Why Rest Feels Unproductive (Even When You Need It)

You know you need rest. You might even be exhausted. But when you finally have the chance to stop, you find yourself reaching for your phone, thinking about everything you should be doing, or getting back up to tackle one more thing.

In this episode, we're looking at the gap between knowing you need rest and actually being able to take it. I talk about why stopping can feel surprisingly uncomfortable, what staying in motion might be doing for you, and why the discomfort that shows up when you slow down may be useful information rather than evidence that you're bad at resting.

What You'll Discover:

• Why knowing you need rest doesn't automatically make it easy to rest
• What productivity and staying in motion might be doing for you
• Why thoughts, emotions, and sensations can get louder when you slow down
• How to start getting curious about your own relationship with rest

If you've ever wondered why you can't seem to relax even when you know how much you need it, this episode will help you look at rest through a different lens.

If you're wondering whether your nervous system might be part of what's making rest so difficult, grab my free guide, Mapping Your Nervous System.

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Transcript

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You know you need rest. You've told yourself that more times than you can count. But when you actually sit down to do it, something in you starts to itch. You reach for your phone. You think of five things you should be doing instead. You feel restless instead of restored. Today we're exploring why knowing you need rest and actually being able to rest are two completely different things and what your body might be protecting you from every time it won't let you stop. Welcome to Binge Eating Breakthrough, the podcast to help you stop feeling out of control around food and build trust with your body. If you've tried everything but still feel stuck, you're not alone. I've been there too. I'm Jane Pilger, and I'm here to help you see binge eating in a new way so you can finally break free. Each week you'll get the tools and insights to create peace with food and your body. Your breakthrough starts. I used to pride myself on my productivity, always doing something, always working through a to-do list, always moving. I genuinely thought it was one of the best things about me. It felt like a strength, a feature of my personality that I got to take credit for. And it helped me get a lot done. But what I didn't have back then was any connection to my body or any way of picking up on the signals it was sending me long before I ever got close to a breaking point. And here's what I can see now, looking back, that I couldn't see then. When I would binge, it was the only thing that actually got me to slow down. The only time I stopped moving, truly stopped, was after a binge. I would sit on the couch for hours, scrolling, maybe half watching something on TV. But it was the only time in my whole week that I was actually still. And at the time, I thought that was just what happened after a binge. But now I understand it differently. My body was getting me to stop. But stopping and resting are not the same thing. What I was in after a binge wasn't restorative. My body was working hard just to process everything that I had eaten on top of the shame and the guilt and the judgment that I was piling on myself. It was still, but it felt more like collapse than recovery. My body had finally stopped moving, but that didn't mean that it was actually getting the kind of rest that it needed. And here's the part that I think a lot of people will recognize, even if the specifics look different. When I actually tried to rest on purpose, when I sat down and told myself this is rest time, I couldn't stop thinking about everything I needed to do. I would feel lazy, unproductive. Even sitting in front of the TV, some part of me would be drafting an email in my head or mentally working through my list. My body was in the room, but I wasn't. Now, if any of this is landing for you, you are not alone. So many of the people that I work with say they need rest. They want rest. They crave rest. They want that permission to just do nothing for a while. And many of them have an actual image. This is what I would love to be doing right now. But when they actually try to give themselves that permission, they can't take it. Somewhere along the way, they came to believe that permission only arrives once everything is done, once every project is caught up, every item on the list is handled, everything is taken care of. Only then, they believe, are they actually allowed to rest. And then, of course, everything is never fully caught up. So the permission never actually arrives. And here's what it actually looks like when they try anyway. They sit down to rest, really intending to. And within minutes, they're back up, reorganizing a drawer, answering an email that could have waited until Monday, scrolling their phone without really watching what's on the screen, which isn't rest either, just motion in a smaller form. So that gap between knowing you need rest and actually being able to take it is what we're going to talk about today. Because I don't think that the problem is that you are bad at resting. I think your brain and body might have very good reasons for keeping you in motion the same way that mine did. So here's where I'm going to take you today. First, I'm going to talk about why knowing you need rest and actually being able to take it are two entirely different things. Then we're going to get into what staying productive might actually be protecting you from, and why things can suddenly feel louder the moment you slow down, and what to do with the strange paradox that trying to rest doesn't always feel restful. All right. So let's start with this first part. Knowing and being able