With ADHD, with AuDHD, with trauma, our nervous systems can really struggle with rest. It can feel unsafe to rest.
Why do I share how hard I find rest this while extoling the virtues of rest? Because it’s STILL an advanced practice for me. The whole point of this podcast is to show the gap, sometimes gulf, between what we – as self-care and Self care professionals – want to be doing and are actually doing. Especially with trauma histories and the hypervigilance that comes with having needed to survive. And AuDHD and ADHD where endless cycles of burnout eventually teach us how to honour our sensitive nervous systems.
It doesn’t have to take you the decades it’s taken me!
Everyone (and I’ve interviewed neuroscientists, other therapists, somatic therapists, energy workers and coaches, nutritional therapists, choreographers, artists and more) knows what would help us. We just need to give ourselves permission to make the necessary changes. For me, that’s constantly taking more and more off my plate and becoming more strategic (and actually getting MORE done while feeling better about it all!) by paying closer attention to my own nervous system and energies.
I hope that you’ll gift yourself some extra breathing space over the holidays. Begin to ponder ways in which you can build in sustainable changes for a more restful, easier, more peaceful and joyful 2026.
I’ve shared loads of resources to support you (and myself!) over the decades and you can access some here (including some research on rest) as well as listening to Tracy Otsuka (am imagining that the 43% of ADHDers with excellent mental health are better at prioritising rest. I know my mental health has improved along with my capacity for more rest), Caroline Shole Arewu and others share some of their tools to support prioritising rest.
Enjoy the episode and let me know what you’re going to do to rest more today, this week, this month and in the New Year!
le grá (with love),
Eve
CHAPTERS
0:00 – Why rest feels so difficult
2:55 – AuDHD, ADHD, trauma and nervous system safety
4:02 – Different ways of resting
5:27 – Productivity, pressure and burnout
8:25 – Rest, holidays and emotional release
11:37 – When rest feels unsafe to the nervous system
13:59 – Learning to love a sensitive nervous system
16:24 – Collective care, boundaries and co-regulation
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Do you struggle to take time to rest, to give yourself a break, to take things off your plate? It can be especially challenging with trauma histories, with AuDHD (autism and ADHD) with ADHD.
It’s especially important to pay attention to your nervous system and make sure that you are getting enough rest, because we’re mammals, just like my little role model here, Meadbh.
Cats don’t feel guilty about all the snoozes, all the rest, it enables them to play harder, to climb, to do other things, but we humans, we are in a world which doesn’t encourage rest. It encourages us to think we need all sorts of things we don’t necessarily need.
Welcome to Episode 90 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast.
I’ve talked and written about rest a lot and there’ll be links in the show notes to some of those blogs and episodes, but I’m hoping you’re going to leave this episode with a renewed commitment to your own renewal and yet rest over this festive period, as well as some neuro-affirming and trauma-informed ideas to help you rest your way, to help you let yourself rest your way.
I’m your host and producer, Eve Menezes Cunningham. I’m an author, columnist, trauma therapist, self-care coach, and senior accredited supervisor specialising in AuDHD and ADHD-friendly, trauma-informed, neuro-affirming, and transpersonal and somatic approaches.
I help people heal through self-care practices that honour how your brain and nervous system work, as well as yourself, that highest, wisest, truest, wildest, most joyful, brilliant, and miraculous part of yourself.
There are new episodes every Tuesday and you can subscribe or follow to make it less likely that you’ll miss any new episodes.
If you’re new here, you might want to check out older episodes, access deeper dives and free resources and more information at thefeelbettereverydaypodcast.com
As you listen to today’s episode, ask yourself how might you build more rest into your day-to-day, into this week, into if you’re listening to it as it’s coming out this holiday season, or whenever it is that you’re listening to it in the future potentially.
Ask yourself what gets in the way of you giving yourself the rest you know you deserve at some level and you know you need. If you need it, it just shows how strong the conditioning is that we deny it to ourselves.
With ADHD, with AuDHD, with trauma, our nervous systems can really struggle with rest. It can feel unsafe to rest. This is partly of why I use the cats to demonstrate.
So little Meadbh has her claws into me, but cats don’t feel guilty about allowing themselves rest and allowing themselves to find the sun puddle, allowing themselves to find what’s going to feel more comfortable, most comfortable for them in any given moment.
And the more we acknowledge and befriend our nervous systems, work with the vagus, recognise what’s going to, like what is the kind of rest that appeals to you. If it feels like going from 100 miles an hour to nought is scary because of course it would be, your nervous system has been so lifted and then all of a sudden you’re expecting yourself to calm right down.
