Why do so many of us treat rest like a reward instead of a basic need? In this episode, Jessica unpacks the hidden rule a lot of high achievers live by: I can rest once everything is done. The problem is, the finish line keeps moving — there's always one more email, one more task, one more thing to get ahead on. Jessica explores where this belief comes from, why it hits especially hard for people who are "good at" being productive, and what it actually takes to start relating to rest as a resource instead of a prize.
What We Cover
Why "I'll rest when I'm done" sets up a finish line that never arrives
How everyday messages (work before play, don't be lazy, hard work pays off) quietly turn into rigid rules about earning rest
Why high-achieving people are especially good at finding the next task — and why that keeps rest out of reach
The difference between rest as a reward and rest as a resource
How we moralize productivity vs. rest (productive = responsible, resting = lazy) — and why that framing isn't true
Noticing the double standard: the compassion we extend to others' need for rest vs. the standard we hold ourselves to
What guilt during rest is actually telling us (and what it isn't)
A personal example from Jessica about catching herself moving the goalpost on rest
How productivity can get tangled up with identity ("I'm the one who handles everything") and why that's worth examining
This week's healing experiment: resting before you've earned it
This Week's Healing Experiment
Choose a small moment when something could still be done — and stop anyway. Ten minutes. Leave something undone on purpose. Notice what comes up (the thought, the guilt, the urge to get back to it) without rushing to fix it. Ask yourself: what rule do I think I'm breaking right now?
Mentioned in This Episode
Why You Can't Stop — Jessica's 7-module self-paced course on nervous system regulation, anxiety, and the beliefs underneath productivity and control. Early bird pricing ($197) available through September 14th. 🔗 heal.jessicacolarcolcsw.com
Nervous System Regulation Plan — a free fillable workbook to help identify your regulated baseline, early signs of activation/shutdown, coping patterns, and go-to strategies. Available in the resource library. 🔗 heal.jessicacolarcolcsw.com
Healing Is My Hobby — because healing doesn't have to be your whole life. It can just be something you keep practicing along the way.
Transcripts
Jessica (:
I'll rest when I'm done. How many times have you said that? I'll sit down when the kitchen is clean. I'll take the afternoon off when I finish these emails. I'll go to bed after I get one more thing done. I'll take a break when everyone else is taken care of. I'll relax when I get caught up. But here's the problem. When are you actually caught up?
Because there's always another email, another load of laundry, another appointment to make, another thing you could clean, another person who needs something, another task you could get ahead on, another thing you forgot to put on the list. And if rest only happens once everything is done, rest becomes something you're constantly working toward and almost never reaching. At some point, without necessarily realizing it,
We can start treating rest like a reward, something we earn after we've been productive enough, useful enough, responsible enough, good enough. So today I want to challenge one of the rules a lot of us are living by. You don't have to earn your rest. Hi, welcome back to Healing is My Hobby. I'm Jessica Collarco, a licensed clinical social worker and CBT therapist. And this is the podcast.
Where we get curious about patterns that shape how we think, feel, cope, and heal, both inside and outside the therapy room. We spent the first few episodes of season two talking about our relationship with productivity. In episode one, we talked about what happens when productivity starts to feel like safety, why doing, fixing, planning, achieving, or staying busy can give us relief when we're uncomfortable.
Then last week we talked about why rest doesn't always feel restful. Because physically stopping doesn't necessarily mean your nervous system has stopped mobilizing. And today I want to go underneath both these things because sometimes we know we're tired. We know we need a break. We even know that slowing down would be good for us. And we still don't do it. Why? Sometimes there's a rule underneath. I haven't done enough yet.
Most of us probably were not explicitly taught you are only worthy of rest if you've accomplished enough today. Nobody sat down and handed us that rule, but we still learn it. Think about some of the messages we absorb. Work before play, don't be lazy, finish what you started, you can relax when you're done. Hard work pays off. Make yourself useful. Don't waste the day.
And again, none of these ideas are inherently bad. They're not terrible. Responsibility matters. Following through matters. Hard work can be incredibly meaningful. But sometimes those ideas become rigid rules. And instead of I have responsibilities and I need rest, the rule becomes I am allowed to rest only after I have fulfilled all of my responsibilities.
That's a very different relationship with rest because now rest isn't part of taking care of yourself. It's a prize and you have to qualify for it. Here's where this becomes a problem for high achieving people.
You're very good at finding the next thing. You finish the big project. Great. Now you can get ahead on next week's project. You clean the kitchen. Great. You notice the pantry. By the way, this is my third time recording this episode. The first time it kept stopping. The second time, none of the audio came. And so now I'm in my kitchen recording. And so I don't know if when I edit it, the audio will take out. But one of my cats is meowing really loud in the background. So
That's what's happening in the background. Then you look and you answer your emails. Great. And there's still something in your inbox from three weeks ago. So you finish everything on today's list. And then maybe you could not get a couple things from tomorrow. And the finish line moves. And the better you are at being productive, the more opportunities you can find to be productive. Which means the rule is.
