When Rest Feels Like Failure

I used to multitask while brushing my teeth.

Mar 25, 2026

I don’t mean brushing my teeth while I mentally rehearse my day. I mean, full on brushing while wandering around my apartment - cleaning. Putting away dishes. Drafting emails. Watering plants.

I would even pee and shower like there was someone with a stopwatch hovering over me (there wasn’t.) Everything felt like a race - and if I didn’t do them as quickly and efficiently as possible- I always felt like I would lose.

In LA this makes sense. Time is money. Opportunities come and go and you better move fast or else you could miss them. The biggest currencies in LA are beauty and busyness. And boy did I flex my busyness like a badge of honor.

Having free time meant you weren’t important enough. Rest was for people who weren’t ambitious, who didn’t want it badly enough, who were okay being mediocre.

Then I moved to Portugal.

And Portugal does not care about your efficiency.

There are lines for everything. The pharmacy. The post office. The grocery store. Things that would take five minutes in LA take thirty here, and nobody seems bothered by it. At first, this made me feel CRAZY. I’d stand in line mentally calculating all the things I could be doing instead, feeling my skin crawl with impatience, checking the time, checking my email, checking to see how many minutes had passed.

But you know what happens when you live somewhere that refuses to move at your pace? Eventually, you stop fighting it. You start noticing things. The waiter who offered to comfort a fussy baby so the mom could eat. The warm conversation between a store clerk and the customer who just got back from their vacation with freshly bronzed skin. The sunset that you overlook in LA – you pause for it in Portugal. You learn that efficiency isn’t the highest value, that convenience isn’t the same as quality of life, that sometimes waiting teaches you something you desperately needed to learn.

Like the fact that you’ve forgotten how to just exist.

I remember the first time I had lunch with a friend and realized when I looked at the time that over 4 hours passed. We didn’t have to rush off to meetings, or other appointments. We both had the luxury to just enjoy the moment. This would have felt criminal to the previous version of myself.

Rest as resistance

Tricia Hersey, founder of The Nap Ministry, calls rest “a form of resistance.” When I first heard this, I didn’t know what to think. But she’s not talking about bubble baths and face masks. She means resistance as in refusing to participate in a system that measures your worth by your output. As in reclaiming your right to exist without justification.

Audre Lorde wrote that “caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” When a culture is built on extracting value from you until you’re depleted, choosing to rest is genuinely radical.

For eldest daughters, perfectionists, and high achievers, we learned early that love was conditional on usefulness. That our value was measured in what we could do, not who we were. The voice in our heads sounds like: “Who am I if I’m not useful?” “People will think I’m lazy.” “People only like me when I’m helping.”

Rest, then, isn’t simply uncomfortable, it feels dangerous. Like the moment we stop moving, someone will realize we’re not actually that special after all.

The type of rest nobody talks about

Here’s what I didn’t understand until Portugal: I thought I was resting. I’d “take breaks” by scrolling Instagram. I’d “relax” by watching Netflix. I’d go on vacation and take a thousand photos to prove I was there. I was consuming, constantly consuming, but I was never actually experiencing anything.

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith identifies seven types of rest our bodies and minds need. Physical rest (rest for your body, like naps and sleep). Mental rest (giving your brain a break from decisions). Sensory rest (reducing input from screens and noise). Emotional rest (being authentic instead of performing). Social rest (time with people who energize you). Spiritual rest (connecting to something larger than yourself).

But the type of rest I think we as a society neglect the most? Creative rest.

Creative rest is about experiencing beauty without having to extract value from it AND creating without it needing to be productive. For high achievers, both feel impossible. We can’t go to a museum without thinking about how it relates to our work. We can’t enjoy nature without posting about it. We can’t listen to music without multitasking. And we definitely can’t create just for the joy of it - everything has to serve a purpose, build toward something, count as productive.

We’ve turned everything into a project with a deliverable.

Creative rest means letting yourself paint without it needing to become a side business. Writing in your journal even though it’s not going in a book. Playing guitar badly just because it feels good. Appreciating a latte with beautiful latte art - without documenting it. (If a latte is made with latte art and no one is there to photograph it, does it even exist?)

It’s experiencing and creating for the experience itself, not for what it produces.

In Portugal, I’m learning what this feels like. Wednesday afternoons at the café where I’m not networking or “working remotely.” I’m just there. Feeling the sun on my face. Not taking photos. Not mentally drafting a post about it. Not thinking about how this moment could be useful later.

Just experiencing it.

This is wealth: The fact that my nervous system isn’t screaming that I’m wasting time. The fact that I’ve slowly, painfully learned that this moment, this connection, this unhurried presence is what I’ve been working toward all along.

The big houses and designer clothes I used to think were wealth? They made me feel like I needed to work harder to maintain them. Real wealth is having time that belongs to you, not to your productivity. Having space in your day that isn’t optimized. Having the capacity to be moved by beauty without having to do anything with it.

Why your brain fights this so hard

Your nervous system learned that rest is dangerous. When you’ve spent years proving your worth through output, stopping feels like becoming worthless.

But here’s what the research shows: When you lift weights, you’re creating micro-tears in your muscles. The workout breaks them down. Rest is when your body repairs those tears and builds them back stronger. Overtraining doesn’t make you stronger faster. It breaks you down.

We’ve decided this biological reality doesn’t apply to our minds, our emotions, our creative capacity. Microsoft Japan tried a four-day workweek and productivity jumped 40%. The honest truth is, you’d probably be better at everything you’re trying so hard to be good at if you rested more.

What it actually looks like

I’m not going to give you a seven-step plan because that would just turn rest into another productivity project. But I’ll tell you what’s working for me.

I notice when I’m turning an experience into a project. The urge to photograph the sunset instead of watching it. The happier I am the fewer photos I’m taking - so now I make a point to be more present instead of documenting every moment.

I try to do things that feel like they have no “point.” Sandcastles. Doodles. Writing something on my mind even if it’s not going to be part of a book.

Most importantly, I’m redefining what counts as time well spent. I’m learning that the Wednesday afternoon café visit, the slow walk where I don’t track my steps, the conversation where I’m fully present - those aren’t breaks from my real life. They are my real life.

What we’re diving into on the podcast

Why is it so hard to rest? That’s the question we’re exploring in this week’s episode of Checking In.

We go deep on all seven types of rest and why “I tried resting and it didn’t work” is usually because you’re addressing the wrong type. We talk about why high achievers’ nervous systems treat rest as danger. We explore the muscle-building metaphor and why overworking breaks you down instead of building you up. And I share more stories about learning to slow down in a place that refuses to accommodate my urgency.

If you’re someone who has vacation days left over every year, who can’t sit still at parties, who feels guilty at red lights, who multitasks while doing literally everything - this conversation might help you identify which type of rest you’re most desperately hungry for.

Listen to the full episode here.

The transformation is possible

I’m still learning this. I still catch myself planning during showers, checking my phone while in line, turning moments into content. But more and more, I remember: I don’t have to earn my right to exist through output.

You know how we feel about babies? Pure adoration even though they don’t produce anything, don’t contribute, literally just eat and sleep and exist? That baby has inherent worth just for being.

You are the same.

You’re worthy of rest - not because you’ve earned it, not because you’ve checked off enough items on your impossible list, but because you exist. The part of you that believes otherwise is just programming. Everything else is just programming we can choose to resist.

What would it feel like to try?

With care,
Dr. Therese 💜

Need help now?

These resources can help:

Suicide Prevention Lifeline | SAMHSA National Helpline | The Trevor Project

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