Season 4 Episode 1: Intro to Rest
We are kicking off a new season talking all about rest!
In the first episode of our new season (!) Nancy wades into a topic that's both frustrated and fascinated her over the years-- rest. She grapples with why it's so hard for people like her with HFA to truly rest, and talks with her friend, Stephanie Pollack, about why rest is such a hot topic these days. This is just the first of our eight episode season all about rest-- so stay tuned for more!
Listen to the full episode to hear:
Nancy's personal relationship to rest, including why COVID has made resting even harder.
A conversation about rest with Nancy's friend Stephanie Poll0ck.
A sneak peek at what we'll be covering in the realm of rest this season.
Learn more about Stephanie Pollock:
Listen to Stephanie's podcast, "Everyday Leadership for Smart Women": https://stephaniepollock.com/podcast/
Subscribe to her newsletter: https://newsletter.stephaniepollock.com/
Follow Stephanie on Twitter @Steph_Pollock
Learn more about Self Loyalty School:
+ Read the Transcript
Nancy: Hey guys, it’s me! Nancy Jane Smith. Welcome back to the Happier Approach, the show that pulls back the curtain on the need to succeed, hustle, and achieve at the price of our inner peace and relationships.
I am so excited to dive into a brand new season! We’ve got eight episodes coming up, all on a topic that has both frustrated and fascinated me over the years. That topic is rest. I know what you’re thinking– REST!? I don’t have time for REST! Well, I thought that for a long time too. But in the past few years I’ve realized that really listening to my mind and body, and fighting against that instinct to go go go, can be a total game changer. Especially in a world where stressful things are happening every day.
I am well aware– from personal experience– it can be particularly hard for people with high functioning anxiety to ignore that nagging monger voice when it comes to rest. The one that says: you don’t deserve to REST! What if something bad happens while you’re resting! Stay vigilant, you! But I’m here to tell you you DO deserve rest. To feel restored. However that looks for you personally, because it looks different for everyone.
ACT I: Why Rest? Why Now?
"I am exhausted," a friend said to me. "I mean… soul level exhausted."
Yes, I thought, me too.
This is a refrain I have heard from clients, friends, and myself. We are exhausted.
When I think about what we have collectively been through in the past two plus years—global pandemic, increased gun violence, crazy weather due to climate change, the polarization of our politics and culture, threats to our democracy, and a war in Ukraine.
Everywhere you look, there is pain and suffering—and that doesn't even take into account all the personal traumas we have pushed through and dug deep around.
No wonder we are exhausted. We keep piling on more and more and more, with no time for rest. By the time we finish one major drama, we are on to the next.
Over the past few months, I have been digging deep to keep pushing and giving, giving, giving. I have ignored my body's signs of fatigue—I have pushed past the pain, stomach issues, and headaches, and rather than seeing them as signs to rest, I have worn them as a warped badge of honor. But this is not something I am proud of; this is an area where I need a lot of growth.
And I think that’s where my friend was when she said, "I am so exhausted."
At the end of May, I decided I couldn't push anymore. I needed to rest. I booked a short getaway to French Lick Indiana, for my husband and me. I set realistic expectations. I knew I was too tired for romance– I needed sleep.
I was expecting my Monger to criticize me for resting… but turns out I was too tired to care! All I did for 3 days was sleep. The only decisions I had to make were where to eat and where to rest. It was fantastic and blissful.
AND YET! On the drive home, back into reality I realized that I still felt exhausted. 3 days of sleep was but a drop in the bucket for the level of weariness I was feeling.
On that drive somewhere in Ohio, I decided I wanted to explore this idea of rest on a deeper level. Those of us with High Functioning Anxiety have an especially tense relationship with rest.
My first response when I realize I am exhausted is: ugh, I shouldn't be tired—why am I tired?!? And so, I try to justify my fatigue or beat myself up for it.
If I can justify my tiredness and it passes my Monger's test, I deserve to be tired. I can rest. But only for a little bit. There is a lot to get done! People who need care! Push Push Push!
The more exhausted I get, the more I push myself. And once I do this push push push behavior for a few days or a week, it is like a lever gets triggered internally, and I hit the place of no return. My Monger takes over, and screams “THERE WILL BE NO RESTING.” My anxiety goes sky-high, and my unhealthy coping skills come into play. My Monger regularly chimes in with, “Only YOU can do this—THEY will mess it up. You must control everything for it to go well because it must be perfect.”
There is no time for practicing A.S.K., acknowledging feelings, or slowing down. My Monger is driving the bus, going off-road at 100 mph.
Sometimes when I feel like this– in the throes of a monger-attack and beyond exhausted– I’ll reach out to a friend to try to sort through what’s going on and make sense of my feelings. That’s why I reached out to my friend Stephanie.