For some people it can be researching a new topic or painting or writing or rest comes in lots of different ways. I’ll link to the blog I did about Claudia Hammond’s research and the biggest rest survey that had been done at the time. There are many, many different ways to rest.
Ask yourself, How you can give yourself permission to rest YOUR way?
As we work with the Feel. Love. Heal. framework this week, the Feel element is that lowercase hyphenated self-care, the regulatory practices, the things we actually do to help ourselves feel better. The Love element is working with the love archetype, that acceptance, that support, that reminder that you don’t need to do a thing to improve yourself. You are part of the divine, you are part of nature, you are already whole, it’s about acceptance. And then we have the Heal element which is around collective self-care and co-regulation. Not just helping your community, your family, the world at large, but accepting help and support from other people. We’re all connected.
As we are in the Feel part for this week in terms of rest, it sounds simple but you’re likely to have a lot of resistance towards it because we live in a world where we’re so conditioned to be productive and doing and not being.
But I really encourage you, especially at this time of year working with the seasonal energies, look at your diary, look at your calendar, look at whatever planners you use, look at your to-do list, look at the people asking you to do things, demanding things from you and be honest with yourself about what is getting in between you and feeling more rested.
Why are you choosing to say yes to things that mean that you’re not getting enough sleep, you’re not getting enough downtime, you’re not getting enough rest?
You may want to be yelling at me in frustration: “But I have all these demands, I have all these people who depend on me, I have all these projects, whatever it might be.”
You might think it’s completely impossible. And I remember, I think it was two Christmases ago where I was very burnt out and I was sobbing walking down the lane and a neighbour friend basically shook me and said, you need to take some time off over Christmas. And I was like, I can’t, I have to do, do, do, do, do, do.
Because at that time I had not realised that I had replaced alcohol with work back in 2001 when I got sober, because it was so uncomfortable for me to be present in my body, in my feelings, even though this is the work I do and I’m much, much better than I used to be.
I was still overworking and I hadn’t really acknowledged it until that bout of burnout two years ago. And since then, I recognise the benefits much more so and I actively scheduled time off last Christmas and have done the same, taking more time off this Christmas.
That’s after 21 plus years of being my own boss. I am my own boss. I could have done that 21 years ago.
I took my first holiday in over nine years. I’m back just over a week at time of recording. And basically, I denied myself a week away, partly because of cat care, but also partly because I felt like I had to be ON. I might forget with my AuDHD brain, which I didn’t know about until a few years ago, I might forget how to do my work. I might forget how to do all the things. If I got out of that routine, I didn’t realise how much of a fear response that was.
And it was absolutely gorgeous to take that time. Look at your schedule, think about ways in which you can incorporate more rest in a way that doesn’t make your nervous system freak out, that doesn’t feel unsafe, that doesn’t feel overwhelming. I’m also aware with the holiday I took the other week, it was a gorgeous week for my 50th in Malta, and we did a lot of time, we had a lot of time in the water, which is heaven for me.
A lot of snorkelling, I did a lot of swimming, I was ill as well, my partner was ill, but we had a great time. I did a try-dive, a discovery dive, because I’m a snorkeller rather than a diver. I only got as deep as I think two and a half metres before I couldn’t equalise, and I kind of very much wanted to go up to the surface.
In my imagination, the free diving was going to be where I really kind of found my inner Ocean Ramsey, and I didn’t get below five metres because, again, I wasn’t equalising well enough, and I had an amazing time, but I found myself, when we were having a nap one day, on the edge of the bed, sobbing my little heart out.
I didn’t want to disturb him, I was just basically sobbing my little heart out, thinking, what is wrong? I feel good, I thought I felt good, I’m on holiday, I’m having a lovely time, I’m with the person I love, we’ve not had an argument or anything like that, all is good, and I could not stop sobbing. And because I do this work, and because I recognised that, for whatever reason, I needed to sob, I let it all out.
I thought about doing some tapping on myself, and I thought, I don’t need to write at that point, I did a bit later. Even though this is so much of the work I do, I was kind of telling myself, I shouldn’t feel like that, I was having a restful time, and then I realised later, of course, that felt so alien in my life, in my schedule. I had been so overwhelmed, overstimulated with the free dive earlier that day, something I thought I would be a natural at, and very much was not.
I loved it, and I loved so much of it, and it brought up a lot for healing around the instructor (I’m going to have her on the podcast at some point, she was amazing, and she has ADHD, and she was very neuroaffirming, she was very patient with me, and I really struggled).
