Before I knew rest, I lived in the overworking and over doing cycle of toxic stress. That kept my nervous system hyper-aroused in a negative feedback loop similar to the one I wrote about related to sensory overload. All that unmanaged stress and workplace toxicity turned into imbedded trauma that led to my breakdowns break-opens that brought me here to you.

Add in these years of pandemic, and everyone’s talking about fatigue and burnout. At the beginning of the pandemic, many employers/supervisors (of the professional realm) were understanding-ish of shifting expectations. Fast forward to now where there’s so more talk in society and higher ed about being ‘back to normal’ yet folks haven’t had a chance to reset.

While I’ve been talking about rest as a way to rebuild our depleted resilience, I want to take a big step back this week and talk about different types of rest in case you missed our Grow Boldly series on it. And even if you participated, stay with me as maybe you need something different this week than you did then.

Grab my Rest & Resilience Action Guide now for reflection prompts on how to G.R.O.W spaciously in your restful routines and behaviors.

Let’s review.

Physical

Our most familiar rest is with the body through either passive (sleep, nap) and active (exercise, movement). This is the one we are most familiar with or comes to mind when folks talk about rest. Yet, as Grow Boldly participants realized, getting a good night’s sleep doesn’t mean they wake up rested.

Mental

Focus struggle and lack of clarity that can be helped by meditation or mental break. Mental exhaustion is one that the pandemic has exacerbated. We’ve experienced ongoing zoom fatigue with the attempts to solve that along with meeting overload. Higher ed - student affairs professionals especially - already had a reputation for overdoing the number of meetings in a day. Now there’s not even the break of walking between meetings - it’s just been back to back online for folks.

Emotional

All the feels exhaustion or when the feelings feel overwhelming and piled on top whereas emotional rest might be how you feel after a good therapy session or journaling. Grief. So much to grieve over these years. Even when I’ve been able to hold grieving and gratitude at the same time, grief continues to be an emotional drain and spiral.

Social

Feeling drained by interactions rather whereas social rest is connection with soul filling folks and self-connection. There’s been lots of social isolation and loneliness over this time. Now is the opportunity to evaluate the type of social engagement that feels restful because afterwards you feel seen, heard, supported and it is a reciprocal relationship.

Sensory

Overloads especially from screen time, noises, artificial lights that can be countered with quiet time and more natural spaces. A client shared a study on screen colors stimulation keeping us hooked to looking at our phones because of primitive neural reward. Phones these days have various ways to disconnecting from switching to black and white screen to bedtime routine shutdowns.

Creative

Blocked or stuck or drained can’t be pushed through but needs refilling with inspiration and less over stimulation. Creative rest is a favorite, which is why it’s the summer focus of Grow Boldly going from the shame of creativity scars to resetting as a recovering creative and there’s so much more.

Spiritual

Disconnected, lack of purpose can be soothed with prayer, meditation, nature, or volunteering. I suspect spiritual rest is ignored by many of us or integrated into other types of rest through activities, nature, or creative experiences.

Reflection time:

On a scale of 1-10, how would you assess your own restfulness for each type?

What surprises you about that assessment?

What did you notice? What does that mean to you?

Which ones are more acceptable and which ones are not?

What in your day-to-day or work is a barrier to rest?

What do you want to shift before spring time so you’re ready to embrace growth?

We’ve got one more workshop on Rest & Resilience in our Winter Grow Boldly (free) series. Click to register:

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