*Deep sigh*
It has been the longest time since I’ve been able to connect with you all, and honestly, I have missed it greatly! While I’d like to say that I’ve been absent for a lot of good reasons, I unfortunately can’t. Make no mistake a lot has happened, but not in a positive light. Since we’ve last connected, I have been getting sick, week after week, and failing to get enough proper rest to function normally and recover quickly!
A lot of this was mainly due to stress I was experiencing with my 9-5 job (which I have recently left), and trying my best to follow through with commitments that I had made even though I have very limited time. As a result, I completely checked out of my own emotional, physical, and mental space personally, locked in on everybody else’s, and paid the cost for it severely.
I was completely defeated and exhausted mentally and emotionally, and it showed up in me physically every single week for nearly 2 months. If I wasn’t sick with strep throat (not fun and caught it several times), I was sick from dehydration, or lack of proper nourishment, or a general cold. Especially because the weather is changing and my body never adjusts to that easily.
It was always something that just had me confined to my bed most hours during the day, taking cold medicine like it was my full-time job, throwing up, struggling with sleep, having consistent headaches and stomach aches, feeling extremely lethargic throughout the day, having throat problems, losing my voice, sensory issues, and so much more.
I neglected to take care of myself and rest when I absolutely needed to, and as a result, my body shut down week after week until I literally couldn’t get out of bed to do anything more than use the restroom. As sad and as embarrassing as it is, it was the wake-up call that I needed to stop, take a break, and rest.
I have been going non-stop for over a year now with working, creating, and serving everybody else, that I never truly did give myself time off to rest and reset. So, my body literally had to force me to take that time to rest and reset. I finally did, mainly because I couldn’t fight against it anymore, but now I am in a much better place emotionally, physically, and mentally, than I was a week ago.
And because of this experience and hard life lesson I had to learn, I wanted to share with you all, as we reconnect once more, the different types of rest that we all need, and the importance of each one, in hopes that you don’t get forced by your body to sit down in the most unpleasant way like I did.
Let’s get into it.
Types of Rest: Mental, Emotional, and Social
There are six different types of rest that we all need to be getting on a consistent basis in order to operate at our full potential, and be able to present our best selves to others on a day-to-day basis. Most of these types of rest or non-brainers, I mean we literally do it on a consistent and regular basis. However, there are a few types of rest that a lot of us often do not think about, especially if it’s not in our practice, that are essential to our overall well-being.
Since this list is going to be pretty exhaustive, I am going to break this blog post into two separate posts. For part 1 I will talk about the first three types of rest. Mental, emotional, and physical rest. The next three will be discussed in part 2 of this blog post, so be sure to keep an eye out for it!
Mental Rest
In my opinion the most important one there is. Menatl rest is giving yourself permission to take a break from thinking, analyzing, problem-solving, and basically doing any type of mental activity that requires a lot of energy to put out. We spend so much of our time flexing our brains just to survive on a daily basis, but not nearly enough time to just relax and be.
As mentioned earlier I was experiencing constant headaches and while a lot of that had to do with my lack of proper hydration and nutrition, I’m also aware that my job at the time required me to use a lot of brain power round the clock. Since I was working round the clock my brain never got to properly rest from not being over utilized.
Which was a big no-no! Mental rest is important because it allows for our minds to take a much-needed break from being “on” all the time. Mental rest is the perfect way to be able to increase your capacity of self-awareness, improve your memory, engage in appropriate reflection and decision making, keep a healthy perspective on life, and of course foster creativity. Mental rest encourages proper and healthy brain function which is vital to operating as a healthy individual.
Depriving yourself of that is the same as depriving yourself of your existence on this Earth. Do not make the same mistake that I did. Get your mental rest as often as you possibly can, and take full advantage of it when you do.
Emotional Rest
This is a big one. Here on the blog, you guys know we are all about being authentic, and honest, and most importantly accepting of our thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Well, emotional rest embodies all of that by simply allowing yourself to honor your feelings and everything that may come with it, good or bad. I truly do believe the biggest reason I was sick for so long and so often was because of my lack of emotional regulation.
I was constantly stress and when new stressors would appear I did not have the emotional capacity to handle it well. I constantly had a brain fog that would never go away, and anytime I would get a little peek through it, I couldn’t think properly because I couldn’t connect with my body. Much like mental rest, emotional rest is essential for proper and healthy brain function, and I completed deprived myself of that.
To put the cherry on top of it all, my emotions were constantly all over the place. I was fluctuating from being stable, to being angry, to being sad, to experiencing great amounts of frustration, back to being angry, then sad, before being stable again for a short amount of time. I had very few moments of genuine happiness. It was the emotional rollercoaster from hell!
Emotional rest is important for our overall well-being, for managing various levels of stress, processing our thoughts and feelings, and for simply showing up in the word in a personal space of emotional peace and acceptance. Things that we do not, cannot, and will not achieve if we don’t grant ourselves permission to engage in emotional rest.
Social Rest
Recharge, recharge, recharge. I literally cannot say this enough! As humans we are naturally designed to be social creatures, some than others, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But when we are constantly putting ourselves in social situations, and engagements, and interactions of all kinds, and never giving ourselves a break from that, it can and will eventually take a toll on you on.
While social rest wasn’t necessarily a big problem of mines while I was sick, working round the clock required me to just simply show up in a lot of social circles. As a naturally more introverted individual, the thought alone was completely exhausting. So, the actual action behind it only added to the exhaustion that was already present.
While social interaction is good for developing social skills and knowledge, building relationships, and expanding your horizons, it can also be detrimental to our health. Social rest allows you to be able to regulate yourself in terms of maintaining social and emotional boundaries, avoiding burnout, and not becoming co-dependent on others.
In addition to that, social rest provides ample opportunity to maximize your energy, and build strong, healthy relationships with others that promote togetherness and a strong sense of belonging. It can help to increase your own self-awareness, discover ways in which you enjoy spending time with others and by yourself, and really push for healthy boundary setting.
How To Increase Mental, Emotional, and Social Rest
So how do we increase more areas and opportunities of rest for ourselves? Well, simply put we make ourselves a priority, we create and maintain boundaries, we engage in various wellness practices on a consistent basis, and most importantly we listen to our bodies!
I know how hard it can be to silence the world around you and really listen to your body when you are under an extreme amount of stress, feel a lot of pressure to show up and perform, and have a great sense of responsibility to not let people down. However, this will absolutely be your downfall (like it was mines) if you do not silence the real and/or imagined judgments of others, and do what you know to be right for yourself.
To help you in doing so I’ve put together a little guide with some activities that you can do to engage in these three different types of rest. Click here to download it and give at least one of these activities a go this weekend.
Talk soon loves!
Love and Light,
Kimora