When Rest Feels Wrong Even When You Need It

I used to think exhaustion was something I could outrun.

If I tried a little harder.

If I kept going a little longer.

If I stayed useful, busy and necessary.

Rest never felt like a choice.

It felt like a threat.

As if slowing down would expose everything I had spent my whole life trying not to feel.

As if stillness meant failure.

When I finally needed rest, it did not feel comforting.

It felt uncomfortable and unfamiliar, like wearing someone else’s clothes.

My body was crying out for gentleness and my mind was still trying to earn permission to stop.

This is what I am learning now.

When love has to be earned as a child, rest becomes something you believe you must earn too.

You wait for the tasks to be finished.

You wait for people to approve.

You wait to feel deserving.

The moment you lie down, you hear a quiet voice that says you should be doing more.

That voice is old.

It is not the truth.

I spent years pushing through pain that I did not recognise as pain.

Years believing that tiredness was weakness.

Years pretending my body was not speaking when it was begging.

By the time I could no longer push through, I had forgotten what rest even felt like.

Now it feels different.

Not easy.

Not natural.

But slowly, it feels more like relief than guilt.

More like listening than failing.

More like care than collapse.

Some days I still fight the urge to keep moving.

Some days I still hear the old voice telling me I need to prove myself.

But I am teaching myself something new.

Rest is not earned.

Rest is allowed.

Rest is human.

Rest is something I deserved long before I ever slowed down enough to feel it.

If rest feels wrong for you too, it does not mean you are broken.

It means you lived through things that taught you to survive instead of soften.

You are not failing by stopping.

You are meeting a part of yourself that was never given space before.

And that is its own kind of healing.

Rebecca Bloom