Basically, every time she did anything, any attention, I interpreted as I was doing whatever wrong, so it brought up a lot of school stuff, a lot of all adults in my life stuff when I was growing up, and I clearly needed to just weep that afternoon on the edge of the bed. Because I let it all out, I then slept amazingly, and I just felt better than I had in such a long time.
It can feel really scary when we think, when your nervous system has been in sympathetic activation lifted for so long, and we live in a world where it’s 24-7 excitement and stress, where in sympathetic activation, when we go into that parasympathetic, it’s that rest digest, and when it feels unfamiliar, it can feel very scary.
Even I’m telling you this story, like there’s a part of me thinking, am I oversharing?
I well might be, but I also think I am a human, and I have a nervous system like every other human, like every other cat, every other mammal, and the more we stop arguing with reality and honour what is, the better we can support ourselves and those in our lives.
When you look through your schedule, when you think about the demands that others are placing on you, or that you’re perceiving from them, because often we internalise demands, people don’t even have to ask us, and we think we should be doing X, Y and Z, just ask yourself, what can you take off your plate that’s not going to create a meltdown, or if it might, how can you build in a bit of space around that as a buffer for yourself?
How can you let yourself know it’s safe to ease into more rest, especially at this very busy time of year, we’ve got all the festivities, it might be that you’re out a lot, it might be that you’re grieving an enormous amount of what you used to celebrate and what’s no longer available to you, or it might be that you’re comparing your holiday season to films and adverts that have never been any people’s actual reality, but use your nervous system to support you in reducing the overwhelm on your schedule, and as you plan for the year ahead, as you plan for the week ahead, as you plan for anything moving forward/
Get used to checking in with yourself and asking how does that feel, like whatever it is you’re thinking of doing that’s taking you away from potential rest, and it’s a simple thing and it might be helpful, feel free to email me if you have any questions around that.
As we move into the Love, that uppercase S Self care part, it’s about accepting and even loving your sensitive nervous system. I’ve spoken about that a little bit already about how even though I didn’t love that I was on the edge of my bed sobbing while my partner was snoring on the other side of the bed, there were very big beds in the hotel, I knew enough to know that it would pass and to have that compassion that it’s taken me decades, it’s taken me a lifetime to develop for myself, so a part of me felt ridiculous, a part of me felt stupid, a part of me felt spoilt, a part of me just felt like I didn’t know why I was feeling like that, but I had that compassion for myself, I was able to move into that ventral vagal (Purr!), that curiosity, that compassion.
Why am I feeling like this matters less than I am feeling like this, and I’m just going to let it out, I’m going to let the whole everything out, and it then felt amazing, so you have a sensitive nervous system and you can learn to love it, you can learn to recognise that yes, other people might get away with more in terms of going with society’s flow, but you can use it to design a life that really nourishes and supports you, that you are excited about rather than stressed and overwhelmed about.
And a big part of that is giving yourself rest, thinking again of the roots in winter going deep into the earth and it looks like nothing’s growing above the surface and yet so much is happening below, accept that you can’t see all the growth that you’re doing, all the healing, all the rewiring of your nervous system, the retraining of your brain, I meant it the other way around, retraining your nervous system, rewiring with practice your brain, but you giving yourself time to nap, you giving yourself permission to say no to things, you giving yourself permission to recognise that you know what you need and just because you were conditioned away from doing what you needed doesn’t mean that you have to continue to deny it, honour, love, accept and support that sensitive nervous system of yours.
And then as we move to the Heal part of the Feel. Love. Heal. framework I developed, it’s around collective care, it’s around thinking who are you most looking forward to seeing to, who are you most looking forward to seeing even.
The postie just drove up the driveway and my attention got taken for a moment, got my words in a muddle, I could edit this out but I won’t.
Who feels restful when you think about the people in your life? Who do you get to be held by energetically, emotionally, maybe physically with an enormous hug if you like, enormous hugs? Who are you there for, who are you restful for? Know that (if that is a motivating factor for you, often people talk about self-care like put your own life mask, oxygen mask on first and then you can help others, you deserve your own oxygen mask just because you are worthy and you deserve to live and thrive, but if it helps you, you might think about how) you’ll be better able to be there for others in your life when you’re rested, when your bandwidth is higher because you’ve given yourself the time and space and care and tenderness.
And you are also modelling for them so you’re going to be helping any children, older adults, people your own age, colleagues, employees, whoever it might be, people in your community, you modelling rest is helping them break the cycle of feeling like we have to be constantly on the go, productive, contributing, that’s not nature, that’s not where we’re all served, we have to take as we have to receive as well as give, so just notice when you think about the people in your life, the people in your communities, who feels restful, who helps you replenish and how can you use the idea of you giving yourself permission to rest in whatever way is best for you, recognising that that’s going to help you help other people co-regulate as well and also there are going to be people that you love who are far from restful and that’s okay, it’s the ventral vagal both and that Purr!
