The Fight That Never Ends: When You Don’t Know How to Rest
Somewhere along the way, many veterans, service personnel and trauma survivors come to believe that rest is weakness. Not because anyone explicitly said it, but because we learned, over and over, that being still or allowing the guard to drop was unsafe.
In the military, idleness is often associated with risk. When you stop moving, you're vulnerable. When you’re not useful, you’re a liability. Even after leaving the forces, that wiring stays active. The body might be out of uniform, but the nervous system isn’t ‘standing easy’. For many, the conflict never really ends, it just goes quiet, and in that silence, stillness feels dangerous.
Why Does Rest Feel So Hard?
On the surface, it might seem like a matter of habit. You’ve spent years operating at high tempo. Of course it’s hard to slow down. But there’s more to it than muscle memory or personal grit.
When someone is stuck in a high-alert state, their brain doesn’t register rest as safety, it registers it as exposure. The amygdala, part of the brain responsible for detecting threat, stays switched on. The sympathetic nervous system keeps humming, so “rest” feels uncomfortable, even unsafe. The mind races. The body stays tense. Stillness triggers guilt, anxiety, or even shame.
In trauma therapy, we talk about hyper-arousal, when the fight-or-flight system doesn’t turn off. It’s exhausting to live in that state, but stepping out of it can feel unbearable too. For many, the fight never ends not because they want it to continue, but because stopping feels more frightening than pushing on.
The Physiology of Never Switching Off
Living in survival mode has a cost.
The body floods with cortisol and adrenaline, preparing for a threat that never fully arrives. Heart rate stays elevated. Sleep is shallow or broken. Digestion, immunity, even memory start to suffer. Over time, this chronic activation wears you down, not just emotionally, but neurologically.
The prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain responsible for rational thinking, emotional regulation, and decision-making, gets hijacked by stress. You’re more reactive, more irritable, and less able to find perspective. That constant edge? It’s not just psychological. It’s chemical.
It’s no wonder rest feels impossible. Your brain thinks the war’s still on.
Reframing Rest as Discipline, Not Laziness
Here’s the truth; rest is not indulgence. Rest is a form of discipline. It takes strength to stop. It takes trust, in yourself, in the people around you, and in the idea that you’re allowed to put the weight down without the world falling apart.
What if rest wasn’t the opposite of hard work, but the thing that makes it sustainable? What if your worth wasn’t measured by your output, but by your presence, how grounded, clear-headed, and steady you are?
Most people don’t burn out because they’re weak. They burn out because they never learned how to stop. Therapy helps you build that skill. It helps you train your nervous system to tolerate calm. To find safety in quiet. To unwind, not because you're giving up, but because you're refuelling.
How Therapy Helps You Step Out of Survival Mode
Psychotherapy won’t turn you into someone else, but it will help you learn how to live in your own body again, without it feeling like a battlefield.
In therapy, we work to:
Identify your internal alarm bells, the signals that tell your body rest is unsafe.
Work with your nervous system, not against it, using body-based techniques to calm hyper vigilance.
Rebuild your identity outside of constant doing, exploring who you are when you're not performing or protecting.
It’s not a quick fix. But over time, the tension eases. Sleep deepens. You stop clenching your jaw without realising it. You remember what it’s like to be still and not feel guilt.
You Don’t Need Permission to Rest (But If You’re Looking for It, Here It Is)
If this speaks to you, maybe you’re already tired of the fight. Maybe you’re craving rest but don’t know how to take it without feeling like you’re failing.
So here it is, in black and white. You’re allowed to stop.
Not forever. Not all at once. But enough to catch your breath. Enough to feel like you again.
Let’s work together to make that feel possible.
You don’t need permission to rest. But if you’re looking for it, this is it!