Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello and welcome to
the One Depression is in your
Bed podcast.
Are you a busy bee?
Do you find yourself buzzingthrough life nearly in constant
motion, hustling, making all thethings happen, perhaps in your
relationship or at work, or as afriend or a caregiver, in one
of the many demanding roles thatyou take on that have the
tendency to deplete your energy?
Underneath it all, do you havea deep longing to figure out a
(00:23):
way to slow down?
Well, if so, you are not alone.
Today, I want to explore howour society has created a
terrible reputation for rest andhow so many of us hold that
belief, which is not just wrongbut it's also harmful to our
well-being.
I'm your host, trish Sanders,and I am delighted that you are
(00:44):
here.
Let's get started.
Last week, I had the absolutegift of having an experience of
being able to slow down foreight days.
My week started with three daysin an incredible healing space
filled with supportive,heart-centered, lovely,
beautiful people, where I wasable to have the time and space
(01:07):
to slow down and focus inward onwhat I really needed and what
was really happening for me.
And then I went from thisdelightful space right into a
five-day polyvagal retreat.
And if you've been listening tome, then you'll know what
polyvagal theory is, but ifyou're new, polyvagal theory
explores how our nervous systemis really at the core of
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everything that we do and howour nervous system affects how
we perceive ourselves and othersand the world, and also how we
experience our own well-being.
And at the retreat it was atraining for therapists and
wellness practitioners.
It was about how we bringnervous system work into the
office and work with our clientsand it was also very
experiential.
So it was really connecting tothe wisdom of our own nervous
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systems and exploring our ownwellness and healing process
through that lens.
And so, as a result of havingall this time, I've been very
reflective and I talked inrecent episodes about my
incredible gratitude for beingable to have this time and space
, because I am a business ownerand a mom and I can't just take
eight days off without making alot of arrangements, but yet I
(02:10):
am able to make thosearrangements and I was able to
get this incredible expanse oftime to focus on myself and, of
course, also be able to focus onhow to do even better work with
the people that come and workwith me.
So in this space, I've been veryreflective, very grateful, and
I thought a lot about rest andtruly, one of the takeaways that
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I had from my eight days wasthe intention to walk slowly, to
walk with purpose, to trustthat it is actually in the
slowdown that I will be able tomake my most informed decisions
and consciously choose one stepafter another in present time.
And it's not about thedestination, it's not about how
quickly I go there, but ratherthis is, of course, very cliche
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to say, but it's so true butreally how important the journey
is and how that's where mypurpose is found and created and
unfolds.
And what really supports thatis the slowdown, is the rest, is
the time to be able to reflectand be in that being space, that
safely still space where I canreally tune in to what my needs
(03:15):
are and what makes sense for thenext step or how to move
forward.
And so I've been thinking aboutthis and all eight days.
There was certainly somebusyness, there was work to do,
there were parts of the training, there was travel, those sorts
of things, but even with all ofthat, I still had very much time
to slow down each day, the waythat both experiences the
wellness weekend and then alsothe polyvagal retreat, were
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really intentionally created bythe people who were running them
so that the participants couldhave that time to slow down, to
reflect, to be in connectionwith yourself certainly safe and
delightful connection withothers and nature and spirit and
the greater world.
And so, as I thought about allof this and how grateful I was
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to have this experience, Irealized how I had so much
clarity, and I've been gainingso much clarity over the last
several years, about how takingthis time to slow down stress
even though it's between timesof much more activity and what
many people would think of asthe traditional productive time,
getting things done howvaluable it has been to me, but
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how it is not a value in societyfor many.
Certainly, I live in Americanculture.
I am just outside of New YorkCity, the city that never sleeps
, so you know the hustle is veryreal here and the number of
things that quote unquote needto be done for me, for my
business, for my kids I meankids are so incredibly busy
(04:38):
today again, certainly in myarea of the world it is not a
value to slow down, to breathe,to take times of reflection, and
so I really wanted to startthis conversation today to name
that and acknowledge that andthink more about it, and my plan
is to take the next severalepisodes to explore different
parts of rest and the narrativeabout rest in our society and
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what that means to us and to ourwell-being.
As long as I can remember,certainly back to when I was a
teenager, I have always beendrawn to stillness practices
like meditation or being able tospend time in nature,
restorative yoga, those kinds ofthings.
And yet for many years, as muchas I tried, it took me decades
to really be able to have aregular practice of creating
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times of stillness.
And I think today I understandthat largely through the lens of
the nervous system, that for methat slowdown was most often
associated with that survivalresponse of dorsal shutdown and
collapse.
