sYou take a day off but get distracted by the thought of your work inbox filling up. Or you sit down to watch a movie and immediately feel guilty about all the tasks still on your to-do list. Or maybe you would like a massage, but barely enjoy it because your thoughts are racing all the time.
If any of this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. Relaxing may seem like the easiest thing in the world, but for many people it’s anything but.
Erin Westgate, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Florida, learned this a decade ago when she helped design a study to test the effects of letting people do nothing but think for a few minutes. “We had this idea that if we gave people a few moments in their busy days to just sit, slow down and be alone with their thoughts, they would find it really enjoyable, it would be relaxing and it would increase well-being,” Westgate says. The opposite happened: people felt so uncomfortable doing nothing that many chose to administer small electric shocks.
Doing nothing, as the Westgate study illustrated, can be difficult because most of us are not used to thinking without turning those thoughts into actions—a disconnect that can be “incredibly cognitively intense,” she says.
Researchers like Michelle Newman, a psychology professor at Pennsylvania State University, have also studied the concepts of “relaxation anxiety” It is “relaxation sensitivity”, which relate to the discomfort, boredom or malaise that some people feel when they slow down. For some, “there is the opinion that ‘I must always be busy doing something,’” says Newman. “People often feel like it’s not right to just read a good book or watch a good show on TV.”
No wonder. Productivity and hard work are nothing more than the American way, with major institutions from government to church encouraging people to stay busy, says Celeste Headlee, author of the book Do nothing: how to get rid of overwork, excess and lack of life. “Our society has valued very, very toxic things,” she says. “We’ve been brainwashed for generations” to believe that productivity is morally superior to rest—so it’s no wonder that relaxing sometimes feels uncomfortable or even wrong, says Headlee. Research shows that people are, to varying degrees, motivated by what they feel they “should” be doing; some may feel guilty when they deviate from this.
Rebecca Schaumberg, assistant professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, studied the positive side of work-related guilt, finding that people prone to guilt tend to be more productive and reliable workers. But in recent years, she says, she’s come to question whether guilt is good for people or just the organizations that employ them. “Guilt can be good in the workplace, but it doesn’t always mean it’s good for the person feeling it,” she says — especially if it prevents them from taking time to step away and decompress.
The truth is that rest and relaxation are vital to well-being. Chronic stress negatively affects almost all aspects of physical and mental health, even contributing to greater risks of chronic diseases and premature death. Meanwhile, rest can improve your health, quality of life and longevity. Improving rest and relaxation is therefore not frivolous; in fact, it could save lives.
Here’s how to get started.
Reframe what “counts” as rest
If the idea of meditating makes you break out in hives, that’s okay. Scientifically speaking, “relaxation” just means activating the parasympathetic nervous system—the one that handles bodily processes you don’t think about, like breathing and digestion—instead of the sympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for the stress response, says Christina Luberto, assistant professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School who studied relaxation. “You can bring about this physiological state in any activity that involves a single, targeted focus, leaving aside intrusive or unrelated distractions,” explains Luberto.
Anything from gardening to cooking to reading to your kids could be suitable, she says. These activity-oriented forms of relaxation can be especially beneficial for people who don’t like slower mindfulness practices like meditation. Often, Luberto says, the pressure to feel zen during these sessions contributes to anxiety—so trying to force a “relaxation” practice that isn’t working for you may do more harm than good.
see more information: How to really rest
Westgate follows this advice. People often ruminate and become anxious if they simply sit and think about what they need to do or what happened to them that day – but they find it refreshing to write these thoughts down in a journal. “By actually doing something physically…we are reducing some of the [cognitive] demand,” says Westgate. In other words, it can be helpful to do a little something when you’re not doing anything.
Set limits
When work creeps into your personal life—skipping Sunday brunch to check your email, for example—that’s “polluted time,” says Headlee. If your relaxation hours are polluted, you won’t be reaping the full benefits. What’s more, you may be reinforcing the idea that you “should” perform tasks even during downtime.
To keep your time free, Headlee recommends writing down your work schedule and posting it somewhere visible as a reminder to yourself. Just like a store wouldn’t reopen to a customer who arrived after it closed, says Headlee, you shouldn’t make exceptions to your hours when you get a late-night email or feel like talking to the boss on Sunday. afternoon. “Closed is closed,” she says. For extra reinforcement, consider adding a line about your work hours to your email signature or telling your friends and family about the boundaries you’ve set so they can hold you accountable.
Remember to relax your body too
Many people walk around with muscle tension that keeps them stressed, feeling exhausted even when they try to relax. Newman recommends tensing and then releasing different muscles in the body to help release pent-up stress. Breathing exercises can also help catalyze a relaxation response.
see more information: How to go back to sleep after waking up at night
Consider seeing a therapist
Not all busy people have anxiety or relaxation sensitivity, notes Luberto. If you’re active by nature but also enjoy downtime, however occasional, there’s probably no cause for concern. But if relaxing feels difficult or impossible for you — whether because you’re feeling guilty, anxious, or distracted — it might be time to see a professional, she says. Psychological techniques such as cognitive behavioral therapy can help.
Start small and then practice
If you have trouble relaxing, don’t dive straight in at the deep end by booking a week-long beach vacation. Start by finding small moments in your day to practice slowing down and getting comfortable just to be. And choose moments strategically, choosing those when you’re most likely to succeed—like during your morning shower, says Westgate.
Like most things in life, resting gets easier the more you do it, says Headlee. Slowing down may feel uncomfortable or even shameful at first, but once you train your brain, it will become easier, she says. “It’s going to take a while to teach your brain that you can’t reply to that email and nothing will happen, nothing will explode,” says Headlee. “You just have to keep doing it.”
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
