Recovery Rest vs. Self-Care Rest

I am writing to you today from the comfort and ease of my bedroom. 

All my favorite stuff is here, my bed is cozy, and I have several stacks of ‘to be read’ books sitting on my bedside table. 

And I have been stuck here for 4 days.

I’ve got COVID, and while this is my first bout with the virus, I am not here to complain about my symptoms or recovery.  I am going to acknowledge that I am quite lucky with a robust nervous and immune system and 20+ years of working in a self-care arena that gives me a whole host of skills to help offset the worst of the effects. 

But I am also bored AF.

This made me think about how a lot of people who talk to me about how they are “terrible at resting” are mismatching the type of rest they are attempting with how they think they are supposed to feel during rest, and why you should rest in the first place.  I most often hear this conversation from folks who flirt consistently with burnout, so if that is you then read to the end because I have an important message for you.

Since I am a big fan of defining terms, and a believer that nuanced and clear language helps us understand each other and ourselves better, the thing we are going to discuss today is rest.  Specifically, the difference between rest for recovery and rest for self-care.  They are not the same, don’t serve the same purpose, and aren’t even close to the same experience.

Isn’t all rest “recovery rest”?

I know we are made to believe that rest, sleep, and self-care are all pretty much the same thing, but I assure you they are not.  Recovery rest is an essential experience we have in life.  Recovery rest comes after a big effort, a big sickness, or a big stressor.  And often, life will force you to take it.  Most of the time recovery rest is boring, isolating, and just not very much fun.  But one hundred percent is needed if you are going to plan to go into every day feeling like your body and brain are going to operate at their personal best.

If you are sick, like I was, make sure you take time to say no to all things that are physically taxing or mentally challenging, and embrace taking frequent naps—that is recovery rest.  For a lot of people, recovery rest is terribly boring—so we say yes to things we should say no to, do too much, and extend the amount of time we need to recover from a sickness, injury, or high-endurance, high-stress situation by days or weeks. 

Recovery rest requires you to just say no, to everything, until you are better.  You say no to literally all activities that aren’t you sitting down, lying down, and not making decisions.  And if you are like me, a ‘doer’ by nature, that may seem more like a punishment than self-care. 

For me, COVID meant I had a headache and muscle aches—so no writing, researching, or creating was happening.  No cleaning, tidying, organizing, or managing either.  During that time a very precarious and bizarre incident with my dishwasher occurred, and I had to sit upstairs and wonder what was going on—as well as worry that I might need to buy a new dishwasher. Was it tempting to try and meddle, and be a part of the solution?  Of course.  Would it have added another day to my recovery?  Most likely.  And if my priority is my wellness, then “fixing” just wasn’t an option.

When you are in the middle of recovery rest things are quite often mind-numbingly boring, for most of us.  We don’t get to do the things we want to; we don’t get to partake in our favorite activities, and we essentially just sit there—for me that usually scrolling on my phone or streaming shows from my laptop.  Books are typically too rigorous for my sick brain, so let me tell you…recovery rest is a truly dull affair.

How is rest for self-care different?

Self-care rest is not forced upon you by life choices or circumstances. Rest for self-care doesn’t typically require isolation, monotony, or lack of activity.  Sometimes it can, of course, but if I am being honest—I think any nourishing activity that asks us to slow down and do something just for ourselves counts as restful self-care.  That could be going to a movie or streaming a movie at home.  It could be going for a forest bath with tea.  It could be taking a nap or spending a slow afternoon in bed with a book.  Just because you want to.

But desire and intention matter here.  You are doing those things because you really want to.  It feels like a treat, a moment for yourself carved out into the giant granite mountain of modern civilization.  It feels like, as Tricia Hersey says, an act of rebellion. 

I think 1 hour (or even 20 minutes) of intentional self-care guided rest can support us wholly in these times where so many minutes of our day are given away to the care of others.  The effort you put into caring for yourself is really what does the trick here.  So don’t give up because you don’t have the same amount of time to care for yourself as you do for others.  Spend 20 minutes planning for your kids’ lunch every day, and then spend 20 minutes planning for your own self-care.  Even if the time taken in actual self-care rest amounts to a 10-minute power nap.  What matters is you put energy into filling your own cup.

You aren’t bad at resting.

Often, I will hear stories of people who tell me “I am bad at resting”.  Then they go on to tell me about how they tried when they were feeling so incredibly burned out and stressed that they attempted to rest so they could continue, and it lasted a whopping 2.5 seconds which they absolutely hated.  They got uncomfortable and lost in the moments of trying to find something to do for themselves, so they gave up and slid right back into the patterns that led them to experience overwhelmed, burnout, and sometimes even sickness.

If there is one thing in this article you take with you, let it be this sentence.  Burnout specifically requires recovery rest, not self-care rest.  Your body and brain are sick.  Lay down.  Don’t do stuff.  Leave your dishes.  Leave your laundry.  Take to your bed with whatever Netflix or Hulu show you love.  Sit there.  Watch it.  Watch something else.  Stop planning.  Stop deciding.  Your body and brain need you to do nothing.  Watch 200 episodes of Friends. Use your allegedly unlimited PTO. If it is something your mom would tell you would “rot your brain” in the 90s, take it up like it is gospel.  Play a video game if that is your cup of tea, scroll Pinterest for ideas you’ll never try, and get absolutely and utterly bored. 

It will suck.  But it is what is required.

Burnout, especially at the beginning of recovery, needs you to not go on a self-care retreat to the desert where you hike for 5 days, journal your feelings to your inner child, and come out a “higher self” version of yourself.  That is for the later stages when you dive into why you were in burnout mode, to begin with.  In the beginning, the best prescription is to take 5 days off and say you are sick.  Don’t lie to your office, just realize your heart, head, and body are sick and you need a week to recover. 

Then when you feel like you can head back into the world get excellent at self-care rest so this doesn’t happen again.  That’s the time to be an A+ overachiever.  Get so good at self-care rest people don’t recognize you.  Until then, go ahead and fight the recovery rest--but do it anyway. 

I know you don’t like it. 

I know you feel like you aren’t good at it. 

But you don’t need to be good at recovery rest.  There is nothing to be good at. 

Just lay down.  Do nothing.  

That’s it.

Want to know more about self-care rest?  This blog has a ton of options but start here.  If you like to front-load work like I do, you’ll be in heaven.