Why You Feel Guilty Resting in Motherhood (And Why You Don't Have to Earn It)

0:02Here's the reframe that I really needed. Rest is anything that makes your nervous system feel safe enough to switch the stress response off. Welcome to this Motherkind Moment on a Monday. I love the clip that I'm about to share with you from the brilliant episode we did with Nicola Jane Hobbs, known as the relaxed woman. this clip is incredible because I am someone and I wonder if you are someone too who struggles to slow down who runs off adrenaline stress that has definitely been my programming it is changing for me day by day in part because I have learned that rest isn't about sitting on the sofa and doing nothing it is really getting myself into a place where I can be more regulated and calm for myself and everyone around me.

0:55Learning this has completely changed my motherhood. It has completely changed my life. And I cannot wait for you to hear in this clip what Nicola shares with us. It is practical. It is realistic. And it is rooted in neuroscience and psychology. So here it is. If you love this clip, please do go and listen to the full episode. It is full of wisdom and practical advice and support. It is linked just below wherever you are listening to this. Please do share this with someone that you think might benefit from it. Be that person sharing these brilliant tools and ideas. And I will see you on our next episode.

1:37I love in the book how you weave in nervous system, because this is something that I really experienced. I want to talk to you about your experience of matrescence because you are thick in your matrescence at the moment with an 11-month-old, I sort of ran into my matrescence. I was that typical high-achieving corporate woman. And I remember the slowness and the stillness, particularly of the fourth trimester, those first three months. My nervous system did not know what to do with that. And I found myself sort of busying myself. I was going to like three baby classes a day, I realized, oh my gosh, I've just, my nervous system has been on that sort of busyness, got to keep going.

2:21And I'm just replacing all of the work with now the kind of work of going to baby classes and cleaning. I mean, there is a lot to do, but I noticed that I felt more comfortable in that busyness than in the stillness. I now know that was because my nervous system was completely alien to my nervous system to sit with my boobs out for 12 hours on the sofa, you know, breastfeeding and watching TV and just sort of chilling out. Can you explain how important it is for us to stand the nervous system when we think about wanting to become more of a relaxed woman? Yeah, I mean, I can completely relate to what you say.

2:58I think when we've been living in this, we live in a culture of urgency. And so Our nervous systems are very used to this very busy, always on the go lifestyles. And if we've spent our lives rushing, slowness can feel so unfamiliar to our nervous system that it feels like a threat. Not because it is a threat or because it is unsafe, but just because it's unfamiliar. And I think sometimes when we have a baby and with our matrescence, we're thrown into such a shift in lifestyle that we don't have time almost to teach our nervous systems very gently that slowness and stillness are safe. And so we find ourselves kind of ping-ponging back into that super busy mode.

3:47Whereas if maybe we're working with a therapist or we're kind of beginning to understand and tend to our nervous systems on our own, we begin to make these changes a lot more slowly and a lot more gently and kind of weave these moments of slowness into our days. Whereas in matricence and with a baby, everything happens so suddenly and it's like a whole culture shock that we have to adapt to. which I think in itself puts our nervous system into a state of threat and hypervigilance, which then makes slowing down even harder. But I think it's, I guess the advice I would give to other women who find themselves in kind of a similar situation to you is to begin to weave moments of slowness into your day.

4:34So it could be as simple as slowing down your breathing and being really conscious about that or slowing down your speech or slowing down when you're taking the washing out the washing machine and things like that just so we keep sending these signals of to our nervous system when we're telling it slowness is safe. I absolutely love that because it's so true like I can walk down the stairs or I can pelt it down the stairs you know and both send a message to my nervous system, don't they? How has your matrescence been? So my little boy is now 11 months old, so I'm still very new to motherhood. For me, I think the word that would describe it at the beginning, and maybe even now, is disorientating.

5:23I think I spent so much of my life focused on other things, and I don't think no matter how much you read or how many other mothers you speak to, nothing can really prepare you for that entire shift in identity and lifestyle. And it has helped me to, I'd say, relax even more and to really embody what I write in the book because I wrote the book whilst I was pregnant and then I edited it once I'd had my son. So it was quite interesting to look back on how my ideas had kind of evolved and shifted. And now I very much feel like I'm living the research that I did where women, some of the key phrases that women said to me were, they have no time to rest and no place to rest.