So for me, when I was still alot of the time came when my
nervous system was perceivingdanger.
My nervous system experience ofstillness is paired with me
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needing to be in protection modeand so sometimes slowing down
felt overwhelming.
It felt scary because thethoughts would come, the quiet
did not come.
I felt overwhelmed.
All the things that I didn'twant to think about, that I was
trying to avoid could flood inat times and that it wasn't an
experience of safely still.
But yet there was a part of methat just deeply knew that this
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stillness was an important partof my healing and necessary, as
a matter of fact, for mywell-being.
And it wasn't until after myhusband and I separated and then
got back together that I wasable to successfully start what
became a daily meditationpractice and lasted as a daily
practice for almost two years Iwould say a year and a half to
two years and then the resultswere so incredible.
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The physical results of how Inoticed the shift in my body
were so astounding and I felt somuch better that it was easier
to hold on to the practice.
But then I still being human andall, I fell off practice and
have kind of ebbed and flowedand sometimes I have very much
an active daily practice.
Sometimes it's a sporadicpractice, sometimes I still fall
off for months on end.
But now I know when I'm notsitting in daily meditation that
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I notice a physical difference.
I have fluttering in my chest.
I have what I would callsympathetic fight or flight
activation.
Now that kind of comes withthat.
That's where it sits in my body.
I can feel my body tends tolive in, this sort of pulled up
like place, as opposed to beingable to sit back and settle in
which is that more sort of likesafely still relaxed place, calm
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, grounded place.
And so, knowing this and havinghad this experience over many
years a decade that I've had asomewhat regular meditation
practice, and then it's onlybeen about the last probably
three years that I've had thisinformation about the nervous
system, that has helped me todeepen my understanding of
what's actually going on andwhat those deeper needs are.
And through that nervous systemawareness, I started to really
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honor how helpful depression wastrying to be.
One of the things thatdepression, I think, is trying
to give us that often it doesnot actually successfully give
us, but it's trying to give usthat slowdown.
It's trying to give us thatbreak.
We feel overwhelmed, and formany of us, then, this's trying
to give us that slowdown.
It's trying to give us thatbreak.
We feel overwhelmed, and formany of us, then, this can be
confusing and complicated if youdon't experience it yourself,
because sometimes people seemfine quote unquote when they're
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depressed.
They're kind of going throughthe motions of the day they go
to work, they might hang outwith friends, that kind of thing
.
But they're still sufferingfrom depression and it's not
clear what that means from anervous system perspective is
that during the day they'veactivated unconsciously most of
the time, but they've activatedtheir sympathetic fight or
flight response and they're inpush mode, strive mode, go mode,
and they get through their day,which is very hard, it's very
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exhausting and taxing on thesystem, and then at night they
crash and in the moments whenthey don't have to push they're
in that nervous system state ofdorsal shutdown collapse.
And in the moments when theydon't have to push they're in
that nervous system state ofdorsal shutdown collapse.
And that was my life, certainlywith Ben, for many, many years
before we had kids particularly,and it continued once we had
kids.
But it shifted and that's awhole other conversation which I
will happily share with youanother time.
But it was both of us kind ofjust using all the resources we
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had and sympathetic survival toget through the day.
And then at night we would comehome, we would drink a lot of
wine, we would crash On theweekends we slept a ton and we
were in that dorsal collapse andso we never felt rested.
We never really got to a pointwhere it was like, oh yeah, I
feel really restored and renewedbecause we were in this cycle
of survival.
We were in the sympatheticsurvival push and strive and
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then we were in dorsal collapse,but dorsal was trying to allow
us rest.
It's just that, because we werestuck in this survival cycle,
we never really felt rested.
And for people who may be in adeeper dorsal stuckness where
they're not able to get out ofbed and that sort of thing, it's
still an attempt to protect, totake care, to help us avoid
what feels scary, to help usavoid what feels overwhelming.
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Unfortunately, when we'reavoiding what feels overwhelming
, we're usually avoiding thingsthat we need to do.
There are, in fact, things thatneed to get done, but also we
avoid joy and fun and connectionand the things that we would
actually really want to do inorder to create the life we want
to have.
And depression doesn't pick andchoose.
Our collapsed, withdrawn,avoidant state doesn't say oh
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well, I'll just avoid the thingsthat feel overwhelming, but
I'll allow energy to enjoy funthings.
That's generally not how itworks.
Again.
There can be a little bit of ablend there, but it can be
pretty all or nothing, and sothis is why depression tends to
be rather ineffective when we'retalking about rest, because you
don't actually get the rest andrestoration that you need.
And so I really started thinking, holding this honoring of
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depression and what it means andhow.
