How To Rest Well

6 minute read

I am tired. As I write this piece I am promising myself a nap after I finish it. But the problem is I’m always tired these days - it’s a sort of bone-tired that I am finding to be unique and quite specific to my midlife. I don’t love it.

The naps I take from time to time (and fully endorse, by the way) just don’t seem to fill the gap anymore. They don’t scratch the itch. A twenty-minute power down used to fully refresh me, but these days they’re just not working. The thing is, as well as a midlife sort of generalised tiredness that I think comes with being a human at this age, the real thing that’s affecting us all is the undeniable feeling of emotional overload, and for women, it seems just so much more these days. At this point, we are being told we are ‘post-pandemic’, but it doesn’t really feel like we are - also, I maintain we are all holding a significant amount of unnameable trauma in our hearts, minds and bodies too - a new PTSD perhaps - Pandemic Traumatic Stress Disorder.

And on top of that, there’s war, the cost of living, the HRT shortage, the US terrifyingly retreating back to the dark ages for women’s rights - there is just so much fear around - so no wonder we’re all so tired, walking around Zombie-like, back to running full tilt on the hamster wheel after the Covid hiatus, happy to be moving again but also wishing we could stop to shout BUT ISN’T THIS ALL A BIT SHIT???!!

So, this thinking (and the bone-tiredness) led me to look into what’s going on with this endless exhaustion and it turns out that we - all of us - not just overloaded midlifers - need seven distinct types of rest to feel truly rejuvenated. Yep - seven. Not seven hours of sleep each night, as per the usual guidance we all know, seven separate kinds of restorative action to feel fully refreshed and centred. According to Dr Saundra Dalton-Smyth, who wrote a book called Sacred Rest: Recover Your Life, Renew Your Energy, Restore Your Sanity, and in it talks about the need to be fully rested in roder to handle the real pressures of life, the seven kinds of rest are: physical, mental, emotional, social, sensory, creative and spiritual.

Now, you may think, like I did, that if I were to truly tend to each of those pillars of rest, I would have to entirely withdraw from daily life and my duties that lie within it. I would be in a state of full rest - something absolute - not moving, not engaging, not living. But no, what she is in fact espousing is learning a way to be aware of all the pillars, of how and when you need to refresh them and then, how to, quite simply, weave these refreshes into daily life. It’s a case of adding in order to not have to subtract. Take her online ‘rest quiz’ to see where your real deficits lie - it’s quite revealing!

Physical

Perhaps a no-brainer - if our bodies are overworked and over-exercised, we need to rest them. This feels like Fatigue 101 on first look, but Dr Dalton-Smyth also suggests looking at the physical exhaustion felt after a day at a desk. Of the crunched shoulders, the stiff lower back - this too is physical exhaustion. And this can be alleviated with movement breaks - she calls it ‘body fluidity’ and I don’t think it even has to be as defined as ‘take an online yoga class at lunchtime’, I think it’s more like ‘stand up and walk around every 20 minutes.’ Perhaps a gigantic stretch, or touching your toes, or leaning your legs up the wall to reverse the blood flow - little things that make a difference to a body stuck in a fairly static state if a desk-bound worker, for example. Makes sense really doesn’t it.

Mental

The digital overload is real, right? As is the news cycle, the notifications and our inboxes. All of this is putting pressure on our brain function and needs relieving or we feel much more brain foggy than even our peri/menopausal symptoms allow for. We all need brain breaks. Turn off notifications, put your phone on silent in another room and when you are taking a movement break from your desk, don’t fill your brain with useless information - instead go outside and breathe, or make tea - just do nothing very much. Give your brain some downtime - let it stop trying to process constantly - there’s too much input and it’s exhausting.

Emotional

This kind of fatigue is quite all-encompassing and the one we can tend to hold quite deep down inside ourselves - hidden away from our awareness - happily doing all sorts of damage to our wellbeing! A way to think about it is to perform an audit of sorts on what’s overloading you - it might not be easy, especially at this age - it might be relationships (it will probably be relationships!) - with partners, parents, kids, colleagues, friends - all quite tricky. Have a think about those that are draining you. About those you feel used within, unloved, disrespected…
It’s tough work, but that’s why they call it ‘the work’. But it’s worth it because it makes things feel much lighter once you audit - then you edit - then suddenly you’re less drained, less tired, more light. Also - go to therapy. There is no better investment in your emotional life and landscape. Many kind and brilliant counsellors offer reduced rates if cost feels prohibitive these days too - so look into it; it’s life-changing.