ACT II: Interview with Stephanie Pollock
Nancy Jane Smith: Hi Steph.
Stephanie Pollock: Hi.
Nancy: This is my friend, Stephanie Pollock.
Stephanie Pollock: I am a leadership coach and community builder for progressive purpose driven women who want to create social impact in the world.
Nancy: Stephanie and I met many years ago at a conference. We were fast friends– being in the same business and dealing with some of the same issues with high functioning anxiety gave us a lot to talk about. Eventually, we started talking back and forth every day.
Nancy Jane Smith: Yeah, it was funny cuz I know you're getting ready to leave on vacation and then I'm getting ready to leave on vacation. And I said to Doug, I was walking upstairs to go to bed last night and I said, Stephanie leaves on vacation next week. And then I'm gonna be on vacation and it's gonna be like three weeks where we're not gonna be together talking.
And I said, it's just a really weird relationship that I have with her. And he said, yes, it is. I can't figure it out.
Stephanie Pollock: Then that has to mean there's something special about it.
Nancy: There IS something special about our relationship. We’re able to talk freely with each other. To explore our ideas and feelings in a way that helps both of us to make sense of the world. And something we’ve been talking about a lot lately? Rest.
Nancy Jane Smith: What is your relationship with rest, Stephanie?
Stephanie Pollock: Oh, it's totally positive. I do it really well. All of the time. I kid, uh, I, I struggle with rest, you know, that, you know, I struggle with rest. Uh, I am a type, a ambitious, uh, achievement oriented for better, for worse. often for worse type of person. And so rest doesn't compute well with that.
Nancy: Like a lot of people, Stephanie’s fraught relationship with rest started when she was a kid.
Stephanie Pollock: When I was 14, he, you know, I was 14. I wanted to go to the mall with my friends. That's what you did at 14.
Nancy: Her dad made an offhand comment about Stephanie being lazy because she wanted to go to the mall on a Saturday afternoon instead of doing chores. And even though he didn’t really mean anything by it, that moment dramatically changed the way she saw rest. From now on, it was like a dirty word.
Stephanie Pollock: Something tweaked in my brain and I said, oh, I'm lazy. I need to change that. It was a really pivotal moment because it set into motion my need to go after all the things, to join all the teams, to say yes to everything, to work really hard. It wasn't enough to be on the sports team. I had to be the captain of the sports team.
And so that has been, you know, 30 years of my life. Because if you believe that your value is measured in your output and your achievements, then rest is wasteful.
Nancy: This all sounds way too familiar to me. I see it in my clients all the time. And I see it in myself. But Stephanie and I are BOTH practicing redefining for ourselves what it means to truly rest.
Nancy Jane Smith: Cause it's not just about, I'm gonna go take a bubble bath, it's more than that. What I'm interested about [with] rest is what we think about when we think about rest. I think, oh, it's taking the afternoon off to watch TV or it's, you know, reading a good book or it's, um, you know, like that sort of stuff is rest, but, but it's also a a state, it's a mindset. Of okay. I have 30 minutes. What can I do in this time to rest, versus who can I talk to? What can I accomplish? What podcast do I need to listen to?
That idea, I think is something I'm trying to change in how I view rest that, oh, it's how I'm doing my day to day mindset. Not just, oh, I'm taking an afternoon to spend in the garden because that doesn't seem to cut it anymore.
Stephanie Pollock: I read an article a number of years ago, it's called the seven different types of rest. And that is something that always comes to my mind when I really think about what it means to rest and what kind of rest I need.
Nancy: That was interesting to me. That there could be different kinds of rest, to address different kinds of weariness.
Stephanie Pollock: So there's physical rest, which is both active and passive. Passive is like sleeping or napping. Whereas active is like yoga or meditation or things like that. And then there's emotional rest, mental rest, spiritual rest, creative rest, social rest, and sensory rest. And that has been really helpful for me. To really be able to tune into what kind of rest do I actually need.
Nancy: So, if you’re pretty good sleeper it’s easy to say: well, you got eight hours of sleep. Why are you tired? What’s your problem?? But if you look at rest from this perspective, maybe physical rest isn’t what you needed. Maybe you needed social rest, or emotional rest. For Stephanie, what she often needs is sensory or creative rest.
Stephanie Pollock: This brain of mine it's on 24/7. It never stops. And it runs on overdrive. So if I don't give it any room to just take a break by, you know, stopping the scroll on Twitter or creative, meaning you don't have to come up with an idea. You don't have to action on something right now. That really helps me kind of dial that back again, imperfectly, but at least gives me a bit of a frame to say yet, you know? Yeah. You're sitting here, you're drinking your coffee in the morning and that's restful.
Nancy Jane Smith: So paint me a picture of what true rest looks like to you.