For me, the way I woulddescribe it is that over many
years, while even thoughdepression is definitely a very
familiar and comfortable place,that I've spent a huge amount of
my life, that empty, dark, sortof dead feeling place, quite
frankly, that state ofimmobilization, that shut down I
did find out that being insympathetic, which is that fight
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or flight, that energy again,that striving, push I did find
out that feeling alive, thataliveness that can come with
sympathetic energy, that busybee right, that buzzing feeling,
felt preferable in a lot ofways to the dorsal collapse,
shutdown, avoidance, that deadfeeling.
Feeling alive often felt betterthan feeling dead, although,
conversely, when you push andyou strive and you have so much
of that sympathetic energy,feeling that dorsal collapse is
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really welcome because you'repushing and you're striving so
hard that then falling intodorsal collapse can feel really
welcoming.
I hope you can start to seeit's certainly been my
experience, I have lived thishow we can stay stuck in these
patterns of protection, becausewhen there's a lack of
familiarity with that ventralstate of our nervous system,
that connected, grounded, safestate I did not know that
ventral state of our nervoussystem, that connected, grounded
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, safe state I did not know thatventral state very well.
I certainly had a pull, I wasdrawn to it.
There were pieces of me, as Isaid before, where I knew I
needed some stillness, I knew Ineeded some grounding.
I had experiences of healthyflow, like grounded feeling,
like oh, I'm getting through myto-do list, I feel good.
I certainly had moments of that, but they happened in a very
unconscious way, like they justhappened to me, like, oh, I had
(11:30):
a good day today.
Don't know how that happened,don't know how to make it happen
again, and so there was a lotof challenge for most of my life
in that way and that was sortof the cycle.
Now, thankfully, I havedefinitely begun to grow into
knowing how to more consciouslyand purposefully reconnect with
that ventral grounding state andI think that being able to
connect with that has alsoreally helped me understand how
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important rest is and, again,that honoring of the depression
and how it was trying to supportme in slowing down when I was
pushing myself so hard or when Ifelt overwhelmed, and I can
come from that place ofgratitude now instead of beating
myself up for all the thingsthat I couldn't do or didn't do,
which certainly can sometimesstill fall into that trap, but I
really notice it a lot quickerand have tools and support to
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get myself out of it.
So I started really thinkingabout all of this and to me it
feels very clear that oursociety does not value rest.
And again, you might be in adifferent corner of society, you
might have different culturalinfluences.
Certainly, I think if you gofurther out from New York City
or further out from big citiesin general in the United States,
there is a little bit of adifferent experience of what
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rest is.
I hear that from friends wholive out of state or even in
different parts of the statepretty regularly, or people who
used to live here and then theymove somewhere else and it's
like wow, it's so different.
So you may relate to this in abig way or you may relate to
this in a small way or perhapsnot at all, but I do think that
there's a lot of misinformationout there about rest and
restfulness and people who rest.
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Often we think of them as lazyor slackers or things like that,
or we call them unmotivated orunproductive and we say that
they're wasting time or thatthey're doing nothing if they're
going slowly traveling throughlife those sort of things.
We definitely have a lot ofnegatives around procrastination
.
I myself am a bigprocrastinator and, with my ADHD
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brain and my relationship totime and my to-do list and
things feeling hard, there's agreat term out there.
It's not mine, but the wall ofawful is something I deeply
relate to and so getting thingsdone can feel very hard and
procrastination comes in andI've learned this is a pretty
active process, but I'm learninghow to respond to that in a way
that actually is helpful so Ican get my rest and get my work
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done, which is really nice to beable to do.
Both Feels really good when Ican make that happen.
And on the flip side, we reallyvalue things like people who are
overachievers or workaholics orhustlers or people who are
grinding you know, in the dailygrind all of that and it feels
like a real positive.
And if you think about it,maybe workaholic doesn't feel
100% positive, but would yourather someone call you a
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workaholic or a slacker.
For me, I think that, from thetwo, workaholic seems like the
more positive term, right?
Not only do we value this right, we think that time is money
and you have to hustle and wehave to put in all this energy.
There's something problematicabout slowing down.
We also even further distanceourselves from our ability to
rest by often thinking of it asa luxury, and I did feel
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luxurious last week, I have totell you.
It felt like an absolute luxuryto be able to slow down and
again have the support thatallowed me to slow down.
And as I thought about it, I hadtwo very distinct feelings.
One was like it did feelluxurious, like it felt
delicious.
I mean being able to plan myday.
Listen to my nervous system.
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You know there were things onthe calendar.
