Relaxing makes me nervous
If someone tells you “just relax!” and you feel like punching them in the face, I get it. Do you avoid relaxing because it makes you feel restless or agitated?
You’re not alone!
It sounds backwards, but it happens for so many people - especially busy, driven women
The problem is staying busy is a short term solution with long term consequences
“Just relaxing” is not a viable option for everyone
Your life may be genuinely filled with an ever-expanding number of very necessary tasks that all the “just relaxing” people don’t see *because you are doing them*
On the other hand, it’s also true that you might have ended up in this very necessary position not by choice but because your survival brain is running the show, and it can’t tolerate standing down for a minute.
I learned this in the hard way 10 years ago when my body finally gave out and I spent 3 months in bed twitching like a dying bug from adrenaline withdrawal
Here’s what I wish I’d known earlier
I don’t need a vacation, I need safety
“Time off” doesn’t help if you bring your survival brain with you
You will continue obsessively scanning and preparing for threats until you learn how to build safety and proactively shift out of survival mode.
2. I don’t need a shoulder to cry on, I need self-mastery
I had a lot of feelings bottled up, but spilling them on a couch once a week wasn’t making me feel better, it was making me feel worse.
There’s a time and place to feel your feelings, but we need to build the mental and emotional muscles to choose when and how to do that.
3. Relaxing is a skill, I’m just not very good at it — yet
When I reframed relaxing as a skill that I had to learn, it got exciting instead of frustrating
I learned to take it step by step and relish the satisfaction of real progress and ability to live in the moment became a reality instead of a dream.
If you, like me, are the go-to “do-er” in your household, at your work or in your friend group, you may have elected yourself to that position because relaxing is just not something you’re good at. And you don’t do things you’re not good at.
What you have is a superpower, but it needs to be used for good, not for evil. That means you need to have the option to switch out of survival mode.
The good news is that deep relaxation is not magic, or a blessing bestowed from above only on the lucky few. It is actually a skill and - because you are so good at learning and doing things - you can tackle learning this skill and you can master it.
In resilience,
Caitlin