I can rest when everything is done. You've created a condition that may literally never be met. There will always be something else you could do. So eventually we need a different question. Instead of, have I done enough to earn a break? To deserve a break? Maybe the question becomes: what do I need in order to continue functioning in a way that is sustainable? That changes rest.
From a reward into a resource. Think about the way we treat other basic needs. We don't say, I've been really productive today, so I think I've earned some water. I answered all my emails, so I'm allowed to use the bathroom now. I was exceptionally responsible today, so I deserve oxygen. Obviously, those examples sound ridiculous, and rest is more complicated than those physiological needs. But I use the comparison because I want us to notice.
How we moralize it. We attach character to rest. If I'm working, I'm productive, responsible, motivated, disciplined. If I'm resting, lazy, unmotivated, wasting time, falling behind. But rest doesn't tell us anything about someone's character. Sometimes rest means I'm paying attention to my capacity. Sometimes it means I'm choosing not to wait.
until I'm completely depleted before I respond to myself.
I'm recognizing that I'm a human being with limits. And having limits is not a character flaw. Now, intellectually, you might agree with everything I just said. You may be listening and thinking, yes, people need rest. Of course they do. But here's a more interesting question. Do you believe that it applies to you? Because we can be incredibly compassionate about everyone else's needs. Your friend says she's exhausted. Take the day off.
Your partner has a terrible week, you need a break. Your child is overwhelmed. Let's give you some downtime. But when you're exhausted, the response is I can push through. I just need to finish this. It's fine. I'll rest this weekend. And then the weekend comes and you find seven more things to do. So I want you to pay attention to what happens when you rest before you've decided to earn it. What thought shows up? Maybe it's
I should be doing something. I'm being lazy. I'm wasting the day. Everyone else is getting things done. I'm falling behind. I haven't done enough. Or maybe it's not even a thought. Maybe it's just guilt. That uncomfortable feeling that says you're doing something wrong. And this is where I want to make an important distinction. Feeling guilty doesn't
Always mean you've done something wrong. Sometimes guilt shows up because you're doing something differently. Sometimes you're breaking one of your own internal rules. If the rule has always been worst work first, rest later, then resting before everything is finished may feel wrong. That doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong. It might mean it's unfamiliar.
This resonates with me so much. I'm subconsciously creating all of these episodes for myself. I shared that the weekend before my daughter left for college. I was cleaning out closets. I mean, now I I'm like crazy. Now I'm last night I was cleaning out like filing cabinets from papers from 15 years ago. And I was telling myself, let me shred all of these papers and then I'm gonna eat dinner. Let me do this and then I can finally like watch a show. And so I had to very mindfully stop.
It's okay that there's still a stack of papers. I sat the stack of papers down and I was like, I'm just gonna have to step away from this. And I had to talk myself through the discomfort. You know, this is it's gonna be okay. I need to go eat dinner. I lost track of time. and so for me, I can really see how I keep moving the bar, right? First it was after I clean the closet, then it was like after I drop off the things off to donate, then it was after I get everything out to the trash bin.
And so I notice I myself move the bar all the time. And so now I just have to, you know, talk myself through the discomfort and give myself rest because I'm checking my capacity versus waiting till something's done. I think there's a fear underneath this conversation that we don't always say out loud. What if I let myself rest and then I stop doing anything? What if I become lazy? What if I lose my drive? What if I stop being successful?
What if I give myself permission to slow down and suddenly I never want to speed back up? For someone whose identity is connected to being capable, productive, responsible, or ambitious, that can be a very real fear. So let me say this: learning how to rest is not the same thing as abandoning responsibility. Regulation is about flexibility. The goal isn't to replace I always have to be doing with I never have to do anything. We're moving away from both extremes.
The goal is being able to work when it's time to work and rest when you need rest. Mobilize when something needs your attention, slow down when it doesn't. And make those choices based on what is actually happening, not simply because anxiety, guilt, or an old rule is making the decision for you. You don't need to become less ambitious. You need more choices.
And this is where the conversation can get a little deeper because sometimes productivity isn't only about what we accomplish. It's part of who we believe we are. I'm the responsible one. I'm the strong one. I'm the one everybody calls. I'm the one who figures it out. I'm the one who can handle a lot. I'm the one who gets things done. Those identities often come with real strengths, but they can also become restrictive.
Because what happens when the strong one needs help? What happens when the responsible one drops the ball? What happens when the productive one spends an entire afternoon doing absolutely nothing useful? What happens when the person who takes care of everyone else says, I don't have the capacity for that today? Sometimes the discomfort isn't actually about the task. It's about what not doing the task seems to say about who we are. And this is where I want you to really get curious. Finish this sentence.
If I'm not being productive, then I'm what? Don't overthink it. What comes up? Lazy, irresponsible, unmotivated, selfish, useless, falling behind, not doing enough? Now ask yourself, where did I learn that? Because that belief didn't come from nowhere.
