Making Sense of Rest and ADHD
- Coach Mary
- 3 days ago
- 7 min read
What comes up for you when you hear the word "rest"? Or words/phrases like "relax", "just take it easy", "slow down", or "just rest for a bit"?
Does your body soften at the thought… or perhaps, does it tense up more?
Do you feel relief, or something more complicated? Maybe a strange discombobulated mix of guilt, irritation, shame, boredom, or even nothing at all? Apathy is a feeling too.
For most of my life, I’ve had a love–hate relationship with the word rest. If someone told my younger self to rest I’d probably scrunch my face, roll my eyes, or feel my shoulders lifting toward my ears. Rest never felt like something I was allowed to do. Not unless I had earned it through perfectionism, achievement, or pushing myself far past my limits.
And even then, rest rarely felt restorative for me. It often felt like my brain and body refused stillness. Boredom or sitting quietly with nothing to do felt unbearable, almost painful, like energy building with nowhere to go. I was always moving, long before I had words to explain why. There’s a story my family still tells about me from when I was around four years old. We were asked to move out of our apartment because the neighbours below us kept complaining about the loud dog running back and forth across their ceiling. The problem was, we didn’t have a dog. It was me. Constantly running, bouncing from furniture to furniture. A one-child stampede.
Much later, during my ADHD assessment as an adult, the practitioner compared my profile to Tigger from Winnie the Pooh. I bounced from project to project, hobby to hobby, idea to idea. From job changes to career shifts. From art experiments to sporting goals and tournaments, straight into the next hyperfocus rabbit hole. As my body slowed down from years of overuse injuries and exhaustion, my mind only became busier. More anxious. More restless.
All of this was also shaped by the environment I grew up in, something I’ve come to understand only over time. I was raised in a Christian Asian immigrant household where mental health was stigmatized and poorly understood, emotions were often minimized or bypassed, and rest was often linked to laziness or a lack of discipline. The people around me cared deeply, but they were navigating limited knowledge, limited resources and support, intense cultural barriers, and real fears around safety and survival. Over time, I came to see that many of the beliefs I absorbed were shaped by their own trauma, hypervigilance, and the ways they had learned to endure.
In that context, rest didn’t just feel uncomfortable — it felt inherently wrong. Like something that could invite judgment or punishment. Like something my body learned to associate with danger rather than safety. When you layer that kind of conditioning with ADHD, sensory sensitivity, unspoken needs, and a nervous system shaped by constant vigilance, it began to make more sense to me why rest never felt natural or safe.
It wasn’t until therapy, a few years ago when I experienced my first true safe pause, that I realized something that genuinely surprised me: Oh my gosh, I had never actually rested… Not in the way my brain and body actually needed.
If this resonates, you’re not alone. Many ADHDers spend years moving at full speed, adapting, coping, and pushing through life without ever being taught how to rest in a way that supports their nervous system.
And so, with the holidays quickly approaching, a time when our world collectively whispers slow down, I felt drawn to explore this topic with more care and curiosity. What does rest actually mean, and why does it feel so complicated for so many of us?
What exactly is Rest?
If we strip it back to its bare bones, rest is less about “doing nothing” and more about creating the conditions for the mind and body to recover from effort. In qualitative research exploring how people actually experience rest, rest is described as a state of harmony — where motivation, emotions, and actions feel more aligned, and where the body is no longer bracing or pushing (Asp, 2015). In other words, rest is not just stopping activity. It’s a felt sense of easing and settling.
This understanding shows up clearly in Occupational Therapy as well. Rest is considered an essential occupation. Not a luxury, and not simply the absence of activity, but a necessary part of what allows people to experience balance, meaning, and satisfaction in daily life (Wilcock & Hocking, 2015).
For much of human history, rest wasn’t something individuals had to figure out alone. It was built into shared life. Sabbaths. Seasonal wintering. Feast days and fasting days. Communal rhythms that clearly signalled when it was time to pause.
Even our language reflects how layered this idea is. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary (n.d.) defines rest as everything from freedom from activity and peace of mind, to a place for stopping or breathing, to rhythmic silence in music, and even “the repose of death.” It’s striking that rest is associated with something so deep, settled, and complete.
On paper, rest sounds comforting. A softening. A letting go. A moment to breathe.