Social

Another Fatigue 101 you may say - feeling tired, don’t go out. No, in fact, it’s the opposite. If you’re feeling socially drained, by work, by family, by the same old, same old conversations at home, try something different. Seek out the people whose company you enjoy. Maybe your hairdresser makes you laugh? Maybe you always have a short, but enlivening chat with the woman in the coffee shop, it’s not always about the length of time spent, it’s about the worth of the interaction. It can reset you. I had an amazing, expansive, authentic and moving conversation with the woman dyeing my hair this week - I have dined out on it emotionally all week. She hadn’t done my hair before and as soon as I sat down, we got straight into the real talk - it was gorgeous. Sometimes real rest is in someone new to you. Be open to finding them.

Sensory

I have noticed that, as I’m ageing, I am becoming far less tolerant of sound sources. Yes, yes, cue all the memes about turning down the radio so you can see better - I know, I know - but it’s also to do with sensory overload. A lot of us midlifers have kids talking to us about something intensely random while we are doing four other important things, and the radio or TV may be on (at the same time) or whatever. I guess this one is about figuring out if silence soothes you - it does for me - but I’ve only recently figured this out. A similar sensory overload for women might be when you have smaller kids who are on you all the time and then, perhaps, your partner comes home and would like connection and affection and you still have to call your mum or write that thing or pay that bill and you’re all touched out and it’s too bloody much. Relate?
In terms of a fix, I have found nothing else as strong a sensory reset as jumping in the sea - the cold shock is so intense that all overload fades away. Failing a nearby coastline, a cold shower works wonders - you can also squeal to your heart’s content at home - it’s great, I promise!

Creative

Dalton-Smyth advises a sort of ‘sabbatical’ to refresh thinking and creativity and while most of us can’t take weeks off to walk The Camino, we can build in some creative nourishment into our calendars if we really want to. I take my (whingeing) teen and tween to art galleries often for such artistic nurturing - they hate it - but I love it and I feel that even some of the grand ideas and creativity must go into them somehow - even on a particle level - like osmosis.
I also crave time away, by myself. European cities do it for me, my creativity comes flooding back like a tap turned on again. Ideas, once stagnant, become flood waters again…

But I think too, on a granular level, walks in nature, and by the sea are huge creative resets. As are old movies. I watched Awakenings last night, the 1990 movie with Robin Williams and Robert de Niro about the doctor working with people with locked-in syndrome - remember it? It sounds grim - it’s not - it is pure, unadulterated joy and I am a new person today. A case in point is this very article - it was due here two weeks ago, I couldn’t find the words to bring it to life, and here they are falling out of me. Absorbing the creative output of other people increases our own - and I’m not talking TikTok or Instagram Reels - something real, something considered - creativity breeds creativity. Get thee to a gallery!

Spiritual

Dalton-Smyth also advises tuning into a spiritual focus to lift one out of the day to day drudgery that exhausts us. That to believe in something brings perspective and a sense of purpose. And that this, in turn, is restful to our constantly questing human minds. This is a tricky one for many I guess. There are so many questions and emotions around faith and spirituality. Personally, I do believe in something, but it’s my something, it’s a feeling - a knowing - something without words. Because, for me, it doesn’t need words. I access it in meditation, I find it in nature. I once heard Russell Brand talk about what he believes God to be and he suggested that it feels to him like the deep, ancient, natural intelligence that runs the seasons and the biology of our bodies and that felt interesting to me. No matter what I think though, because faith and spirituality should be personal and they can be private. All I know is dogma is dangerous and openness is everything. Ram Dass, the spiritual guru for many said, “The spiritual journey is individual. It can’t be organised or regulated. It isn’t true that everyone should follow one path. Listen to your own truth”.

And if that isn’t the essence of rest - all seven kinds - the permission to tune in to you, if and as you need to, in order to reset and refresh yourself, in whatever way you feel you need and see fit, then I don’t know what is.

Rest well, friends.

Ellie Balfe, May 2022