Brazil’s Rest Crisis: Why We Can’t Relax but Must

In November 2021, a person with autoimmune issues experienced a flare-up. Their doctor was unsure whether rheumatoid arthritis or fibromyalgia was the cause, or if both conditions were acting together. The person felt achiness and debilitating fatigue, which they took as a clear sign that something was more active than usual.

They woke up tired, needed naps, and often ran out of spoons, a term used by people with chronic conditions based on Christine Miserandino’s essay “The Spoon Theory.” While the reason for the flare-up was unclear, the person’s body was demanding rest.

The person found it very hard to just rest. Knowing they needed rest did not give them the ability to do it. They would sit down to watch a show and try to multitask. They would put off a nap like a stubborn child. Instead of throwing a tantrum, they tried to push through to finish typing an email or move laundry into the dryer.

Even with a body and brain crying out for rest, it was difficult to allow themselves to do it. They had to reparent themselves to enforce stopping times and rest periods.

The person noted that people in the Western world, especially in the United States, are programmed to be productive. They are told they should be doing things to be busy. Work in all forms, from job tasks to errands to chores, is what they are supposed to do.

People are conditioned to be productive and stay busy from a young age. They hear phrases like “I’ll rest when I’m dead” and “no rest for the weary.” They are told to “pay their dues” and “put in the work.” Even if people avoid direct messages about staying busy, they receive indirect messages by watching the people in their lives. They watch parents come home from work with grocery bags, fix dinner, and put groceries away. They are asked what they are doing and made to feel wrong if the answer is “nothing.”

After dinner, when it is time to relax, people watch parents do additional work, both paid and unpaid. They watch them knit, iron, or putter around the house. People are told they have to work hard to succeed. That nothing good comes easy. That they should not stop when tired, but only when done.

Sitting down and resting is not prioritized. People who decide to rest often must justify it. They have to have earned the right to rest.

Rest does not only mean sleep, although sleep is a large part of it. It also includes sitting comfortably doing not much of anything. It could mean listening to music, watching TV, or meditating. It could mean working quietly on a jigsaw puzzle, crafting, reading, playing solitaire, looking out the window, or journaling.

In the fall, as the person struggled with their autoimmune flare, they thought they should rest more. They were so used to overriding their body’s signals that they had not realized how far they had pushed themselves. When they checked how their mind and body were truly feeling, they were shocked to find they were almost buckling, on the edge of collapse.

They waited to notice what was happening until they reached a point where they could not do many tasks in the day. A good day during that time might have involved doing a single load of laundry or cooking dinner. They were so fixated on staying busy that they could no longer honestly assess their need for busyness. They had lost the ability to tune into their body to find out if it needed to move and stretch, or to stretch out and sleep.

Had they continued to push ahead for much longer, they are certain they would have fallen ill. They were dealing with brain fog, fatigue, and joint and muscle pain, all of which made life unpleasant. It is easy to see now that they should never have allowed things to get to that state, but fatigue, pain, and brain fog have a way of teaming up so you cannot clearly assess much of anything. When they hit the edge of collapse and burnout, they realized that serious rest was in order.

They cleared their calendar for at least three weeks. They cleared their work calendar of appointments, scheduled some brief blog posts and emails, and took time off. It was torture at first. Their husband was still getting up and heading out to teach tai chi and qigong classes, modeling proper work behavior. They also discovered they were incapable of just resting.

They had to relearn how to listen to their body to discover what it needed. They had to reprogram their thoughts about rest as being an inherent right that everyone holds, not a reward for productivity. They also had to learn how to actually do it.

They did all the things they listed as forms of rest, from naps to puzzles to sitting quietly. It was ridiculously difficult. They had to almost force themselves to limit themselves to single-tasking, which is doing one task at a time. That was especially hard if the task was mechanically simple, such as watching a television show. Their inner monologue would kick up, chastising them for just sitting there, urging them to be productive.

In moments when they decided that rest meant watching a movie on TV, they sometimes sat on their hands to make sure they did not pick up their phone or a crossword puzzle. They often put their phone on silent and deliberately left it in another room to reduce temptation. Even with taking affirmative steps to single-task, they did not always manage. They did learn through reinforcement that there was nothing likely to arise in an hour or two that required them to give up on resting and take immediate action.

They realized that in many ways, they were retraining their nervous system to allow itself to relax. It was so used to being in a state of alertness that resting and allowing it to have some time off took some getting used to. What they learned when they started to budget rest into their days was that they could start to tell more easily what signals their body was sending. It became easier to converse with their brain and body to find out how they were feeling and what they needed.

At any given moment, they can pause, tap into what they are feeling mentally and physically, and act on their own needs in ways that are more nurturing and caring than before. When they realize they are losing focus on a project, they no longer push through. They pause and check in with their brain and body. They can quickly ascertain whether they need to take a simple break, get up and walk around, take a walk outdoors, or stop for the day.

They are learning to embrace the idea that rest is an inherent right, not something that needs to be earned. It is no longer something that occurs only once they have pushed themselves until the point of collapse. The more they lean into rest and build it into their days, the more energy they have to accomplish all the things they want to get done in life. When they add time off or breaks during the day, they find they have better focus when they need to be working on a task. When they include rest in their days, they have the energy to exercise in the morning and also make a good meal for dinner.