the difference between rest and avoidance

i kept calling it recharging.

but man am i good at lying to myself... as my therapist often reminds me, "your brain is not on your side."

a saturday on the couch. phone in hand, three episodes deep. another slice of pizza, then a fourth. then a fifth. polishing off that "almost empty" bottle of wine that had three pours left. telling myself i earned it.

and i had — the week was a lot. action items, fire drills, kids, hobbies, health, self care, the bear, guy's grocery games new season, the newest dungeon crawler carl -- i was worn out. so why not "relax"? turn off your brain any way I could?

but by sunday night i didn't feel restored. i felt heavier. like i'd spent two days running from something instead of resting from it. that's when it clicked: rest and avoidance can look identical from the outside. same couch, same blanket, same closed laptop. the difference is on the inside, and it's worth learning to actually think about what emotions i'm feeling and identify them

here's the test i use now. rest leaves you lighter. you come back to the thing — the work, the conversation, the decision — with a little more in the tank.

avoidance leaves you heavier. the "thing" (boss, spouse, to do list) is still there, except now it's grown teeth, because you've spent the whole time half-thinking about it instead of actually resting. rest has an end. you nap, you walk, you read, and at some point you're done and you get up and do what needs to be done with MORE energy and passoion and enthusiasm. avoidance has no natural end. it just runs until something forces you to stop — a deadline, a guilt spike, a person, a stroke (in the case of a good friend).

rest doesn't need a story. avoidance is full of stories (see excuses). "i'll start fresh monday." "i just need one more day." "i can't think about this right now." the stories are the tell. i'm not saying every couch day is a moral failure - far from it. i was raised on tv, and i plan to die with tv!

sometimes you genuinely need to disappear for a bit, and that's fine. the problem is calling avoidance "rest," because then you never get the actual rest — you just get the slow drip of dread with a blanket on top. so now when i catch myself reaching for the remote, i ask one question: am i moving toward something, or away from it? if it's toward — toward quiet, toward recovery, toward genuinely refilling — i let myself have it, fully, no guilt. if it's away, i don't force productivity either. i just name it. "i'm avoiding the thing."

weirdly, that sentence alone takes some of the air out of it. the thing is usually a person, accompanied with a feeling of fear or anger or broken trust or expectations (real or imagined).

but that pause make the thing shrinks back to its actual size, which is almost always smaller than the version i was running from. the truth is never as scary as the story you tell yourself.

rest is a yes to yourself. avoidance is a no to something else, wearing rest's clothes, showing up with late night doordash deliveries full of all the things you love. learn to tell them apart and you get more than rest - you get your weekends back.

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