Is it possible to relax without feeling guilty?
As someone who has dealt with mental health issues (particularly anxiety, depression, and ADHD) for most of my adult life, it has always felt impossible to relax.
Even when I’m exhausted mentally and/or physically. Or when my to-do list is done. And even when I know I NEED rest.
I sit down to relax, flip on my favorite show and then….. my brains starts shaming me. It starts making me feel guilty for taking a little me-time instead of being ‘productive’. It relabels ‘self-care’ as ‘laziness’.
Sound familiar?
I’ve heard from so many other people who struggle with mental health that this is the norm. And frustratingly so.
So, what do we do? How do we get our brains to give us a break (literally) and let us relax without feeling guilty?
Below, I’m giving you some strategies to try out that might just help you nip this issue in the bud once and for all.
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All the tips in the post are for education purposes only and are not intended to replace medical advice from a medical professional.
1. Relax with the Pomodoro technique
If your brain is relentless about needing to get stuff done, then the Pomodoro method is a good negotiation technique.
Here’s how it works: You will split up your time into alternating intervals. For the first interval, you will be productive and work on whatever you need to work on. Then for the second interval, you’ll rest. And then you’ll continue this way for as long as you’d like.
This could look like 20 minutes of work followed by 10 minutes of relaxation, or even 5 minutes of work followed by an hour of relaxation. The time intervals are totally up to you.
This technique gives our brains a little less reason to play the guilt game, because we’re still accomplishing something.
2. Set an alarm for your guilt.
This one is my absolute favorite on the list because it has worked so so well for me with my own rest-induced guilt.
Here’s how I do it: If I start to feel guilty while relaxing, I set an alarm for a later time. And I tell myself (i.e. my brain) that once that alarm goes off, that’s when I’m allowed to start thinking/worrying about my to-do list or my stressors or whatever else is on my mind. But until then, I will be relaxing.
So if my alarm is set for 3 pm, then until 3 pm, my brain is off of the clock.
Something about this just works wonders for our brains. It’s like just having that goal post set for our brains can really take the weight off of things. And 9.99 times out of 10, this really helps me feel more relaxed and waaaaay less guilty for resting.
3. Rewire your brain to see ‘rest’ as productive.
Reconditioning your brain is definitely not the easiest method on this list. It’s a long-term goal, and it takes a lot of work.
But if you can keep reminding your brain over and over again that rest is productive, then eventually it’ll start to believe that.
So many of us see rest as laziness. Whether that’s from what we were told as children, or the stigmas around work we deal with, or just the internal (somewhat mean) voice we all have, the result is the same.
So breaking that stigma and rewriting the beliefs we have about rest is so important.
Remind yourself that you can’t pour from an empty cup. You can’t keep giving to the world and to your own life if you have nothing left to give.
No one throws a fit about eating when we’re hungry, so why is resting when we’re tired any different?
We rest to recharge our batteries. To take care of our bodies and our minds.
Try to teach yourself that rest is productive. Because it is.
4. Add relaxing to your to-do list.
If you’re someone who is driven by your to-do list, but struggles with rest, then maybe an easy solution is adding rest to your to-do list.
Having it there, written out, makes it seem like any other task that we need to get done.
Some people write it into their planners, or set an appointment in their phone, or have it jotted in their minds as a regular occurrence, maybe every Friday night for example.
Doing this takes it from being ‘rest is something we do that keeps us away from our to-do list’ to ‘rest is part of my to-do list, so getting it done is accomplishing something’.
5. Make rest routine.
If you begin to add rest into your daily routine, then it becomes more natural and can also keep your brain from playing the guessing game.
When we go days, weeks, or even months (yikes) without resting, then the desire for rest just grows and grows until it can feel like we need a TON of it to feel better again.
And unfortunately, stress and chores and work won’t just stop if it gets to the point that we need to rest for 3 days straight.
I’ve learned the more depleted I feel, the more guilty my brain makes me feel for resting.
One way around this, when possible, is to incorporate rest into a part of your regular routine.
Whether it’s spending 30 minutes on a morning routine each day, or having a certain day each week where you know you can rest and look forward to that, or being more intentional about how you spend your lunch breaks (doom scrolling is not relaxing, let’s be honest), getting something regularly scheduled can really change the game.
My husband and I recently started doing weekly movie nights. So now I know that each Friday night, he and I will make some popcorn and get some candy and put on our comfiest clothes and collapse into a pile of blankets on the couch while watching a movie. Getting to look forward to that scheduled rest has felt like a huge weight off of my shoulders.
I didn’t realize how much time my brain spent wondering ‘when will I get to rest again?’ until I started scheduling it out.
6. Set your expectations.
As hard as it is, train your brain to know that not everything will get accomplished 100% of the time and that’s okay.
There might always be something left on your to-do list. There might always be an unfinished project waiting for you to come back to it.
And it’s hard to push that out of our minds. But learning to accept it, and to be comfortable with it, can truly set you free in so many ways.
Often the thing about pressure like guilt is that we get so used to it we don’t even recognize it as abnormal anymore.
Always striving for perfection and a 100% success rate will not only wear you down, but it also puts a lot of strain on the rest of your life.
Teach yourself to let go of the idea of perfection. Do what you can, but make sure your needs are being met too. And one of your non-negotiable needs is self-care and rest.
7. If you must be productive, pair it with something relaxing.
They call this ‘habit stacking’, and I talk about it a lot in my 60-Day Anti-Depression Workbook.
The days are short, and sometimes we really do have to be productive rather than relaxing.
But, in those moments when you can, especially if you’re in need of some self-care, try adding something relaxing in with your productivity.
Listen to an audiobook while working. Watch a movie while folding laundry. Ask a friend to run errands with you, then grab some dinner afterwards.
Finding ways to incorporate relaxation into your life wherever possible will only help you. And if you can’t skip the tasks on your to-do list, then this is a great way to make sure you aren’t foregoing relaxation all together.
Just make sure that your rest isn’t ALWAYS combined with other tasks. Devoted time to rest is still important.
If you struggle with mental health, relaxing can feel such an unnecessarily difficult task. I hope these tips will help you find relaxation and rest more attainable and enjoyable.
If you have any tips you swear by that aren’t on this list, let me know in the comments!
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