Stephanie Pollock: Well, as somebody who's had a very busy household, particularly during COVID with kids at home husband at home working. I have realized true rest means I need some time alone. I need quiet, uninterrupted time where I can just be, I don't have to do anything or say anything or be anything other than kind of whatever I need.
You need to give yourself some grace, which I totally believe, I say that to clients all of the time, because they are so hard on themselves as I am to myself. if we're not careful and there's some realities of life that it's like, yeah, yeah. And still keep working.
Nancy Jane Smith: Someone tells me to give myself grace, what I hear them saying is be the BFF, you know, take the afternoon off. You know, when in reality, I think what we are saying is just be kind to yourself about all the stuff you have going on,
I know my stress is at a seven and I can't, and that just tips me over into even more over functioning. You'd think I would get to a seven or an eight and I'd be like, no, now you need rest. No, it's like, I go the opposite. So I get to, if I hit that tipping point, I just am way over. Stephanie Pollock: Yeah, I relate to that.
Nancy: I’m someone who finds it really hard to give myself grace, even in the best of times. But something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, is how this idea that the past few years have been a chance to “reset” has really messed with my idea of what rest looks like.
Nancy Jane Smith: So there was this myth of COVID I remember at the time like, oh, this is the great reset and we're all gonna figure out, you know, how important it is to be resting. And what I think COVID did was it forced us to, you know, to step off the Merry round of stress and commitments, which was awesome. But then it also forced us into a world of no social contact with all these traumatic things happening So now then the world reopens and we're kind of left with all this unresolved trauma, but now expected to deal with it. And so now we're out and our parents have aged to the kids of age. Everyone's stressed. Like life has just gotten harder.
Do you agree with that? What are your thoughts on that?
Stephanie Pollock: I think we are still trying to figure out what this time now looks like and what we want it to be. And, you know, I think back to the early days, my kids came home, my husband came home. It was just managing life. It was managing homeschooling. My, you know, then nine year old daughter was still doing zoom soccer in the basement because they wanted to keep her going.
It was like, oh it is really nice to take my, you know, type a brain down a notch and say, no, you just can't do these things. You don't have to feel guilty about them. You don't have to wonder, should I, could I, would I, because it's just not on the table.
And then we kind of did the ebb and flow of COVID like, it's back it's, it's dipping it's back, it's dipping. And so I just, you know, personally felt like I was on that rollercoaster of like, how much do I invest in my, you know, in my work, in this way, in a project, knowing that it could change.
Oh my gosh, it's been so much. I think we are all now exhausted. Everybody I talk to is exhausted. When I operate like that, I just start to operate a little bit by default. So it's like, well, okay. You know, what do we, what do we used to do? I'll just start doing those things again.
Nancy Jane Smith: The word default there, you know, is, is totally accurate. Like that's how I feel. I mean, that's how I feel. And I can see that in my clients that it's just kind of like, you know, and I, we just, I just picked up where I left off. But what we're doing is we're ignoring the anxiety and the trauma and the, you know, and a little T trauma for many people, many people was a big T trauma of COVID, but we're ignoring what we went through and how anxiety provoking and awful that was.
And part of that is because we're all done. And so we don't wanna talk about it. We have been through hell and we can't just pretend that hell didn't happen and go right back into our lives. And I think that's why, you know, so many of my clients are back at their jobs working 50, 60 hours, you know, the, uh, because people have resigned and they're like, I should be able to do this cuz I did it before.
Stephanie Pollock: I think that's still true. Like the threat isn't imminent in the way it was. We're still we're back to work. We're back at the, you know, the social engagements, we're doing all these things, but all that stored up years worth of, you know, sitting at three 30 to watch our chief medical officer tell us what the numbers are with my husband.
I feel that all of those micro experiences through the pandemic, the sitting and listening to the health officer, the scrolling through Twitter, all of those micro things that have long since passed now they're over. But I feel like somewhere they're a little still embedded in me and that they have accumulated to a point where I don't feel some days, like I have that same get up and go that I used to have pre pandemic, even though the conditions are available now, for me to reactivate that.
I do notice that my capacity it's like I once was operating at a tank of, you know, a hundred percent. And now my tank is like 60 percent.
Nancy Jane Smith: Mm-hmm yes. Yeah. Mm-hmm
Stephanie Pollock: Right. All the time. And I keep trying to like, get it up to 70 and fill it up more. And it's like, no, we're staying at 60 friend.
Like we're just gonna be here for a while. And that is really frustrating. And then that sends my monger into overdrive.
Nancy Jane Smith: Yeah, but I think it is somewhere in the acknowledging what we've been through. Like it is kind of admitting I'm at 60. And I'm not gonna beat myself up for that. I'm just gonna recognize I'm just gonna give myself grace
Stephanie Pollock: Yes.
