Feeling emotionally starved?

Exhausted?

As I get ready to take some time off from work for my end-of-year rest, reflection, and rejuvenation time, I’m reminded of how much my relationship with rest has changed over the years. In the same way my relationship with food and my body has.

I used to resist rest. I feared the quiet. “Being still” felt impossible. Wrong, even. 

As I looked deeper at my resistance to rest, I realized that at the root of it was fear. 

I was afraid that if I really rested, that I would find this lurking emptiness, a terrible aching void. 

Even worse, I’d have to feel the sheer enormity of my exhaustion. 
I feared that if I really rested, I’d never get up off the couch again. 

I was afraid of drowning in the tidal wave of guilt and shame that I was “lazy” or that there was “something wrong with me” because all I wanted to do was crawl back into bed. 

Not knowing how to handle this fear, I’d resist. And I’d PUSH. 

I’d fill my calendar with so many tasks, projects, errands, things to get done…to fill the time and empty space. (This is what I now call “binge scheduling”)

I wore the invisible badge of “I’m SO busy” with pride, hoping someone would see how hard I was working… how valuable I was.

And just like I’d fill my calendar, I’d fill my body. With food. 

So I didn’t have to feel. 

But here’s what I now know: 

Busy-ness and overeating are defense mechanisms. They both create a false sense of safety, a sense of “control”. But in truth keep you emotionally starved.

When you overeat or overwork, you are saying “yes, more won’t hurt”, when honestly every cell of our being wants to say “NO. I’ve had enough for now!”.

Now, I no longer fear rest, the quiet, or space in my calendar. 

I know that if I don’t rest, and I just keep on going, going, going, I am not functioning at my highest level. 

I become energetically and emotionally constipated, which creates a deep disconnect between myself and my body, where I’m so numb that I can’t tell if I’m tired or hungry. 

And then I get angry. And resentful. And can torch a small village if anyone crosses my path. 

Now I know that in the quiet stillness of rest, creation happens. New ideas get birthed, love and kindness deepen, and my intuition sharpens. 

So I’ve learned to stop fighting rest. Now, I absolutely treasure it. I create space for it. And protect that space like a she-wolf. 

I’ve learned when and how to say “enough is enough” without fearing what other people will think of me.

When I feel fear start to creep back in, I simply say to myself, “I trust that the important tasks of my life will resurface when I plug back into the world. Nothing will be lost. I give myself permission to take this time for myself.”

Feel free to use this mantra yourself if you find yourself addicted to busy-ness or resisting rest.

Know that true safety and peace are available to you (no matter what is going on in your world) if you’re simply willing to pause and rest. Even if it’s just for a minute. 

In service to your freedom,

P.S. I’ll be stepping out of the office (to rest!) for the remainder of the year, but if you are clear you want to leave your unhealthy patterns of overeating and overworking in the past, then click here and submit your application for my support.

You’ll be at the top of my list when I get back into the office, and we’ll ASAP set some time to explore all of this then. My calendar for January is already pretty squishy, so click here right now if you want first dibs!