And potentially claws coming out, you get to set boundaries, you get to send enormous love and you get to just be frustrated for short periods of time or just notice how you’re going to do things differently next year or next time, do not try to be saintly, do not try to not have human reactions to people who potentially trigger you.
This week in the Sole to Soul Circle there’ll be a yoga nidra for non-sleep deep rest and it’s going to be specifically to help you throughout this holiday season and any time you choose to listen where you just recognise there’s an enormous amount going on and you need deeper rest. So yoga nidra, you’ve probably come across many of mine and others, there are loads on the website and on my YouTube channel and obviously the Sole to Soul Circle as well, you have instant access to the rich archive if you join but it’s a wonderful way, it lowers blood pressure, it helps increase dopamine by up to 70 percent, it helps us harness the power of the unconscious mind through that deep rest and by working with that sankalpa, that positive intentional resolve, we’re more likely to take those steps that we need to physically take in our actions, in our behaviour because from that state of deep rest we’ve imagined what life will be like, the life that we’re designing for ourselves.
I’m looking forward to sharing this week’s yoga nidra and you can join the Sole to Soul Circle as a free member or as a paid member and each Wednesday you’ll receive your deeper dive into each week’s episode.
Free subscribers get journal prompts and paid members from just eight euros a month get exclusive video and audio recordings and you might also like to sign up for my free weekly newsletter Míle Buíochas Mondays. I’m very slowly learning Irish, it means a hundred thousand, no it doesn’t, it means a thousand thank yous. Céad míle fáilte is a hundred thousand welcomes.
Each week I share some of the things that I’m grateful for as I support you in building a gratitude practice that honours your nervous system by welcoming all the feelings because it’s not about forcing gratitude, it’s about having curiosity, what might have made you (Purr!) in that ventral vagal mode but also thinking about and acknowledging the things that have had you in sympathetic survival that (Hiss!) or even dorsal vagal “Freeze!” and welcoming all of it.
If you want to learn to heal your trauma and befriend your AuDHD/ADHD brain you can find out more about the book that’s 365 Ways to Feel Better and you can also explore self-care coaching and other ways in which we might work together as well as accessing lots of free resources through the website at selfcarecoaching.net.
Next week I’m sharing some simple practices and rituals for New Year’s Eve and around the New Year which I hope you’ll find helpful and thank you very much for listening. This episode, like all of them, has been produced by me, your host and producer Eve Menezes Cunningham and if you would like to subscribe, rate, give a five star rating that would be wonderful. I love the idea of helping as many people as possible heal your trauma and befriend your AuDHD, ADHD brain and the more it’s shared the more people it can potentially help.
If you feel like doing that that would be wonderful and I hope you have a really gorgeous Christmas. There’ll be more next week but I hope that you really even if you struggle enormously with the idea of rest and giving yourself permission, if you’re the kind of person who needs to be ill in order to have an early night or let go of some of the demands, imagine what it might be like, we’ll go into depth more with the Sole to Soul Circle with the yoga nidra.
But you can all do this, just imagine what might future you be like when you give yourself permission to get more rest and how might you now put things in place that future you will benefit from in terms of rest. You might also enjoy the Tracey Otsuka episode from a few weeks ago where she talked about sleep and lifespan and health span and how that helped her really learn to prioritise rest in its sleep form. Have a gorgeous Christmas and happy holidays and I look forward to sharing more next time.
Thank you for listening or watching the Feel Better Every Day Podcast. This episode, like all of them, was produced by me, your host, Eve Menezes Cunningham. You can find full transcripts, links and more information in the show notes and also at selfcarecoaching.net as well as more information about the book, 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing and if you’re interested in those deeper dives, joining the Sole to Soul Circle as well as lots of other free resources and information about other offerings.
If this episode was helpful, please leave a five-star review. In a world in which so much is coming up for healing and so many people are feeling unsafe. I want to do whatever I can to help as many people as possible heal from trauma, helping create a world in which everyone is safe, welcome and loved physiologically, emotionally, spiritually and mentally able to thrive. So your subscribing or liking or sharing feedback and other support helps me help as many people of all genders with trauma histories and AuDHD and ADHD.
Your learning to take better care of yourself isn’t just good for you, it creates a ripple effect helping others heal too. Keep looking after yourself, do what feels good, let yourself honour your nervous system, let yourself honour your charge, your life force and míle buíochas, a thousand thank yous.