"Take a deep breath. Relax. Calm down." All well-meaning advice, and we've all wanted to throw something at the person offering it. Of course I take deep breaths. I'll relax when this is finished. And we won't even discuss the results of telling a stressed person to calm down.
The sentiment is caring; the delivery lands sideways because it skips the real problem: somewhere along the way, most of us lost the ability to do less. Or even — gasp — to do nothing.
Busyness as a competitive sport
Listen to any office (or any group text) and you'll hear the scoreboard: who's juggling the most, who slept the least, whose calendar is the most catastrophic. The 9-to-5 drags into the evening by phone. Leisure gets hoarded for vacation days Americans famously don't use — or for that mythical weekend after the housework is done. Here's the local irony: I practice in a town people drive hours to relax in, and the people who live here forget how. The beach is two blocks away and somehow there's no time to stand on it.
Health professionals broadly agree that genuine leisure — relaxation, reflection, even intentional gratitude — is instrumental in managing stress. We know rest works. What stops us isn't evidence. It's the lingering stigma of doing nothing: fear of looking lazy, of being judged, or of simply not knowing how to be without a task in hand. So we stay in the rat race of who can do more.
The should/could swap
The tool I use most — on clients and on myself — is a two-line script. Catch yourself mid-should: "I should have finished the laundry instead of reading my novel." That sentence is a shame generator; left running, it produces guilt, anxiety, and precisely zero folded laundry.
Now run the replacement: "I could have done the laundry. Instead I chose to read my novel — and I feel rested, and I enjoyed that hour." Same facts. But the second version tells the truth about choice and names what the rest actually gave you. Say the feeling part out loud; it's the active ingredient.
Full disclosure from your therapist: the laundry is not magically done because you engaged in self-care. Doing less is unfortunately not a magic pill. But the undone laundry was never the end of the world — and therefore neither was the hour you spent with your book. Keep catching the shoulds, and you slowly win back the space to rest without a guilt surcharge.
When you walk the beach, walk the beach
There's an old teaching I love: when you eat, eat. When you sleep, sleep. I'd add a local verse — when you walk the beach, walk the beach. Not beach-plus-inbox, not sunset-through-a-camera-roll. One thing, fully attended, is the opposite of the multitasking arms race, and it's available every single day for free.
"I could have. Instead I chose —" is a complete sentence about rest.
Start embarrassingly small: one intentionally unproductive half hour this week, defended like an appointment. If slowing down reliably triggers guilt or anxiety you can't talk yourself past — that's real, it's common, and it's workable. It's also exactly the kind of thing therapy is for. The goal isn't just tolerating rest. It's getting to the point of celebrating it.
Mandy first explored these ideas in “Slowing Down: Doing Less to Combat Stress,” published on Therapy Today. This piece is a new take, written for life here in Florida. It’s education, not a substitute for care from a licensed clinician.