Nancy Jane Smith: I think it is acknowledging why we're at a 60 versus just giving ourselves grace for the fact that we are at a 60, but consistently bringing it up, like, dude, look what you've lived through. Get a grip.
Stephanie Pollock: Yeah. Okay. But here's the problem. So I'm just gonna be real. We can say that, you've said it to me. I've said it to you. We've said it to our clients and our friends, like, dude, of course you're here. Right? Of course.
Nancy Jane Smith: mm.
Stephanie Pollock: So it's like, yeah, of course, of course you're feeling that way. And then I can go. Yeah, like that's okay. That I am. But the other part of me is like when is it gonna end? Nancy Jane Smith: Right. Totally
Stephanie Pollock: Could you give me an end date please? Because then I can get on board with this whole grace thing. But if this is just the new normal I'm not down with that. For high functioning people, it's like, and what do I do to move to the other side of this? And I don’t know the answer.
Nancy Jane Smith: No, I know. Yeah. Right. I don't. That's why I'm doing a podcast series on rest. Stephanie Pollock: It is the, the magic question, because part of me goes like if I just slept an extra hour and ate a little more spinach, would this make the difference? Like I just, but seriously, like am I just now at a 60 indefinitely? Am I gonna incrementally move 61 62 63. Or do I just need to like get over myself and be okay with being at 60 for a while until I'm not Nancy Jane Smith: Right. How do I do life knowing that, and then have this capacity that I can only do 60%. And I have to come to some acceptance of the fact, this is the reality right now, because trying to slam myself into a box, you know, my round peg into a square box, I'm killing myself. I mean, I'm, I'm wasting 20% more of my energy doing that. So now I'm down to 40% cuz I'm beating myself up all day.
Nancy: Making that adjustment takes patience. It takes time, and a willingness to sit with yourself and really ask– what do I need right now? What kind of rest would be helpful to me in this season of my life. And sometimes, remembering that we’re all on this crazy merry-go-round together for just a short time, can help us make peace with where we’re at.
Stephanie Pollock: You know, next week I'll be on vacation and we go to this place every year. My mother and father-in-law are on the coast of Canada in a beautiful spot, right on the ocean. It's just picturesque. And it really, it is restful for me to be there. It's called Cathedral Grove and it is a forest that is, you know, there's a tree there that's 800 years old. So it's full of these old, old, old trees. And it, for me, when I go there, it is that kind of spiritual rest part. You know, I'm not a religious person, but it is that kind of spiritual rest of remembering: things have come and gone. People have come and gone.
Stephanie Pollock: What are the things that actually really matter here and how can I use this 60% toward those things, as opposed to constantly bemoaning that I'm not at 80 or 90 or a hundred. But I still can be intentional about how I think about what's important to me and where I'm gonna put my energy.
Like this is the cycle of life. I am part of it. I am not it. I am part of it. And it's very grounding for me to just kind of remember that we have these ebbs and flows.
ACT III: Nancy’s Conclusion Nancy: Taking back the wheel from my Monger when she’s going full-speed crazy– trying to tell me that I should be operating at 100% when that’s just NOT possible– acknowledging that impossibility, and putting on the brakes… is messy. Because when I put on the brakes—all the feelings I have been avoiding bubble up, and initially my anxiety increases as I go from lots of distractions to none.
If you, too, are exhausted from pushing and pushing, digging deep to keep all the plates spinning in the air at once, hit subscribe because this season of the podcast will help.
We must rest! And over the next 8 episodes we will be looking at the concept of rest from all different angles. We’ll talk to a sleep expert to help us learn all about sleep. We’ll explore rest through mindfulness and meditation, through the seasons of our lives. We’ll even hear about the power of napping. We’ll also look at why it is so hard for those of us with HFA to rest and what to do about it. Like, how to take a truly restful vacation, how to break the belief that “I can suffer better so I need to keep pushing,” and how to stop treating our bodies like machines.
I am so excited for this season and hopeful that we will have found a way to ease our weariness by the end.
Outro
That’s it for this week! In our next episode we’ll talk to a cognitive neuroscientist and author, who’s focused her career on researching the power of sleep. We’ll learn about WHY sleep is so important, and what you can do to embrace this important element of rest in your own life. That’s next time, on the Happier Approach.
Nancy: The Happier Approach is produced by Nicki Stein and me, Nancy Jane Smith. Music provided by Pod5 and Epidemic Sound. For more episodes, to get in touch, or to learn more about quieting High Functioning Anxiety you can visit nancy jane smith dot com. And if you like the show, leave us a review! It actually helps us out a lot.
Thanks to my friend Stephanie Pollock for speaking with us today. You can learn more about Stephanie, reach out to her– or listen to her awesome podcast “Everyday Leadership for Smart Women”– at stephaniepollck.com.
The Happier Approach will be back with another episode in two weeks. Take care, until then.