to are two different things. Your thinking brain can understand completely and accurately that you are exhausted. It can list the reasons. It can even say the sentence out loud: I need rest. But knowing you need rest doesn't mean that every part of your system experiences stopping as safe or comfortable. Now, this is the same pattern that I talk about with food. Someone can know intellectually that a binge won't fix what is actually wrong. And they do it anyway. Not because they're weak or undisciplined, but because the knowing lives in one place and the behavior gets driven from somewhere else entirely. So I think about my own story. For a long time, a binge was the only thing that could stop me. Now, I can see now that it was much closer to collapse than recovery. Your body is always communicating with you. And for me, that collapse was one of the ways mine was doing it. It wasn't asking me to stop eating a certain food. It was telling me I had been in motion for so long that shutting down was the only option left. And that is the dashboard light that I talk about so often, showing up in a place I never expected. I used to think the light was only about food. But it turns out that same light can be telling you something about rest and about how far you'll let yourself get before your body forces the issue. Rest and that kind of collapse, they can look similar from the outside. Both involve stillness. But one restores you, and one is your system in survival. And here's what I know: understanding something with your mind doesn't automatically give your nervous system permission to take the kind of rest that actually restores you. So if understanding isn't enough, the more useful question becomes what is actually driving the motion in the first place? So for a lot of people, staying in motion isn't really about getting things done. Somewhere along the way, productivity got tangled up with something bigger: worth, belonging, approval, a sense of control, predictability, even identity and safety. So here's what this can look like day to day. Answering a work email at nine at night because being unresponsive feels dangerous, even when nothing is actually urgent. Folding laundry during the one hour a partner has free to talk because sitting still with them feels more exposed than being useful. Saying yes to hosting a holiday you don't have the bandwidth for, because being the one who holds it all together is part of how you know who you are. None of those are really about the task in front of you. They're about what staying busy is protecting you from feeling. If you slow down and some part of you feels unsafe, that is not a character flaw. That is a part of you doing its job. The job it learned a long time ago, which is to keep you moving so you never have to find out what happens when you stop. Now it's different for everyone. And figuring out which one it is for you, worth, belonging, approval, control, safety, isn't usually obvious or quick. It can take time and curiosity to get there, and that is okay. So I hear a version of this often from clients. They crave rest. They can picture exactly what they want. Sitting down with a book, a quiet cup of coffee, just being still for a while, getting out in nature. But when they try, they can't actually do it because some part of them is convinced that if they stop, everything on the list won't get done. There simply won't be time. So even with the picture right there in their mind, they can't get themselves to step into it. Now, this is not a simple thing to untangle, and it's worth getting curious about rather than assuming you already know the answer. And once this answer starts to come into focus, even just a little bit, the next piece makes more sense. Why things can suddenly feel so much louder the moment the motion actually stops. Here's what I've seen happen over and over, both with clients and in my own life. When you are moving, working, caretaking, training, scrolling, there is a lot occupying your attention. All of that motion takes up space. It's noisy in a way that keeps other things from getting through. And when the motion stops, that space opens up. And what fills it isn't nothing. It's thoughts, emotions, sensations you had been outrunning without realizing it. Needs that were there under the surface that never had anywhere to land. And I remember exactly what this felt like for me, sitting in front of the TV, mentally drafting emails. I wasn't actually resting. I was still moving, just quietly on the inside. Because the moment I let the outside motion stop, the inside motion had to take over. And slowing all the way down felt like standing in an empty room with no idea what would show up next. It's kind of scary. And that's why rest can create its own kind of activation. You sit down to relax and your chest gets tight. You lie down and your mind speeds up instead of slowing down. This isn't you doing rest wrong. It's your system suddenly hearing things it couldn't hear over the noise of motion. And that's the paradox. I need rest, but trying to rest doesn't feel restful. And once you understand why, you don't have to interpret that discomfort as evidence that you're bad at resting. You can start seeing it as information. And that's why so many people eventually decide they are just bad at resting. But what if the discomfort isn't evidence that you're bad at it? What if it's simply information? I still notice this in myself. I have done a lot of work on my relationship with rest. And there are still days that I sit down and my mind starts running the list anyway. The difference now is that I recognize what's happening instead of just pushing through it or reaching for something to numb it. That recognition is the whole shift. It's not that the discomfort disappears, it's that you stop mistaking it for evidence that something is wrong with you. And over time, the more you can really give yourself that permission and feel that