Ep #204: For the Woman Who Never Sits: Why You Can’t Relax

This is the Strong Is a Mindset podcast, Episode #204. Some of you don’t have a problem with productivity; you have a problem with stopping. Even when there’s time to rest, your brain keeps looking for what else you should be doing. Let’s talk about why that happens.

This is the Strong Is a Mindset podcast, where you’ll learn how to build both a strong body and a strong mind by eating, moving, and thinking. I’m your host Physician, Personal Trainer, Certified Health Coach and Certified Life Coach, Carrie Holland.

Hey, how are you? What’s new? What’s good? So, what’s good here? Well, I got back from a conference last week, really late Tuesday night. And normally, even though I’m tired, I would have still gotten up Wednesday morning super early and powered through a day of client sessions because that’s just what I do. But this time, I proactively blocked my schedule, and I slept in until 7 a.m. I don’t remember the last time I did that. But thinking about it, what struck me wasn’t even the decision itself. It wasn’t about blocking my schedule. What struck me is that the idea genuinely never occurred to me that I could even do that, which is sort of absurd when you think about it because I run my own business. It’s just me. I manage my own calendar, and no one was forcing me to work. No one told me I couldn’t block my schedule. But somewhere along the way, I created this internal rule that unless I was completely unable to function, like puking my brains out, I should keep going.

And I realized how many women are living like this. I know I am not alone here at all. Rest is not something we allow ourselves proactively. And honestly, the more I do this work, the more I realize that many women see rest as something we permit only once we’ve hit a wall. We wait until we’re sick, exhausted, overwhelmed, depleted, emotionally checked out, or running on fumes before we finally allow ourselves to stop. And even then, a lot of us feel really guilty about it. And I think for a lot of high-achieving women, this becomes so normal that we don’t even question it anymore. Some of you genuinely don’t sit down. You are constantly moving, doing, managing, cleaning, organizing, fixing, planning, anticipating, multitasking. Or maybe you technically do sit down, but your brain doesn’t.

So, you sit down on the couch, but you’re answering emails, or ordering groceries, or paying bills, or mentally making a list of what everyone needs for tomorrow. Or, you’re halfway through a movie, but you get up to fold laundry because you just can’t sit. You need to be doing something. Or, maybe you finally have a second to yourself, and instead of actually resting, you suddenly feel the urge to get up and wipe the counter, or unload the dishwasher, or flip the laundry because God forbid, you just sit there.

And if this is you, please know that I’m not saying this from a pedestal. I’m saying it because this is me too. Ask my husband. He will most definitely vouch for me. I’m always doing something. And I think a lot of women have become so accustomed to being in motion that stillness feels uncomfortable, even agitating, like you should be doing something, like there’s something you’re forgetting, or you’re getting behind, and there’s just one more thing to take care of before you can actually relax.

And what’s tricky is that this pattern is often praised. You’re seen as responsible, dependable, helpful, efficient. You get it done. You are someone people rely on. And these are not bad qualities. There’s nothing wrong with being responsible, or caring, or hard-working. But where this starts to get messy is when your entire nervous system becomes organized around productivity and when resting starts to feel wrong. It gets messy when your worth gets tied to your usefulness. And you’ll know it’s happening because sitting still creates guilt instead of relief. Because a lot of women who look like they’ve got it all together externally are actually exhausted internally, physically, mentally, and emotionally, because they’re not resting. And it’s not just that they never sit down; it’s that they never give their brains a rest either.

And I don’t think this is just about being busy. I think for a lot of women, it goes much deeper than that. Because rest doesn’t actually feel peaceful. It doesn’t feel calming. It doesn’t even necessarily feel good. Instead, rest can feel strangely uncomfortable and almost threatening. And I know that may sound dramatic and a little weird, but stay with me here because I think this is happening for more women than we realize.