There were things that wereplanned over the whole eight
days that I didn't have controlover, but there was a lot of
open time.
If you look at my calendar,there are not a lot of white
spaces hardly any.
On my day to day, there'spretty much something happening
almost every hour of every day,which I'm trying to do something
about, by the way, and I'vemade a little bit of progress,
but there was a lot of whitespace on the calendar, a lot of
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what do you want to do now?
And I got to ask myself in thepresent moment, what do I want
to do now?
And that felt really luxuriousto have this ability.
And then I also felt like thisis a luxury that should be
accessible to everyone andthat's really what got me
thinking, and in the nextepisode I am going to talk more
from that perspective of theaccessibility of rest.
Stay tuned for next time I willdive into that more, but for
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today I just wanted to startthinking about the narratives
that our society holds and whatmore accurate narratives there
would be, and I was thinkingabout as my intro.
I thought about like the busybee right, we think of like the
busy bee, and we have otherphrases in our society that show
the value of pushing yourself,like burning the candle at both
ends, keep on trucking, likejust keep pushing through or
I'll sleep when I'm dead, thatsort of thing.
Like there's no time for rest,you just push through.
That's all very sympatheticfight or flight energy.
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That's pushing, striving energy, and we value that and I will
also touch more on why weperhaps value that and also that
goes hand in hand and why wecan often really demonize people
who are dealing with depressionand I think we have a lot to
learn from people who aresitting with depression.
But again, hold on, stay tunedfor one of my next couple of
episodes where I talk more aboutthat.
(16:18):
But to know that rest is notactually a luxury, even though,
again, I will talk more aboutaccessibility and there are
major barriers to being able toaccess rest.
So I'm fully aware of that, butit shouldn't be a luxury.
Rest is biologically necessary.
Our nervous system has thatdorsal place, not only for
survival, not only for collapse,avoidance, shutdown, not only
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for feeling safe withdisappearing or invisibility,
but it has the regulated dorsalexperience.
That's the rest and digest partof our nervous system where we
can slow down and we can getrest that feels restful.
I've talked about this quite awhile ago on one of the earlier
episodes about how importantthat is to be able to have rest
that feels restful.
And when you're depressed, as Imentioned earlier, a lot of the
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time your rest doesn't feelrestful.
You can't ever get enough sleepthat sort of feeling, but feel
restful.
You can't ever get enough sleepthat sort of feeling, but when
you're actually resting in thisregulated place and what
regulated means, by the way, isthat you have this dorsal energy
, this rest and digest energy,which is grounded by some
ventral energy, that safe,connected, often calm energy,
and when those states blend,then we can have restful rest,
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which is a beautiful thing.
And we need rest.
Why is our nervous system,which has been in us for
millions of years, it developedthis way and has been this way
for so incredibly long?
Why?
Because we need rest.
We need to do things and weneed to rest.
I started thinking about beesand I was like I need to
research this a little bitbecause I don't know a whole
bunch about rest in bees.
But I started looking it up andI found some very interesting,
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although honestly not surprisinginformation.
Bees do not constantly go.
They have a system wheresomebody is being productive all
the time, especially when thenectar is flowing and they have
work to do.
But there is a cycle, there's avillage, it takes a village.
We have other terms in oursociety that are absolutely true
, but we don't always value them, especially American, which is
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very individualistic, very aboutme, very I have to do it myself
on my own kind of beliefsaround that.
That's also very white drivenbeliefs, actually.
But again, more on those reallyimportant topics and ideas
another time.
How is a bee actually soproductive?
Because it takes breaks.
It doesn't just go from flowerto flower, to flower, to flower,
to flower, to flower, to thehive and repeat the cycle.
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It actually slows down.
It takes a break after it doessome of its work before it goes
back to the hive.
And I read this and I found itso interesting and so symbolic.
I'm a play therapist and I seesymbolism and connection in lots
and lots of things.
But if a bee doesn't get enoughrest, it affects its navigation
system.
Bee seems to know where it'sgoing.
It knows how to get back to thehive.
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If it's not rested, a bee willbe disorganized and it can't
find its way home.
I do not know if that resonatesfor you, but that really hit my
soul.
When I read that I was like, ohmy gosh, when I'm not rested and
I am burning the candle at bothends or pushing myself or doing
the things that I often think Ishould do Should, by the way,
is a very sympathetic fight orflight driven thought that I
should do this.
I need to do this, I have to dothis.
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That's some dysregulatedsympathetic energy in there.
I can't find my way home, Ican't find my way back to myself
.
I found that to be really,really powerful.
I can't find my way back toventral when I'm not rested.