difference of the rest, it doesn't feel so scary because you develop evidence that it is possible that you can get back to the things, that you might actually have even more energy or more clarity to do the thing. Or if something is showing up for you, it's showing you some place you need to get curious about in your life. Now, here's what I want to be really clear about. Rest is not the same as giving up on what you care about. Because when I talk about this, people sometimes hear it as stop being productive or stop caring about your goals. And that is not what I'm saying. And it wasn't true for me either. I still care about getting things done. I still value the work that I do and the people that I do it for. But what I'm actually pointing at here is the difference between motion that comes from choice and motion that comes from fear. Getting something done because it matters to you feels different in the body than getting something done because stopping feels dangerous. The same action can even contain both. You can genuinely care about the work you're doing and also have a part of you that doesn't feel safe stopping. The question isn't whether productivity is good or bad. It's whether you have a choice. You don't have to give up your ambition, your standards, or the things that you are proud of to learn how to rest. You just have to start noticing which kind of motion you're actually in. And what you just might find is when you do allow rest, you have more energy, more capability, more capacity to do the things you're proud of in an even better way. So here's what I want to leave you with this week: a few small things to notice. Number one, notice the moment that you reach for motion instead of stillness. So it's the moment that your hand goes for the laundry, the phone, the next task on the list, right when things had just started to go quiet. This isn't even to stop yourself, just notice it. That single moment of awareness is where everything else starts. Number two, ask what stopping is actually connected to for you. So try asking yourself this question. What does slowing down threaten? Is it worth control? Safety? Something else? You don't need the full answer today. Just start asking the question, that that little beginning of curiosity. Plant the seed. Your brain will go to work to answer any question that you give it. So what is being threatened when I slow down? Number three, get curious about what shows up in the quiet. When you do sit still for a minute, notice what comes up. A thought, a feeling, a sensation. Just naming it is enough. You don't have to fix it, and you don't have to reach for something to make it go away. Let it be there. Be curious about what it is that you might be trying to get away from. Number four, let rest be uncomfortable without deciding it's wrong or it's not for you. Experiment with staying in the discomfort for 30 extra seconds before you reach for the next task, before you pick up your phone, before you do whatever else it is that your brain is telling you to do, you're not trying to force yourself to be comfortable. You're just giving yourself a little more space to notice what happens before automatically reaching for that next thing. And if you actually want to experiment with this, here's the invitation. If you have something specific that you picture when you imagine resting, maybe it's sitting down and reading a book. Maybe it is going outside for a walk. Maybe it is just sitting with a cup of coffee. Pay attention to that. Give yourself 10 minutes of exactly that thing. That thing that you imagine when you just think, oh, I just would love a rest. You don't have to give yourself the whole afternoon, 10 minutes, whether your list is finished or not, and just see what happens can be a beautiful experiment for you. So knowing that you need rest and being able to actually rest are not the same skill. If rest has felt impossible for you, it's not because something is wrong with you. I hope you leave today a little less interested in judging yourself for your lack of ability to rest and more curious about what's actually happening when you try. I spent years only really stopping in the aftermath of a binge. And for a long time, I mistook that collapse for rest, but it wasn't. It took me a while to learn what actual rest, the restorative kind, was even supposed to feel like. I didn't get there overnight. And some days I still catch myself reaching for something instead. But I got here slowly by getting curious about what was actually happening instead of pushing harder or judging myself for needing to stop. By creating more connection and awareness from my body, what are the signals my body even gives me that I do need rest? You don't have to become a person who rests easily overnight. You just have to get curious about what happens when you try. And if this is landing for you and you are wondering whether your nervous system might be underneath what's making rest so hard, I put together a free guide called Mapping Your Nervous System to help you start recognizing what's going on for you. And you can grab it at janepilger.com forward slash regulate your nervous system. I'll have a link in the show notes so you can easily just tap it to uh to grab that. Now, next week, we're gonna stay in this territory, but we're gonna go one layer deeper. And I'm gonna talk about the difference between numbing out and resting. Because from the outside, they can look identical. And the difference isn't something you can see just by watching the behavior. So be sure to tune in for that one. All right, that's what I have for you today. I'll see you next week. If you like what you're hearing on the podcast, you love my movie. The binge eating breakthrough. Why food isn't the problem, and it really is. Discover why little problem isn't the answer. I restricting certain foods often flavors, and my understanding of brain and body is the key to lasting.com for slash.