For some people, slowing down brings up guilt almost immediately. You sit down, and instead of relaxing, your brain starts listing off all the things you should be doing, like laundry, email, meal prep, a workout. And suddenly, rest starts to feel like it’s irresponsible. Or, maybe it’s not guilt for you; maybe it’s more anxiety. Like the second things get quiet, your brain freaks out and gets really loud. You start thinking about the things you’ve been avoiding. You think about that conversation you need to have or the decision you need to make, but you don’t want to. Or feelings you haven’t really let yourself feel because you’ve been too busy powering through life. This is me 100%, but I’m working on it.

And this is why I think some women stay busy by reflex because productivity becomes a way to avoid discomfort. Meaning, when you’re constantly doing, there is very little space to actually sit with yourself or your thoughts. You have things to do, boxes to check, and you just go, no thinking. And again, I’m not saying this from judgment; I’m saying it from my own experience and what I have felt or really avoided feeling.

And I think many of us learn this pattern early. We learn that being productive feels safer than slowing down. We learn that being useful feels better than being still. And checking things off gives us relief, so we keep moving. We clean the kitchen because it feels productive. We answer one more email because it feels responsible. We organize a closet. We help someone solve a problem. We fold one more load of laundry before bed. And every time we do this, we get a tiny little exhale of relief, like, okay, now I can relax. Except we don’t. We just move on to the next thing until we finally go to bed after falling asleep sitting upright trying to read a book. Or is that just me?

And what’s interesting is that from the outside, this all looks incredibly functional. It looks like motivation or discipline or responsibility. But internally, sometimes what’s actually happening is emotional regulation. So that means you’re not just accomplishing things; you’re managing yourself through productivity. Doing things helps you feel in control. Movement, that helps discharge tension. Cleaning creates a sense of order. Helping other people gives you purpose. Checking things off a list, which is my favorite, temporarily quiets the mental noise. So, productivity stops just being a behavior, and it starts becoming a coping mechanism.

And once that happens, rest can feel super vulnerable because if your identity and emotional stability are tied to doing, producing, helping, fixing, organizing, anticipating, then slowing down feels very exposing. Like now you’re left alone with yourself. And for some of us, that is the real reason rest feels so difficult. Not because you don’t technically have time, but because stillness forces you to encounter thoughts and emotions you’ve gotten really good at outrunning.

And I think this leads into another pattern that many women don’t even realize they’re doing. Many of you have created these little internal transactions around rest. They’re invisible rules that determine whether or not you’re allowed to slow down. So you tell yourself things like, “I’ll relax after I finish this. I just need to get through this week, and then I’ll chill. I need to work out first. I can’t sit down when the house looks like this. I haven’t gotten enough done today. I should be more productive.” And on the surface, these sound pretty harmless, right? But the problem is that the finish line just keeps moving because there is always something else to do, always. Another email to answer, another load of laundry, another mess to clean up, another errand, another thing you should be doing to get ahead, stay on top of it, or feel more in control.

And the compounding effect of this way of thinking is that rest becomes perpetually delayed. You keep pushing it farther and farther into the future, like it’s something you’ll eventually get to at some point later. Or it’s something you’ll arrive at once you’ve finally done enough to earn it. But that time never comes because your self-imposed conditions for rest are always changing and they’re never fully met. And I think this is especially common in high-achieving women because many of us have learned to associate rest with reward instead of necessity. Rest becomes the thing you get after you’ve been productive enough, after you’ve proven yourself. Everyone else’s needs are handled. The work is done, kitchen is clean, workout is done, and after you’ve caught up.

But the problem is life doesn’t really work that way. There is no magical time when everything is finished. There is no moment when all responsibilities are done. And honestly, I think some women are so accustomed to operating this way that they don’t even realize how conditional their rest has become. So they only allow themselves to slow down when they’re sick enough, tired enough, overwhelmed enough, or depleted enough to justify it. Which means rest starts to function less like care and more like compensation. Like, well, I worked really hard today, or I ran myself into the ground enough that I can barely keep my eyes open to my computer, so now I can sit down.

And again, I don’t say that to shame anyone. I do this myself, and I’m outing my own patterns here. I think this is deeply ingrained within many of us. We are praised for pushing through. We’re praised for being selfless, praised for handling everything, and for being the one who can always keep going. But eventually, you have to ask yourself, what happens when your entire life becomes something you have to recover from? Because some of you are not resting consistently enough to sustain yourself. Instead, you’re collapsing periodically. And those are definitely not the same thing, not at all.

