Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of The Bell!
Not to brag, but in my friend group I’m kind of considered the expert on resting and protecting my peace.
So much so that one of my friends suggested this as a newsletter topic!
At first I wasn’t sure what there was to say on the topic, but the more I think about it, the more I think this is fertile ground. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve gained the language to talk about what I’ve always known: I’m a very sensitive person, meaning my senses are easily overstimulated. Visual and audio in particular.
Loud or overlapping noise, parties, chaos, crowds, quickly changing images (like the social media scroll), visual clutter/mess, malls, department/big box stores, etc. all drain and exhaust me. After being exposed to any of those, I need to rest and restore my senses.
And that’s on top of the kind of rest I need after physical or mental activity, or a particularly emotional day. I’m just a person who needs a lot of rest to have a regulated nervous system and function at my best.
For me, there are four kinds of important rest: Mental, physical, emotional, and sensory. There’s quite a bit of overlap in each one—sleep obviously does the trick for all four—but each kind of rest also requires different action (or inaction).
What I’ve listed below aims to get at the root cause of what needs rested, not just to Band-Aid the exhaustion by laying horizontal in front of the TV or smartphone—which looks like rest but often leaves me feeling even more drained.
Mental rest is about getting out of your head and quieting your thoughts. It’s important before bed so it doesn’t take me forever to fall asleep.
I often like to get mental rest through physical activity like the Peloton bike or housework, but I also get it by redirecting my mind to something light and unrelated to my own life, through a TV show, podcast, or book. Taking a brisk walk or cooking dinner with a podcast in my ears is how I get mental rest daily.
Physical rest is pretty self-explanatory. It’s resting your body from exertion like a hard workout, a busy day of errands, a long work shift on your feet, or a medical procedure. Physical rest is usually the first thing that comes to mind when we think of rest: lying down, taking a bath, doing some gentle stretching.
Often when I’m physically tired I have some mental energy, so I might rest my body while reading nonfiction, writing this newsletter, or getting into a smart, fast-paced TV show.
Emotional rest is about creating the space for emotional processing, or moving emotions through your body. Similar to mental rest, it often requires physical activity like exercise or dancing. But it’s more about giving the emotions somewhere to go so they don’t get stuck.
Journaling gets them out onto the page, a good sweaty workout gets them out through the pores. Don’t ask me to explain how this works, it just does. I like to layer music on top of whatever I’m doing for emotional rest because music gives me the opportunity to spend important time feeling the feelings before letting them go.
Another biggie for sensory rest is ~*boundaries*~ that tired buzzword. But it’s real. Know when you can’t handle the news and don’t watch the news. Know the people who drain you and limit time with them. Know what TV shows make you feel anxious and jittery and don’t watch those shows.
Sensory rest, like I touched on before, is about coming down from overstimulation and regulating my nervous system. Activities like housework where you create order from chaos help with this. Darkness also helps, calming classical music or jazz without lyrics, being in nature of any kind, and sensory deprivation like swimming or sitting in a steam room. I’ve loved swimming and being in water since I was born, and this a big reason why.
The thing is that I’ve never categorized these kinds of rest before today. It’s not like I take inventory at the end of the day and decide “I need physical rest and I’ll select from the list of ways to address it.” (Though maybe I should be that prescriptive.) But it’s more of an intuitive thing.
I’ve worked backwards for this article, thinking of all the things I do intuitively when I’m in different states of exhaustion and listing them out for you. I’m sure I haven’t thought of everything, but here’s the gist:
Mental rest
Sleep
Mindless/funny media
Going for a walk
Exercise of any kind
Stretching
Nature
Bath
Cooking
Reading
Meditation
Podcast
Music
Housework
Cold plunge
Physical rest
Sleep
Reading nonfiction or engaging fiction
Media that makes you think
Writing
Stretching
Massage
Epsom salt bath
Lying down in bed
Sitting under a weighted blanket or any blanket
Sauna or steam room
Emotional rest
Sleep
Mindless/funny media
Taking a walk
Exercise of any kind
Nature
Bath
Jigsaw puzzle
Cooking
Housework
Journaling
Podcast
Music without lyrics
Dancing
Playing a musical instrument
Boundaries!!!
Sensory rest
Sleep
Housework/organizing
Nature
Candlelight/semi-darkness
Bath
Reading
Lying down in bed
Sitting under a weighted blanket or any blanket
Meditation
Swimming
AND.
I can’t sign off without saying this: as with your health, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure when it comes to your energy.
Protect! Your! Energy!
You have a limited amount (even if your limit is a lot higher than mine) and you get to choose how you spend it and who you spend it on.
If you’re reading this article and thinking “What is she talking about?” you might love living in New York or another major metropolis. You might like to go to a lot of parties and restaurants, and jet around traveling every couple of weeks.
But if this article resonates with you, you probably do better in a less chaotic city, the suburbs, or the countryside. You might like fewer social engagements per week, and longer stretches at home between trips.
There’s a lot to be said for getting to know yourself really really well and avoiding situations and people who drain you mentally/emotionally/physically/sensorily. Know your NOs.
Then you can protect your YESes for things that are really worth it.
I recognize that this can be a scary road to go down because once you start listening to your intuition, you might learn that your job/city/lifestyle/social life are draining, and that you need to make some major changes to some of the above to protect your energy.
My friend Amanda Watters (@mamawatters on Instagram) talks a lot about being highly sensitive to sensory overload, and she has four children. She loves being a mom to four, but makes very intentional parenting choices to protect her energy, so she doesn’t feel drained and burned out all the time.
I think we naturally gravitate to places/people that are good energetic matches, though sometimes it may take years to get there. Make small adjustments, one day a time, and listen to the cues your body gives you about what gives you energy and what takes it away.
Tell me… do you get this tired/overstimulated or is it just me? Lol. How do you rest and restore your energy when necessary?
Get plenty of rest and protect your energy! Talk to you on Friday with this week’s recs.
xx Jane
Phew, I feel this! I’m a highly sensitive mother of a ten month old. My favorite trick is to sit on the ground in a dark bathroom. Sit with your back against the wall and run the shower for 20 minutes. Listen to the water running and breathe. It’s so restorative, especially if 20 minutes is all the time you have!
Excellent - The noise and over stimulation - I love your point of…….what is draining you, who, and all of your good points to help with feeling drained. I have been thinking long and hard on all of these issues. You just feel like you are on a good new trajectory and get pulled back in the direction that is causing some of the above issues. I think it is a “Life Long Exercise” for mental and physical health!
Thank you for the reminders - Happy and Healthy New Year✝️💟✝️💟✝️💟✝️