When Rest Feels Uncomfortable: Relearning How to Relax After Years of Overfunctioning
You finally carve out time to rest — maybe a slow morning, a quiet evening, or a day off — and yet your mind races.
You feel restless, guilty, or even a little anxious.
So you tidy up, check your phone, or decide to get ahead on something “just to feel productive.”
Sound familiar?
That’s a nervous system that’s forgotten how to rest in stillness.
Why Rest Feels So Uncomfortable
If you’ve spent years surviving by doing — caring for others, excelling at work, managing chaos, or staying one step ahead of disappointment — your body has learned that movement equals safety.
Rest, on the other hand, signals uncertainty. It gives space for emotions to surface — the ones you’ve worked so hard to keep tucked away.
When your nervous system equates stillness with danger, relaxation doesn’t feel soothing. It feels threatening.
The Physiology of Overfunctioning
Overfunctioning is often praised as strength, but beneath it is a body running on adrenaline and cortisol.
This survival pattern keeps you alert and productive — until it doesn’t.
Eventually, your system becomes stuck in hyperarousal (fight/flight) or collapse (freeze).
Your body starts to resist slowing down because it doesn’t know how to — not because it doesn’t want to.
You can’t force your way into rest.
You have to teach your body that it’s safe there.
How Somatic Therapy Helps You Lean Into Rest
In somatic therapy, we don’t start with “just try to relax.”
We begin by helping your body rediscover what calm feels like — slowly, safely, and in small doses.
That might look like:
Tracking sensations of comfort or neutrality in the body
Introducing gentle movement before stillness
Allowing emotions to rise without rushing to fix them
Using sound or breath to signal safety to your system
As your body learns that it’s safe to slow down, rest stops feeling like loss of control — and starts feeling like coming home.
How EMDR Supports the Shift
EMDR helps reprocess the memories that taught your body it had to stay “on” to be safe or loved.
By working with the brain’s natural processing system, we can reduce the charge of old stress patterns that make rest feel unsafe.
This allows you to experience stillness without the rush of guilt or fear — to finally exhale without bracing for what comes next.
The Rest & Restore Protocol
In sessions, I often integrate the Rest & Restore Protocol, a sound-based nervous system therapy that helps tone the vagus nerve and promote deep calm. Clients describe feeling more relaxed, grounded, and emotionally stable — even between sessions.
Think of it as retraining your body to recognize rest not as a threat, but as its natural state of regulation.
Now Accepting In-Person Appointments in Carmel-by-the-Sea
My office in Carmel-by-the-Sea offers a quiet, restorative space for deep nervous system work — serving women from Monterey, Santa Cruz, and Big Sur. If you’ve been living in survival mode for too long, I’d love to help you find your rhythm again — where rest, pleasure, and peace feel possible.
Disclaimer This blog is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical or psychological advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Results from therapy may vary. Ashley K. Whelan is a holistic psychotherapist in California offering EMDR, somatic therapy, and the Rest & Restore Protocol for women seeking mind-body-spirit healing in Carmel-by-the-Sea, Monterey, Big Sur, and Santa Cruz.