And I think part of the reason this pattern gets so deeply wired is because for many high achievers, productivity becomes part of your identity very early on, and it’s usually subtle. You become known as the responsible one, the capable one, the one who handles it, and the one who follows through. Or you’re the one who doesn’t need a lot from other people. That is most definitely me. And you can become tough as nails on the outside. And over time, those qualities become reinforced. People praise you for being dependable. Bosses reward achievement. Families lean on the person who can handle the most. So naturally, you start building a life around being competent and productive because those traits work. They help you succeed. They help you feel valuable.

And again, I want to be careful here because I’m not saying that achievement is bad. I love hard work. I love growth and goals and discipline and creating meaningful things in life. I made an entire podcast out of it if that says anything. So, achievement is not the problem. The problem is when your ability to rest starts to feel conditional upon your usefulness. Because then, slowing down doesn’t just physically feel uncomfortable; it starts to feel emotionally threatening. Think about it. If your brain has spent years equating worthiness with contribution, then rest can feel dangerous, like a failure, or even laziness.

And I think this is why some women struggle so much with unstructured downtime. Because when there’s no task, no productivity, no achievement, no one needing something from you, you’re left sitting with yourself without the usual markers to tell you’re doing a good job. And that can feel really uncomfortable. I also think this is why some women have a hard time enjoying rest once they finally get it. They’ll have a free evening or a slower weekend or time off work, and instead of feeling relaxed, they feel restless or agitated, like they should be using their time better.

And I don’t think most women consciously realize they’re carrying this belief around, but you can usually hear it in their language. They’ll say things like, I should be doing something. I feel lazy. I just can’t sit. I need to be productive today. And underneath those statements is often this deeper fear that says, if I stop producing, what does that say about me? And that’s the part I think deserves attention because if your entire sense of self gets wrapped up in what you accomplish, or how much you help, or how much you manage, or how much you carry, eventually you stop seeing rest as something that supports your life and start seeing it as something you have to justify.

And here’s the irony in all of this. The women who resist rest the hardest are usually the ones who need it the most. The women who are constantly pushing through, overriding themselves, staying productive, staying useful, staying on. These are often the same women who are running themselves into the ground. And for a while, it works. That is the tricky part. You can override yourself for a long time. You can keep pushing through fatigue. You can keep functioning while depleted. You can keep being a machine, getting things done, while being totally disconnected from yourself. A lot of women I know are incredibly skilled at this. But eventually, something starts to give. And sometimes it’s obvious, like burnout, exhaustion, chronic stress, feeling emotionally fried. Other times, it’s more subtle than that.

Sometimes it looks like resentment. You’re still doing all the things, but now you’re irritated by all of it. Or you start feeling short-tempered with people you love. You feel touched out, needed to death. You start fantasizing about everyone leaving you alone for five minutes. Or maybe it shows up as numbness, where technically you’re functioning, but you don’t feel much anymore. You’re not a sad mess, but you’re also not excited, connected, creative, or energized either. You’re just flat. That was definitely me. And I think this is important because often we think of burnout as being dramatic, like a collapse, or not being able to get out of bed. But often, before it even gets there, it looks like emotional flatness. It looks like moving through your life mechanically. You become a machine.

I talked about this in another episode, the idea that there’s this kind of tired that sleep alone cannot fix. And it’s because you’ve been in output mode for so long that your nervous system never really gets a chance to settle down. You’re always producing, always anticipating, always mentally engaged. And eventually, your body starts reacting to that chronic pressure, and your motivation drops, your patience gets thinner. You stop wanting to do things that you’d normally enjoy doing, and everything starts feeling heavier than it should. And then what often happens is women respond to that depletion by trying to push harder. They think they need to be more disciplined, more efficient, better organized, more productive. They try to optimize their way out of exhaustion. But the issue is not always that you need a better system. Sometimes the issue is that you have been functioning but not thriving without enough recovery for way too long.

