Practice Resting in the Rest of 2025

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...