Rest and action
Walls can protect us or trap us. (Image by Igor Ovsyannykov)
I recently injured my shoulder — I don’t know how. I think maybe from sleeping?
Anyway, it felt a little scary. Every day, I would gasp in pain at least once as I went about my daily activities, unwittingly aggravating the sore muscle. Or was it a torn muscle? I decided to have it looked at.
Naturally, after I booked the appointment, things started to get a little better. By the time I went in to see the orthopedist, I was in a lot less pain. He confirmed what I already suspected: Nothing was broken or torn, and my best course of action was anti-inflammatories and lots of stretching.
For me, it was reassuring to hear that I wasn’t going to make my problem worse by using my arm. In fact, even though it might be uncomfortable or even painful at times, consistent exercise was going to help restore normal range of motion over time.
There is often an acute phase of trauma, be it physical or emotional, that requires rest. If you break your leg or witness a violent event, then complete cessation of activities is warranted for a period of time. Walking on that broken leg is going to make it worse, not better. And you will be a danger to yourself and others if you try to concentrate on something important while upsetting scenes are flashing through your mind.
Eventually, however, the period of rest gives way to gentle action. You start to put your weight on that leg again. You leave the house to go to the grocery store. Life goes on, a bit more carefully than before, and then fully and wholeheartedly.
Healing, like life, is a balance of rest and action. Each of these modalities can be both gratifying and uncomfortable, sometimes at the same time. The deeper the healing required, the more extreme each of these phases might need to be.
A friend who had Covid last summer was incredibly bored during the looooooong period of sitting around doing nothing while she got her strength back. But any attempt she made to get up and do things was followed by fatigue so intense that the message was clear: It was time for rest. When, a few weeks later, the wheezing was gone from her breathing and the fog of fatigue began to dissipate, my friend was grateful to be able to get up off of the couch and move. However, she found herself startled and dismayed by her weakness and the effort that it took to do basic exercises and stretches. A lifelong athlete, she was discouraged by how far she had to go to get back to the level of fitness she had been accustomed to. She saw that it was going to take a lot of work.
This same friend, however, had been through a similar process with her anxiety and depression. She learned, in the process of healing from childhood trauma, that being physically active and connecting with others really does help with depression, and that doing the things that scare you is an antidote for anxiety. “You don’t want to hear it, and you don’t want to do it,” she says, “but it does help.” She knew she could handle the challenge of healing from Covid, as disagreeable as it might be sometimes to move when you want to rest — and rest when you want to move.
A lot of us are a bit out of balance when it comes to these two aspects of healing. I, myself, tend toward the action end of the spectrum, getting impatient and frustrated when I — and sometimes others — can’t push forward. Others struggle to gain momentum. Overwhelmed by the intensity and pressure of the obligations facing them, they are passive in their lives, doing what is easy and comfortable.
We can learn from each other. For many years, I have been practicing the art of slowing down, and I make sleep a priority. I’m working on making more time not just for sleep, but for rest. I gravitate toward people who are good at this already.
Meanwhile, I help people who are at the other extreme to recover a sense of safety in their work, guiding them to release themselves from the shame of not being as “productive” as they should be. The truth is that their way of being, like mine, has value. But it has even more benefit to them and to others when it’s in balance.
The voices that are saying, “Go, go, go!” and pushing you to be productive are not always to be listened to, but neither are the voices that are telling you to wrap yourself in a warm cocoon and shut out the world. To heal — and to grow — we need to challenge ourselves to do scary things even when we don’t feel like it, and we need to set aside time to retreat, reflect, and rest. If you rely heavily on one, make space for the other. Both phases are essential, and both are beneficial.
Where do you see yourself on this spectrum of rest and action? Has your tendency changed over the course of your life? If you were to seek a better balance in your healing or growth process, what would you change?
