Brazil’s Rest Paradox: Why We Can’t and Why We Must

In November 2021, a woman with autoimmune issues experienced a flare-up. Her doctor was not sure if the cause was rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, or a combination of both. The symptoms included widespread achiness and severe fatigue, which she said were clear signs that something was more active than usual.

She woke up tired, needed naps, and often felt she had run out of energy. This feeling is familiar to many people with chronic conditions. It is based on an essay called “The Spoon Theory” by Christine Miserandino. While the exact reason for the flare-up was unknown, the woman said one thing was certain: her body was demanding rest.

She noted that knowing she needed rest did not make it easy to actually rest. She would sit down to watch a show and try to multitask. She would put off taking a nap like a stubborn child. Instead of giving in, she tried to push through the fatigue to finish typing an email or move laundry into the dryer.

Even with her body and brain crying out for rest, she found it hard to allow herself to do it. She had to reparent herself to enforce stopping times and rest periods. She explained that people in the Western world, especially in the United States, are programmed to be productive. They are told they should be busy with work, errands, and chores.

From a young age, people are conditioned to stay busy. 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 someone avoids these direct messages, they learn them by watching the people in their lives. They see parents come home from work with groceries, fix dinner, and put things 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, many people do more work, both paid and unpaid. They knit, iron, or putter around the house. Society tells people they have to work hard to succeed, that nothing good comes easy, and that they should not stop when tired, only when done. Sitting down and resting is not a priority. Those who decide to rest often feel they must justify it, as if they have earned the right.

Rest as a learned skill

Rest does not only mean sleep, although sleep is a large part of it. It also includes sitting comfortably and doing nothing much at all. It could mean listening to music, watching TV, or meditating. It might involve working quietly on a jigsaw puzzle, reading a book, playing solitaire, looking out the window, or journaling.

During her flare-up in the fall, the woman realized she needed to rest more. She was so used to overriding her body’s signals that she had not noticed how far she had pushed herself. When she checked how her mind and body truly felt, she was shocked to find they were almost buckling, on the edge of collapse. She had waited to notice what was happening until she could barely do any tasks during the day. A good day might have involved doing a single load of laundry or cooking dinner for her husband and herself.

She was so focused on staying busy that she could no longer honestly assess her need for activity. She had lost the ability to tune into her body to know if it needed to move, stretch, or sleep. She believes that if she had continued pushing ahead much longer, she would have fallen ill. She was already dealing with brain fog, fatigue, and joint and muscle pain, which made life unpleasant.

Looking back, she said she should never have let things get to that state. But fatigue, pain, and brain fog can team up to make clear assessment difficult. When she hit the edge of collapse and burnout, she realized that serious rest was needed. She cleared her calendar for at least three weeks. She removed work appointments, scheduled brief blog posts and emails, and took time off.

At first, it was torture. Her husband was still getting up and going out to teach tai chi and qigong classes, modeling proper work behavior. She also discovered she was incapable of just resting. She had to relearn how to listen to her body to find out what it needed. She had to reprogram her thoughts about rest, seeing it as an inherent right, not a reward for productivity.

She did all the forms of rest she listed, from naps to puzzles to sitting quietly. It was very difficult. She had to force herself to limit herself to single-tasking, doing one task at a time. This was especially hard if the task was simple, like watching a television show. Her inner monologue would scold her for just sitting there and urge her to be productive. When she decided rest meant watching a movie, she sometimes sat on her hands to avoid picking up her phone or a crossword puzzle. She often put her phone on silent and left it in another room to reduce temptation.

Even with these steps, she did not always manage to single-task. But she learned that nothing urgent was likely to arise in an hour or two that required her to give up resting. She realized she was retraining her nervous system to relax. It was so used to being alert that resting took some getting used to.

Building rest into daily life

When she started to budget rest into her days, she found it easier to tell what signals her body was sending. It became easier to check in with her brain and body to find out how they felt and what they needed. She said she has never felt more integrated. At any moment, she can pause, tap into what she is feeling mentally and physically, and act on her own needs in a more nurturing way.

When she realizes she is losing focus on a project, such as typing a blog post or planning a workshop, she no longer pushes through. Instead, she pauses and checks in with her brain and body. With practice, she can quickly decide if she needs a simple break, to get up and walk around, to take a walk outdoors, or to stop for the day.

She is learning to embrace the idea that rest is an inherent right, not something that needs to be earned. It is no longer something that happens only after pushing herself to the point of collapse. She found that the more she leans into rest and builds it into her days, the more energy she has to accomplish the things she wants to get done. When she adds time off or breaks during the day, she has better focus when working on a task. When she includes rest, she has the energy to exercise in the morning and make a good meal for dinner.