There's a difference between wanting to contribute and believing you have to be useful to have value. There's a difference between taking pride in your work and needing your work to prove something about you. There's a difference between enjoying achievement and needing achievement in order to feel okay about yourself. And these things can get tangled together very quickly. You accomplish something, people praise you. You feel good. So you accomplish something else, and you become the person who can handle things. People depend on you. You feel
needed. And none of this is inherently unhealthy, but eventually is worth at it's worth asking. Do I know how to experience value in myself when I'm not producing something for someone else? And that's a harder question. Who are you when you're not working? Who are you when nobody needs you? Who are you when you aren't accomplishing something? Who are you when you're just you? That's not something you need to answer perfectly today, but it's worth sitting with.
So I want to offer you an experiment. And some of you are gonna hate this one. I want you to intentionally rest before everything is done. Not because you've completed your list, not because you've been exceptionally productive, not because you've hit your step goal, answered every email, cleaned the house, worked out, made dinner, taken care of everybody else. Choose a small moment when something could still be done and stop anyway. 10 minutes. Sit outside, have your coffee without doing something else, lie down.
Read something completely useless, watch something you enjoy, take a bath, listen to music.
Whatever feels like rest to you. And then, and this is important, notice what shows up. Don't immediately try to make the guilt go away. Don't argue with every thought. Just notice. What does your brain say? What does your body do? What are you tempted to get up and do? And ask, what rule am I breaking now? Maybe the answer is I shouldn't sit down while the house is messy. I should be doing something useful. I can't rest while other people are working.
I need to finish everything first. Whatever it is, write it down. Because you can't challenge a rule you don't know you're following. And here's the shift I want to leave you with. What if rest didn't happen at the end? What if it wasn't something you earned after you'd given everything else your energy? What if rest was simply a part of how you lived? Not the reward for completing the plan, part of the plan.
That might mean taking a break before you're exhausted, going to bed even though there is laundry, leaving an email until tomorrow, protecting an hour of your weekend without deciding how you're going to optimize it. Saying no because you don't have capacity, not because you have a better excuse. Stopping before your body forces you to. And I know those things can sound small, but if you spent years believing that your needs belong at the bottom of the list, they may not feel small at all.
This isn't about becoming a person who doesn't care about getting things done. It's about becoming someone who doesn't have to abandon themselves in order to get them done. This is exactly why Why You Can't Stop goes deeper than simply teaching you nervous system regulation strategies. Because if I handed you 10 great regulation tools, but underneath all of them, you still believed, I don't have time for this. I haven't earned a break. Other people need me. I should be doing something productive.
Then you're probably not going to use them. The strategy isn't always the problem. Sometimes we have to understand the beliefs and patterns that make it so difficult to give ourselves permission to use it. And that's what we're working with inside Why You Can't Stop. It's my seven module self-paced course for people who are really good at doing, achieving, fixing, planning, taking care of everyone else and pushing through, but want to understand
Why turning off can feel so difficult? We're looking at your nervous system. We're looking at anxiety. We're looking at productivity and control. We're looking at the beliefs underneath the behavior. And we're practicing what it looks like to create more flexibility. not so you become less ambitious, but so ambition doesn't have to come at the expense of your ability to stop.
If you are hearing this during the early bird launch window, you can enroll now for $197, and that goes until September 14th. You can find the course why you can't stop at heel.jessica Calarco LCSW.com. I'll put the direct link in the show notes. If you want to dive into this, you're not ready for therapy, this is something that you can do that's self paced. I have audio. If you just want to listen, I've got video.
And if you're like, mm, Jess, I'm not ready just yet. If you're looking for a smaller place to begin, I also created my nervous system regulation plan. And that's available also in my resource library. It's a fillable workbook that helps you identify your regulated baseline, your earliest signs of activation and shutdown, your coping patterns, and the strategies that help you in different nervous system states. You can find at the same place, heal.jessica colarco lcsw.com.
So here's what I want you to take with you this week.
Rest is not proof that you've done enough. Rest is not a prize you receive for being productive. And needing rest doesn't mean you're lazy, weak, unmotivated, or failing. Sometimes it simply means you're paying attention. Your healing experiment this week is to rest before you've earned it. Ten minutes, leave something undone. Notice what comes up. And instead of immediately getting back to work to make the discomfort disappear, get curious about it. What rule do I think I'm breaking right now?
Because that rule may tell you a lot more about why you can't stop than your to-do list ever will, ever will. If you want to follow me on socials, you can look at healing is my hobby on TikTok and Instagram. You can sign up for the newsletter at healingismyhobby.com. If you want to know more about my clinical practice, you can visit jessica colarco lcsw.com or on Instagram at Jessica Colarco.
This is healing as my hobby and remember, healing doesn't have to be your whole life. It could just be something you keep practicing along the way. I'll see you next week.