And I really want to normalize this because I think many women are walking around believing that they should be able to sustain a level of output that is honestly not sustainable for a human being. You are not a machine. And the goal here is not to wait until your body forces you to stop. The goal is to learn how to respond to your own needs before you completely hit the wall.

Now, while I just said all that, this is where I need to be careful because I don’t think the answer here is just to tell you to rest more. Because honestly, for many high-achieving women, that advice feels almost insulting because it skips over the fact that slowing down may feel insanely difficult. So instead of thinking about this as just rest more, I want to introduce the idea of tolerating rest to you, which I know that sounds crazy. But I’m talking about you building the skill of tolerating rest. Because I really do think it’s a skill.

If your brain and your body are used to constant motion, constant stimulation, and constant productivity, then slowing down is going to feel very disorienting at first. And when something feels new or unfamiliar, many of us immediately assume something is wrong. But remember what I have said here many, many times before on the podcast, discomfort does not automatically mean danger. And I think that’s important to recognize because some of you are waiting for rest to feel completely natural and relaxing before you allow yourselves to practice it. But that is not how this works, not at least at the outset. For many women, rest requires practice. And I’m not talking about a wellness retreat here, okay? I’m talking very practically. Like practicing sitting down without immediately getting back up to do something. Practicing leaving the kitchen just slightly messy until morning. That is a really hard one for me. Or practicing not answering that email immediately. Or practicing taking a walk without turning it into optimization or productivity or step counts or listening to three podcasts on 3x speed.

And I know some of these examples probably sound tiny. But if you are someone whose nervous system is totally used to going all the time, these tiny things I’m suggesting can actually feel pretty uncomfortable when you try them out. You may notice guilt or restlessness or feeling agitated, or you may feel the urge to get up and do just one more thing. And that’s normal. It doesn’t mean you’re lazy. It doesn’t mean you’re doing rest incorrectly. It does not mean that slowing down is bad for you. It may just mean that your brain has become really well practiced at output and much less practiced at being still.

And honestly, I think part of becoming a healthier, more sustainable version of yourself is learning that you can stop before total depletion. Meaning you can leave some things unfinished. You can choose to ease up before you collapse. You can sit down without having to earn it by suffering enough. Because if the only time you ever rest is when you physically cannot keep going anymore, that’s not really recovery; that is survival mode.

And I think many women need permission to realize that rest does not always have to be justified by exhaustion. Sometimes it can exist by the mere fact that you are a human being with limits, and part of seeing and respecting those limits is taking care of yourself. And I think this brings us to something really important, so I want to be sure to define what rest actually is. Because I think many women hear conversations like this and immediately worry that resting means becoming lazy, or that they’re somehow lowering their standards or letting themselves go. And that is not at all what we’re talking about. So, to be clear, rest is not giving up on your goals. It’s also not abandoning responsibility. And it is most definitely not weakness. If anything, I would argue that rest is what allows you to continue showing up for the things that matter most to you over the long haul.

Because real rest is recovery. It’s allowing your brain and body time to come out of constant activation mode. It’s creating enough space so you can actually think clearly and function on something other than adrenaline, caffeine, or pure obligation. And honestly, if you think about any area of growth or performance, recovery is understood to be part of the process. The easiest example is exercise. We get this. Muscles, they do not get stronger during the workout itself. They adapt and recover afterward, and they come back stronger. And the recovery is part of what creates that strength.

But for some reason, when it comes to the rest of your life, many women act like they should be able to create endless output with any real recovery at all. And eventually, it catches up with you. It doesn’t matter who you are; it will catch up with you because sustainable performance is not built on constant depletion. It’s built on cycles of output and recovery, work and rest. And I think that’s the reframe I really want you to hear. Rest is not separate from the work. Rest is part of the work. Protecting your energy, it matters. Recovery matters. And longevity most certainly matters. And I want all of those for myself and for you. Because what’s the alternative? You can absolutely white-knuckle your way through life for periods of time. Most high-achieving women are really, really good at that. But if you never come up for air, eventually your body, your mind, your relationships, your motivation, something starts paying the price.

