a long time, learning to rest isn't about finding the perfect technique. It's about learning to notice your own limits, becoming more familiar with the sensations that tell you you've had enough, and gradually building enough trust in yourself to respond to them.
You don't have to wait until you're completely depleted to give yourself permission to stop.
Rest isn't a reward for having done enough. You are allowed to need it before you've earned it.
If you've spent years trying to understand why you feel the way you do, but that understanding hasn't translated into feeling any different, somatic therapy may offer another way forward. I offer online somatic therapy for women across Canada. Book a free consultation to see if we're a good fit and learn more about how I work.
Shari Lee Block, MSW, RSW, is a somatic therapist with 20 years of experience supporting women navigating burnout, overthinking, perfectionism, and the feeling that life shouldn't be this hard. Her work is grounded in somatic therapy, Brainspotting, Deep Brain Reorienting (DBR), and a neurodiversity-affirming approach. She offers online therapy to women across Canada.