So I continued to do a littlebit of research and I also came
across thinking about rest andanimals and nature.
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There's a lot about trees, bythe way, which I had a little
bit more awareness of.
You know, trees kind of goslowly and they do their thing
and there's a lot of rest in thewinter.
There's a whole shutdown cyclewhich I think is also really
beautiful.
I feel very connected to trees.
But in sort of looking up theseideas, I came across lions.
They're apex predators.
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They're pretty good at doing,they can get things done right,
they can attack.
That's very sympathetic, that'svery survival.
They do what they have to doand we think of them as so
powerful and so fierce.
But I found out maybe you knowthis, but I did not know this
Lions sleep and rest about 20hours of the day.
That's a lot of resting Inorder to be so incredibly
powerful, to be at the top ofthe food chain.
You know, maybe this is aluxury I'd be interested in your
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take on this and feedback on itbut they have to rest in order
to be so powerful and to havesuch a fierce go mode and to be
able to get things done.
So powerful and to have such afierce go mode and to be able to
get things done, they knowinstinctively they're not
consciously planning this out,but they know they'll burn out
if they don't rest.
They won't be able to attacktheir prey and pounce when the
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time is needed, and they have totake action if they don't rest
and restore.
Again, this feels very much inline with the messages that I
need to remind myself, and so Iam offering them to you in hopes
that perhaps they land asneeded and helpful reminders for
you.
We can't be on all the time, andwhen I think about my
experience of my depression,that is, it was a huge part of
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it feeling like I couldn't be on, I couldn't achieve in the way
I thought I was supposed to, Ididn't feel good enough, which,
of course, is a very dorsalstory of story related to that
nervous system state of dorsaland shutting down felt safer,
taking action a lot of the time,and when I start to really
think about that and think aboutwhat my true needs were, that I
really did need a break.
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I did need to slow down.
I did need a break.
I did need to slow down.
I did need help.
I often didn't feel deservingof help and didn't feel
comfortable asking for it.
Yet now I see and have had,thankfully, the experience of
getting the help that I needed,and so another way to rest is to
not do it all by yourself.
You might not be totally takinga nap, yet.
Many hands make light work,right.
That's another saying thatexists somewhere in our world.
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So I encourage you to startthinking about what restful rest
means to you.
What narratives do you holdabout rest?
Do you think of yourself aslazy if you slow down, or a
slacker?
Do you feel like you have topush and push in order to get
ahead and to sort of start toinvite some slowdown in that and
wonder what do I really need?
What could rest look like in mylife and how can I rewrite this
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narrative?
Like even the busiest of beesneed to stop buzzing sometimes
and, as I said, in the next fewepisodes I'll be continuing to
talk about rest andaccessibility to rest, and rest
as a luxury, and what rest canlegitimately look like in your
day-to-day life, even when weare very busy and pressed for
time, because, in reality,society probably is not going to
slow down anytime soon and it'sprobably not going to give us
(22:28):
permission to slow down.
However, we can learn to givepermission to ourselves and if
we can get to that place, we canactually shape society in a way
that works better for us, andthat's what I'm hoping to do,
and I invite you to think abouthow that lands for you and to
imagine a society where you canget the rest that you need
deserve, so that you can trulylive the life that you really
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want to live.
As our time comes to a close, Iask you to keep listening for
just a few more moments, becauseI want to thank you for showing
up today and I want to leaveyou with an invitation as you
hit stop and move back out intothe world on your own unique
wellness journey In order tomove from where you are today to
the place where you want to be.
(23:12):
The path may seem long orunclear or unknown, and I want
you to know that if that seemsscary or daunting or downright
terrifying or anything else,that is totally okay.
Know that you do not have tocreate the whole way all at once
.
We don't travel a whole journeyin one stride, and that is why
(23:33):
my invitation to you today is totake a step, just one, any type
, any size, in any direction.
It can be an external step thatcan be observed or measured, or
it could be a step youvisualize taking in your mind.
It can be a step towards action, or towards rest or connection
or self-care, or whatever stepmakes sense to you.
(23:55):
I invite you to take a steptoday because getting to a place
that feels better, more joyful,more connected than the place
where you are today is possiblefor everyone, including you, and
even when depression is in yourbed.
If today's episode resonatedwith you, please subscribe so
you can be notified when eachweekly episode gets released.
(24:17):
I encourage you to leave areview and reach out to me on
social media at trishsanderslcsw.
Your feedback will help guidefuture episodes and I love
hearing from you.
Also.
Please share this podcast withanyone who you think may be
interested or who may getsomething from what I have
shared.
Until the next time we connect,take care of yourself and take
(24:39):
a step.