6:12And I think in these early stages of motherhood, that is how it feels. And I suppose we have to be a bit more creative about rest and thinking about how often in motherhood rest is seen as a privilege and unfortunately the society we live in is that rest has become a privilege which it shouldn't be because it's also a biological necessity but if we can expand our idea of rest what rest is beyond lying on a sofa which I think other doctors and psychologists like Sandra Dalton-Smith has done really beautifully in her seven ways of resting and Stuart Shank has done in his work on self-regulation and looking at different domains of stress and rest.

7:00But if we can expand our sense of what rest is, the way I define that is anything that makes our nervous system feel safe enough to switch our stress response off, it becomes more accessible. So like for me, just wearing some comfy trousers with loose waistbands became something that felt restorative because it wasn't placing any more demands on me when I was already sleep deprived and nursing a baby. And I think it's about experimenting in the different seasons of our lives so that we can discover and rediscover what we find restful and restorative.

7:45Yeah, I think I'm really glad you said that because I think so many people just think about resting as, as you say, kind of lying around doing nothing or sleep. And I think neither of those feel particularly accessible, especially in the first five, six years of matrescence and motherhood, like no way. And so I love that you talk about anything that turns off the stress response, because then, you know, taking the buggy out for a walk and hearing the bird song feels, okay, I'm actually resting now. I'm actually resting now. It's just such a powerful reframe you mentioned about the biological necessity of rest and I wondered if you could dive into that to anyone who kind of needs that case made to them as to why finding these pockets of rest more might be beneficial to them and to their their family and children yeah so so I often think of stress is anything that is asking our body to expend energy to meet that need so a stress a stressor could be a threat or a challenge, but it's taking resources and it's depleting us.

8:49And so then we need these experiences of rest. And we can think of rest as both a practice in terms of, like you said, going for a walk and listening to the birds or nourishing ourselves with nice food or spending time with people that feel supportive. But we can also see rest as the state of our nervous system, the state where we are in physiologically, where our inner resources are restored. And that then allows us to cope with the challenges and the stresses of everyday life. And if we don't have those moments of rest, and sometimes it is just a deep breath, it is just a second where our stress response is switched off and our resources can begin to restore.

9:35And those resources can be things like our neurotransmitters, things like glucose. And that's when we hit burnout, when we don't have those pockets of rest that we can weave into our lives to help us cope with the stresses that inevitably we all will face. And how important is it for our children? Because I know something that really changed this for me was learning about mirror neurons and actually the quickest way to help my two-year-old at the time through a tantrum was actually to have a regulated system myself because I thought it was about learning the right word to say to her and actually is that I can say the right word but if I'm dysregulated nothing's going to really cut through can you share more about that and how especially for mothers it's so important that we do learn and find ways to get that more regulated system.

10:30Yeah, so I think one thing that's come up for me in motherhood is just how intertwined we all are. Like you say, kind of nervous system to nervous system, we are always resonating off each other. And that for many women is what motivates us to begin this relaxed women journey. And what motivates us to rest is becoming aware of the impact our nervous system is having on those around us. I know one thing that when I was pregnant and when my son was born was that I began to think about how I do not want to be remembered as a woman who was always exhausted. And I think if we look at what not just our nervous system, but what we're role modeling to our children, that as well can be a really powerful motivator for us to begin resting and relaxing because a lot of what our children learn when they're very little, what they learn about the world and what they learn about relationships and how to take care of themselves is absorbed very implicitly and very subconsciously.

11:38So if our children can see us resting, if they can see us as relaxed mothers resting, honouring our bodies, trusting ourselves and asking for help, whatever it is that helps us feel relaxed and free, then that becomes normal for them. And so our daughters grow up seeing women resting and knowing that that's healthy and that's natural. And our sons grow up knowing that it's healthy and natural for women to rest and it's not their responsibility to do it all and carry the mother load on their own. that was the episode i hoped you loved it if you did please make sure you subscribe and i will see you next time