But in real life, rest is rarely that simple. It’s shaped by culture, faith, family expectations, productivity pressures, and the stories we absorbed long before we had the chance to question them. And for many of us, those stories quietly taught us that rest wasn’t safe, allowed, or deserved.
Why Rest Feels Uncomfortable for ADHD Brains
So why does the word rest make some of us flinch?
Because many of us learned that rest had to be earned.
Because rest was moralized.
Because stillness was equated with laziness.
Because our sense of worth became tied to productivity and output.
Because slowing down didn’t feel safe in our bodies.
Because rest was not modeled as safe or supportive.
And for ADHDers, rest isn’t only emotional. It’s neurological.
Research shows that ADHD brains differ in how the default mode network (DMN) works. This is the system involved in internal thought, reflection, and mind-wandering (Broulidakis et al., 2022; Saad et al., 2022). When external stimulation drops, internal activity often ramps up. More thoughts. More noise. More mental clutter. What looks calm on the outside can feel overwhelming on the inside.
Many ADHDers also experience sensory sensitivities. Sound, light, texture, or movement can register more intensely (Kamath et al., 2020; Lane & Reynolds, 2019). So environments that are meant to be “restful” for most, can actually increase discomfort.
Add in trauma, hypervigilance, burnout, or years of staying on for others, and stillness can feel exposing. Quiet can feel unsafe. The nervous system doesn’t trust it yet.
So for many ADHDers, rest doesn’t feel peaceful or quiet at all. It can feel more like being dropped into a crowded shopping centre on Black Friday. Bright. Noisy. Overwhelming. Except all of it is happening inside the mind.
Rest isn’t hard because ADHDers lack discipline. For some of us, rest is hard because our brains and bodies learned to survive by staying in motion.
Finding Our Own Kind of Rest
Here’s the part that matters most: Your rest doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s.
Sometimes rest begins with curiosity, not absolute quietness or stillness. You might start by noticing what shows up when you slow down, what beliefs you carry about productivity, or what sensations arise in your body when you try to rest.
For some people, rest begins in motion. A slow walk. Stretching. Stepping outside for a few minutes. Doodling.
For others, rest begins with the senses. Lowering the lights. Adding warmth. Soft textures. Fresh air. Looking at something beautiful. A warm drink. Small shifts that help the nervous system ease into a sense of safety.
And sometimes rest requires support and safe community. Therapy/counselling can help untangle the stories we inherited about worth, performance, and slowing down.
I’ve also created a self-paced Notion guide to go alongside exploring what rest means to you. It includes short prompts and simple activities to help you explore what rest means for you, notice what truly restores you, and do a gentle end-of-year-rest-check-in. You can sign up below to receive the Notion guide link via email.
Permission to Rest
Rest is not laziness. Rest is not failure. Rest is not giving up. Rest is how your nervous system gets a chance to settle, reset, and repair after carrying too much for too long. It’s about creating enough safety and space to keep going without breaking.
Your relationship with rest may be tender or tangled, shaped by living with ADHD in a world that wasn’t built for your brain, by cultural and faith-based messages, by trauma, or by years of survival-mode living just to get through each day. None of that is a personal failing.
You’re allowed to take your time. You’re allowed to rest in small, ordinary ways that fit into real life. You’re allowed to define rest in a way that feels safe, supportive, and true for you.
As we step into the holidays, may rest meet you gently. Not as another expectation. Not as something to do right. But as moments of softness, presence, and enoughness.
And may you remember, without pressure or perfection: You deserve rest. Not because you’ve earned it, but simply because you’re human.
References
Asp, M. (2015). Rest: A health-related phenomenon and concept in caring science. Global Qualitative Nursing Research, 2, 1-11. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/2333393615583663.
Broulidakis, M.J., et al. (2022). Default mode network connectivity and ADHD. International Journal of Psychophysiology,173, 38-44. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2022.01.007.
Kamath, J., et al. (2020). Sensory profiles in adults with and without ADHD. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 104. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ridd.2020.103696.
Lane, S.J., & Reynolds, S. (2019). Sensory over-responsivity as an added dimension in ADHD. Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience, 13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnint.2019.00040.
"Rest." Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rest. Accessed 13 Dec. 2025.
Saad, J.F., et al. (2022). Intrinsic functional connectivity and ADHD symptom presentation. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 16. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2022.859538.
Wilcock, A., & Hocking, C. (2015). An Occupational Perspective of Health (3rd ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003525233
