When Rest Feels Impossible: Why Healing Doesn’t Start With Being Okay
09/07/2025
The Myth of “Earning” Rest
So many people grow up learning that rest has to be earned. You finish the chores, the work, the obligations, and only then do you get to stop. If you are still standing, you must keep going. Rest becomes a prize for performance instead of a basic human need.
I remember this from my barista days. “If you have time to lean, you have time to clean.” I can still hear it ringing in my ear. It didn’t matter how long we had been on the floor or how many customers we had just served. The message was clear: idleness was unacceptable. Every second had to be filled with effort.
For survivors of trauma, that message often runs even deeper. The nervous system wires itself to be on guard. Slowing down feels unsafe because you learned that letting your guard down was dangerous. Resting is not just difficult. It feels impossible.
Why Rest Feels Unsafe
Trauma changes how the body keeps score. Your brain may say you are fine, but your body remembers otherwise. Even when life looks calm, your system can stay on high alert.
That high alert is exhausting. But when you try to rest, your body resists. Thoughts race. Muscles tense. Sleep feels shallow. You might even feel guilty for wanting to pause. Rest triggers alarm instead of comfort.
This is not laziness. It is not weakness. It is survival mode still running long after the danger has passed.
Signs Rest Feels Unsafe
If rest feels impossible, it often shows up in small but familiar ways:
Feeling guilty for napping or sleeping in
Rest days filled with anxiety instead of relaxation
Trouble sitting still without needing a distraction
Always saying yes because stopping feels selfish
If these sound familiar, you are not failing. These are survival patterns.
Rest Is Not Laziness. Rest Is Repair.
The truth is simple. Rest is not a prize for performance. It is a basic human need. Rest is how the nervous system begins to repair. Muscles unclench. Breathing slows. The body shifts from protection to healing.
But if you have lived in survival mode, rest does not come naturally. That does not mean you are broken. It means your system learned to survive by staying on. Healing is the process of teaching it that off is possible too.
How Therapy Helps Relearn Safety
In trauma therapy, the first step is often not about revisiting memories. It is about creating safety right now. Sometimes that means practicing what it feels like to pause for thirty seconds without judgment. Sometimes it is noticing one calm breath. Sometimes it is simply learning that stopping is allowed.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) can support this process. EMDR helps the nervous system reprocess old experiences so they lose their grip. Over time, your body learns that it can stand down. Rest stops feeling like danger and starts feeling like relief.
Healing is not about forcing yourself to be okay. It is about giving your body new experiences of safety until rest becomes possible again.
Quiet Rebellion
In a world that glorifies burnout, choosing rest is an act of rebellion. For trauma survivors, it is even more powerful. Rest says, “I deserve repair. I deserve care. I deserve to stop.”
I think back to that old barista mantra. “If you have time to lean, you have time to clean.” For me, the quiet rebellion is this: if you have time to heal, you have time to rest.
Final Thoughts
If you find yourself unable to rest no matter how tired you are, you are not alone. It is not because you are weak. It is because your nervous system has been working overtime for years. Healing does not begin with being okay. It begins with noticing that even if rest feels impossible, it is still yours to claim.
Therapy is one place to start practicing that truth. You do not have to do it alone.
Ready to Begin?
If rest feels impossible, you don’t have to figure it out alone. Therapy can help your nervous system relearn safety so rest feels less like danger and more like relief. Schedule a free 15-min consultation →