I spent the beginning of this week in a rustic cabin in Tulameen, BC with my family. It rained almost the entire time. We gathered in the cozy living room with the smell and warmth of the wood-burning stove as we read, played Solitaire, or crocheted. There was no pressure to go anywhere or do anything, and almost all of us had a nap in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon.
Rest, as it’s always felt to me, is a gift. I think you’d agree. But what makes it so difficult to accept this gift?
My friend, Krystle, introduced me to the phrase “performance-based acceptance.” These three words summarize the powerful drive within us to belong at all costs. When the threat of disconnection is felt between us and someone important to us, especially a caregiver or authority figure, we will do what we must to close the gap.
The things we do are often subconscious rules of belonging. Even if a parent never told you that you must get “A” grades, you equate their excitement as acceptance. Or if they praised you for working hard on a project or at a job, you understand that your hard work makes them proud.
Our brains create these formulas that tell us, “when I do x, she is happy.” Or, “when I do y, he is angry.” Our lives become a pattern of these formulas.
We want to be good. We want to be loved and accepted. But at some point, we need to look at the way we’re living—the formulas we’re following—and ask if it’s serving us anymore.
Belonging is a core need deep within us and when the threat of disconnection appears, our bodies react. Our stress response activates, telling us we need to do something quickly to bring us back to safety. When we experience this repeatedly, our stress response gets stuck. Fight or flight is no longer a high-intensity, short-term adrenaline boost, it’s our default setting.
In this place, rest is impossible.
For my fellow Autistic and/or ADHD folks, you might feel this most of all. When they don’t fit in well with their peers or they annoy the adults in their lives, neurodivergent kids feel rejected a lot.
We learn what makes people likes us and what gets us made fun of or in trouble, and we carefully craft our behaviour to keep everyone happy. Of course we fail because we’re still human, but we beat ourselves up over it again and again until we finally get it right (at least that’s our hope.)
We focus on meeting expectations rather than maintaining our health and happiness. And because the only way to keep living like this is to ignore all the sensations in your body that are screaming at you for attention, you become disembodied—a floating head ordering yourself around until your body cannot be ignored any longer.
Wow, Taryn. Really uplifting.
I know, but I’m not sorry.
Our culture is so broken that we believe we just need to keep working harder, earning more money, and getting to a place where we feel secure before we can rest. We call it retirement.
But what makes retirement any different? We’re already taking working vacations because we can’t put work aside. And we all know people who “retired” from their full-time employment only to find five other projects or part-time jobs to fill the void.
Do you really think you’ll finally be at peace when you retire? I hope you will. But it won’t be because of your retirement savings.
You’ll be at peace when you retire if you’ve found peace before then.
Retirement or vacation or sabbatical won’t take away your belief that you will only be loved and accepted if you do all the right things. Your drive to perform, to be perfect, to make an impact is making you sick as long as you believe that if you stop, people’s love will stop too.
When we think of rest, we think of experiences like my cabin stay: less responsibility and more relaxation. And I think those are both great things! But rest is more than that because rest requires us to be present, not performing. It requires us to be in our bodies—and safe within our bodies.
A friend recently shared that discovering her neurodivergence felt like coming home, and I feel the same way.
I haven’t had noticeable anxiety since accepting my Autistic neurotype. Sure, I’ve changed how I live because of that diagnosis, but it’s deeper than that. Coming home to ourselves is where a regulated nervous system starts.
It’s where rest starts.
When we feel safe within ourselves, our self-acceptance grows and our need to perform or please shrinks. We can start changing our lives to support our health and happiness without fear that we’ll lose our sense of belonging.
It doesn’t happen overnight, but learning to be okay with who we are helps us let go of the formulas that keep us constantly on edge so we can finally just be.
An invitation to be at home within yourself
The inaugural Soul Care Retreat is rooted in the idea that rest is found by being at home within yourself. It isn’t about doing all the right self-care things or setting all the right boundaries, although those are certainly important. It’s about knowing and accepting who you are—including your needs, desires, and limits—and living from that place with self-compassion.
Rest will always be difficult to accept as long as we are striving to prove something to others or ourselves.
Join me this August in beautiful Maple Ridge, BC for a weekend of rest and renewal as we look at what it means to be at home within ourselves.
There will be time to enjoy delicious food, beautiful scenery, and coveted sleep. But more than that, you’ll leave the retreat with permission to pursue rest and a deeper understanding of how to create a restful life.
For more information, visit my website. You can also leave a comment below or contact me privately if you have questions.
Rest is not a luxury. It’s an essential act of self-compassion that can be cultivated within yourself, no matter your circumstances.
I’m with you,
Taryn
This post was so helpful to me as I am just coming back from a time when my body screamed for me to rest, and I felt judged for needing it. Notice, I said, “felt” because I don’t think others really did judge me, and if they did, that really isn’t my problem. I am slowly learning that the performance cycle I lived in my whole life was not indicative of who I am but who I became to survive and to try to gain approval. I love what Thelma said. I too found peace and flourishing during the pandemic. I find that as I try to re-enter the world at large I always become overwhelmed and get sick. I also now see I’m not present with myself in such moments.
Unpopular opinion: I flourished during the pandemic. Because it was socially mandated to remain at home, I could set aside my guilt and rules of belonging and embrace what I always loved doing: being at home. Societal obligation was lifted and I thrived.