Are you able to fully relax and chill out when you want to? Or do you always have a pressing need to do “something”, even when you’re supposedly resting? If it’s the latter, you’re not alone. Many people learned behaviors in childhood that keep them from relaxing properly as adults, and most aren’t even aware of it.
Of course, there are other factors that affect how restless you are, such as neurodivergence, life stress, and anxiety. But if you have trouble relaxing in your free time and you aren’t sure why, the following behaviors may offer some insight as to where this inability to unwind came from.
1. Being constantly on watch for all the things that need to be done.
Some people were parentified as young children or were forced to take on tasks that weren’t their responsibility. This often happens with firstborn daughters who were forced to cook, clean, and parent their siblings, but kids of all ages may have been obligated to step up and take over if the parent was overworked, unable, or simply wanted to alleviate their own workload.
If this were the case with you, then you may have been reprimanded at any time you relaxed because there was always a task that needed to be attended to. As a result, you’re now constantly on watch to see what needs to be done before you can “allow” yourself to get some well-earned rest. You may feel unable to go to bed early because there are a couple of dirty dishes in the sink, for example, or you may sneak one or two small chores in before you settle down to watch a movie.
2. Being called or made to feel “lazy” if you dared to enjoy free time without productivity.
People who experienced this in childhood discovered early that they could only rest and relax if it appeared that they were still doing something productive. Just lying or sitting down and doing nothing was considered a waste of time, when any drop of energy they had could have been put to better use, usually for other people’s benefit.
My partner and I both grew up in environments like this, and neither of us can sit still for very long as a result. She’ll be mending clothes or knitting while we watch TV, and I’ll get up regularly to do things like chop extra kindling, shovel snow off the porch, and so on.
It’s worth pointing out that this kind of messaging isn’t always malicious, either. The implication that lack of productivity = laziness is reflected in work hustle culture, in which sleep deprivation is commended and working non-stop is seen as a virtue. It’s no surprise that it’s passed down from one generation to the next.
3. Perfectionism and overachievement as a way to get praise.
If your parents only paid attention to you or praised you when you achieved something they deemed worthy of their time and care, you may have become an overachiever in order to get your needs met. This can also happen when parents focus solely on praising results rather than effort. For example, you may have discovered that the attention you got depended on how well you performed: an A on a project meant rewards, whereas a B was met with disappointment.
It’s understandable that this formative conditioning caused you to fear failure and seek perfection instead. After all, high achievement = earning love in your mind. Because of this, you likely pour everything you have into making everything in your life perfect, from the cleanliness of your home to the projects you present. Otherwise, you feel that you’re at risk of losing the love and approval of those you care about and depend upon.
4. Having your personal worth tied to output.
Similar to overachieving for others’ approval, you may have learned that your personal worth is entirely tied to how much you output. Maybe your parents enrolled you in countless extracurricular activities as a child, from dance and music classes to math or language lessons on the weekend. Their goal might have been well-intentioned: to prepare you to succeed in adulthood, but what they achieved instead is your complete inability to relax.
This is because, quite frankly, you don’t know how to. You were taught how to do everything except relax, because to do so was seen as a waste of time, rather than a vital aspect of existence. Furthermore, you may be wracked with anxiety and panic on a regular basis, or wake up in fear in the middle of the night because you’re afraid that you’ve forgotten to do something important.
5. Keeping busy as a means of controlling emotions.
If you were punished for expressing emotion as a child, you may have learned to channel those feelings into actions as a means of redirecting and controlling them. For example, if you were yelled at or grounded for crying, expressing hurt, anger, and so on, then you had to find some way to channel those emotions elsewhere.
Now that you’re an adult, you may have difficulty expressing your emotions because of the repercussions that always came with doing so. As a result, you still move those feelings out of your body by keeping busy with other tasks. When angry, you may clean parts of the house meticulously because that focuses your energy on something useful. Similarly, if you’re sad or anxious, you may do a craft or a household task that involves calm repetition.
6. Bracing against conflict.
If your parents were always fighting or one (or both) of them had serious health conditions, then it’s much harder to relax once fully grown. Like a prey animal, you were always sensing the energy of the room to determine whether something terrible was about to happen (which you either had to withstand or help manage), and if you did let your guard down, you were inevitably startled out of a state of calm into chaos.
You may have been braced for so long as a child that you were never able to unwind, and that constant “clenching” has followed you into adulthood. If this sounds familiar, it’s likely that your nervous system is now trapped in a threat response.
Quite simply, you’ve never felt safe enough to unfurl and fully relax, because you’ve learned that being in that kind of vulnerable state would result in you getting hurt somehow. Furthermore, you may be prone to catastrophizing when it comes to future events: you fall down “what if…” rabbit holes about everything that could, possibly, maybe go wrong, so you can anticipate the best way of navigating it. As such, you end up causing yourself a great deal of unnecessary anxiety about things that will likely never come to pass.
7. Acute self-consciousness due to perpetual criticism.
If your parents criticized everything about your appearance and behavior on a constant basis, you’ve likely not only become hypersensitive to negativity from others — you’re also perpetually agonizing over your every move and choice in an attempt to avoid condemnation. This may have translated into acute social anxiety because you assume that everyone you encounter is judging you the same way your own family members did.
You can’t relax because if you let your guard down, you might slouch or make a facial expression that someone may dislike. You may meticulously govern every movement so you don’t accidentally slurp your drink, position your legs the wrong way when you sit, make an errant gesture with your hands, say the wrong thing, etc.
Essentially, you’re micromanaging your very existence to the point of exhaustion, every waking moment of every day. Hell, you might even have difficulty sleeping peacefully, in case you make a sound or movement that those around you will judge you for!
Final thoughts…
Although these behaviors may have helped to create the foundation your life has been built upon, that doesn’t mean they can’t be adjusted or redirected. In fact, when we understand why we behave the way we do, we can take a variety of steps to reprogram ourselves — rather like recording over an old VHS tape or music cassette.
With diligence, patience, and approaches like dialectical behavioral therapy, you can cultivate new, healthier behaviors that allow you to rest and rejuvenate the way you need to.
