057 Why Rest Still Feels Unsafe

I realized recently that my body can stop moving, but my brain still acts like we're in danger. Every time I try to rest, my body feels anxious and my brain runs 90 miles an hour with all the things that I think I should be doing or that I know need to be done. And I think a lot of us with chronic illness struggle with rest in ways like this, and we don't really talk about it enough.

This episode is not here on how to rest better, but it's about why rest can feel emotionally unsafe. Welcome to the Invisible Illness Club podcast. I'm April Aramanda.

This is the place for honest conversations about what life actually looks like when you're living with chronic illness, the parts people see and the parts they don't. Some days we talk about faith, some days we talk about survival, and some days we talk about finding joy in the middle of the mess. Wherever you are in your journey, you're not the only one walking this road.

Rest isn't automatically peaceful. When I'm resting physically, I am mentally spiraling. I'm constantly checking my phone.

I'm thinking about all the unfinished work around the house that needs to be done or for my podcast. I feel behind all the time. And when I see my husband being productive around the house, I feel guilty that I'm not getting up and helping out.

I feel guilty for slowing down and like I should be doing something. You know, sometimes rest feels like I'm failing. Where did we learn this? Where did we learn that rest was wrong? I think for me, it was growing up being the dependable one, being the one who was always leaned on for all the things that needed to be done.

And rest started feeling irresponsible or wrong. I felt guilty for slowing down. I felt like I had to earn my rest.

And now I apologize for my limits constantly because I feel like I should be up and doing something. I constantly push through when I shouldn't. If I get any amount of energy, I'm going to go full tilt on all the things that need to get done so that I feel like I've earned the next bit of rest that I've done instead of realizing that I've put my body in a bad place.

Chronic illness makes rest unbelievably complicated. Sometimes rest is not optional. In fact, often rest is not optional.

And then while I'm resting, even if I can turn off the noise of all the things I should be doing, I'm thinking to myself, will I ever get better? What's piling up while I'm laying here? How much energy is tomorrow going to take? I never get to recharge because rest doesn't always recharge you when you have a chronic illness. Sometimes you rest and you still wake up exhausted. And I think there's grief in needing more rest than the people around us.

That grief that we're not doing enough or that we can't do what we used to do, especially I know as being the one who was always leaned on and was always reliable. I think this leads into my faith life. I wonder if my value changes because my output changes.

I sometimes struggle to believe that God sees me as enough, even though I know that the scripture says that he does. I feel guilty for needing limits. I think I've spent a lot of time trying to deserve rest when the reality is that God tells us in scripture that we need to rest.

He even models it in Genesis. On the seventh day, God rested. In the New Testament, Jesus rests multiple times.

It's modeled for us, but we sometimes just feel like we don't deserve it when God never asked us to become a machine. In Matthew 11:28, it says, “Come to me, all ye who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” In this scripture, Jesus is offering comfort and rest to us.

In Psalm 23, David talks about rest. He says, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures.

He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul.” David is talking about God giving us moments of rest and restoring us.

Scripture tells us that rest is natural, that rest is needed for our bodies, that God wants to give us rest. I hope you take a moment to think about this today and maybe give yourself some grace the next time you need rest.