What Kind of Tired Are You? The 7 Types of Rest Approach
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As a sabbatical coach, I start with the assumption that rest is good and from God. God mandated and then modeled rest for us in the life and ministry of Jesus. And yet for some reason, we as humans are the only created beings that fight this gift.
Simultaneously, in the role I play as a sabbatical coach, I know the signs and symptoms of burnout and can see the lights on the dashboard. However, I don’t always know where the problem lies.
One of my favorite books that talks about our posture and theology of rest comes from Mark Buchanan and The Rest of God. A favorite quote I repeat often is, “if God can take any mess, any mishap, any wastage, any wreckage, any anything, and choreograph beauty and meaning from it, then you can take a day off. Either God’s always at work, watching the city, building the house, or you need to try harder. Either God is good and in control, or it all depends on you.”
“Either God is good and in control, or it all depends on you.”
This is an important starting place as I talk daily with people in need of rest…Can we agree that a pause is needed and that when you take a pause the world will not crumble?
While I feel the edginess of that quote, I don’t serve, write or coach from a place of arrogance and having it all together. If you've read anything I’ve written lately, you know I’ve been on a long journey with burnout and rest. For nearly 20 years I have struggled with an auto-immune disorder that invites me to closely monitor my self-care and rest and hormone levels. Just 18 months ago, I found myself once again with adrenal fatigue and almost no adrenaline in my body. Despite my best-to-date work/life balance over the last 2 years, I question if this depletion is just an inevitable part of my makeup or is there more to unpack in understanding how we wrestle with rest and burnout?
From that space of depletion, I continue the pursuit of understanding rest and burnout.
One of the best and new-to-me paradigms for talking about rest, comes from author Saundra Dalton-Smith, called Sacred Rest. Saundra provides us an incredibly helpful framework to discuss this basic need to stop and pause. As a medical professional, she daily asks her patients in her medical practice, What kind of tired are you? The opening of the book states, “Rest for the body, mind and spirit may appear to be hard to find because hurry is outside and inside of us...So we’re not just talking about sleep. Sleep is not the foundation of rest, but the by-product of rest. The idea of this book is that understanding rest is much more complex than understanding sleep, and one must consider not just the 7 areas of rest but the contributing areas of depletion. She states, “For every depleting activity in your day, there is a counter-reviving activity to balance the scales.” (30-31)
“One must consider not just the 7 areas of rest but the contributing areas of depletion.”
Let me briefly list for you the 7 types, but start first with my contribution in discussing what I see as the places of deficit. Because when we start from this place of describing the kind of tired, we’re able to identify the needed counter-balance in the form of rest. Where do you see yourself in this conversation?
1. Physical Depletion – Our body’s response to overwork. The most basic way we talk about tired including all of our body’s response to overwork. The deep tiredness behind our eyes, the aching shoulders or headaches we experience from lack of sleep.
2. Mental Depletion – The overactivity of a busy mind which may include information overload, overwork, multi-tasking, or obsessing about the future.
3. Emotional Depletion – Feeling the need to perform or meet external expectations. Not feeling enough or seen. This includes the weight of carrying emotional wounds and/or unprocessed grief for ourselves and others. (If this includes trauma, our bodies are unable to close the stress cycle and the Central Nervous System stays on high alert).
4. Social Depletion – Unable to find comfort and a place of belonging in our social relationships. Feeling unknown or unseen; not being able to rest into who we truly are at our best.
5. Sensory Depletion – The constant stimulation of our nervous system through our senses. Think about all forms of pollution - noise pollution, light pollution, stuff pollution.
6. Creative Depletion – Not allowing ourselves to be moved and effected by the world around us. Allowing the left, logical brain to rule our lives without balancing our interaction with the right brain. This includes not being present to the flow that comes from engaging our right brain through nature, play and our bodies.
7. Spiritual Depletion - carrying the heavy load of responsibility for your own or other’s belief in God.
What kind of tired are you? Give each of these a number 1-10 with 10 being absolutely exhausted.
For me, this deficit list illuminates a fraction of my tiredness, and is helpful for discussion. However there are two other pieces I would add in. When I consider my personality, a bent towards social justice and the leadership roles I live into in care for the marginalized, foreigners and women, the awareness of the weight I carry is even greater.
When we carry the burden of a people group or the burden of finances of an organization, the health of a sick parent, the weight of injustice of the evil in the world, we add to the depletion on a more complex and hard to navigate level. We may have what I call “compounded rest deficits” not just for ourselves, but for our family, an organization or a people group such as women, the poor, or people of color that we do not feel we can let down about. Many ask, how can we release our multi-layered loads when the job is unfinished?
What kind of load have we been carrying? Maybe we need to protect our rest that much greater if we have the complex load to carry. I am challenged to ask, How do I rest well on behave of others?
I know a break in the form of sabbatical is a gift but also a necessary reset for me. It’s a time to pause and ask how this cessation from work allows God to do the work He is in control of. As well, it’s an invitation to Ecclesiastes 3, a time to work and a time rest. A time to speak and a time to listen. For me that listening is a continuation of the noticing, checking in with myself on my tired and an opportunity to gain awareness of the specific areas of deficit. Is my tiredness physical, mental, emotional, social, sensory, creative or spiritual?
Consider your deficits and be honest with where you are lacking. How to rest into that is to be continued on part 2!