And I think some women have become so used to functioning on empty that they don’t even recognize how disconnected they feel from themselves anymore. They assume that exhaustion, that’s just adulthood. This is what it means to be successful. This is just how it is. But being chronically overwhelmed is not the same thing as being effective. And constantly running on fumes is not proof that you care enough. It’s also not a badge of honor. And sometimes, the strongest thing you can do is recognize that you are not designed to operate at full capacity every second of your life. And learning how to rest before you completely crash, that is not lowering the bar for yourself. It’s learning how to sustain yourself.

And I think this is the point in the episode where some of you are probably nodding along and thinking, okay, yep, this is me. I never sit. I can’t. And if this is you, here comes the harder part. How do you actually change it when this way of operating feels so automatic? And please know that this does not start with some massive overhaul. I don’t think the answer here is to suddenly force yourself into hours of self-care or completely going off the grid from your responsibilities. Most of you listening have lives, jobs, kids, obligation. So I think this starts much smaller than that. It starts with awareness.

So the next time you finally sit down and you immediately feel the urge to get back up and do something, pause for a second and just notice what’s going on. What came up for you? What did you feel? Was it guilt, restlessness, anxiety, or the sense that you should be doing something more productive? Because for many women, these reactions happen so quickly and automatically that they never even stop to question them, and they just follow the urge and keep moving.

And I think another really important question to ask yourself is, do I believe that my rest has to be earned? And I don’t mean intellectually. I think many women say they believe rest is important, but many people don’t believe it applies to them. But your actual beliefs show up in your behavior. So if you only allow yourself to slow down once everything is done and once everyone else is taken care of, or once you’re completely exhausted, then it may be worth asking yourself what rules you are unconsciously holding yourself to.

And then from there, I encourage you to practice super small moments of intentionally stopping. Hear me out. If this sounds hard to you, I want to make it as small as possible. This may look like sitting with your coffee for five whole minutes without multitasking, just staring out the window. Or watching a show without folding laundry. Or going to bed instead of grinding through one more task. Or if even those things sound hard, try driving somewhere short, like close by, with no music, no podcast, no Audible book in the background. I did this last night, and it felt freeing. It gave my brain space to just be instead of needing to take in and digest and think about something. So we’re talking small things here. And don’t underestimate those small things because they teach your nervous system that it is in fact okay to slow down before you hit total exhaustion.

And remember, this is going to feel really weird at first. That is okay. Let it. It doesn’t mean you’re failing at rest. It might just mean that you’re practicing a different way of relating to yourself than what you have been doing for years. And I think if there’s anything to take away from this episode, it’s not that you need to become a completely different person overnight. This is not about never working hard again, and it’s not about becoming less responsible or less driven either. No. It’s really about seeing that constantly pushing yourself past your limits and never sitting down, that is not the same as strength. Really hear that. Your value is not determined by how exhausted you are, and being endlessly productive, it is not the same thing as thriving. You are allowed to sit down before everything is finished. You are also allowed to rest before you hit a wall.

And honestly, I think one of the hardest but most important things that many high-achieving women will ever learn is how to stop. Like really stop, not just physically, but mentally and emotionally. Because there will always be something left undone. And if your ability to rest depends on reaching the magical point where everything is handled, you will never fully get there. So, maybe the work is learning to trust that you can rest anyway, that you can take care of yourself before burning out forces it, and that respecting your limits, that is not weakness, but actually the opposite.

All right. And if you want help with this, let’s go. When you coach with me, we untangle your patterns like constant productivity and help you find a way of operating that is more sustainable and feels a whole lot better. Check out my website, send me a message at www.CarrieHollandMD.com/contact, and let’s talk about how coaching can help you. Thank you again for hanging out with me, and I’ll catch you again next week.

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Thank you for listening to the Strong Is a Mindset podcast. If you want to learn more about how to build both a strong mind and a strong body by eating, moving, and most importantly, thinking, check out CarrieHollandMD.com.