Why I Can’t Rest—Even Though I’m So Tired(And what to do if you can’t slow down, even when you desperately want to)

Emma Draycott
Jul 29
3 min read

A tired woman in a mustard yellow sweater sits at a desk in front of a laptop, yawning and rubbing her eye. A coffee mug and a small potted plant are on the table, with colorful office binders and a window in the background, suggesting a home or office workspace.

You’re tired but wired. Exhausted but unable to rest.

You crave peace, but when it finally comes… something in you resists it.

You lie down and your brain speeds up. You clear your calendar and feel guilty for not doing more. You finally stop working but now you’re cleaning, organising, scrolling, solving.

If you’ve ever thought, “Why can’t I rest—even though I’m so tired?”Know that there is a reason for this and you are in the right place.

You’re likely stuck in a pattern I see every day in high-functioning women: You don’t just feel on edge, your nervous system is on edge.

This isn’t a mindset issue. It’s not about willpower. And no, it’s not because you’re “bad at relaxing.”

Let’s talk about what’s really going on and what to do about it.

Your System Isn’t Addicted to Stress, It’s Conditioned to Survive

You’ve been operating at full tilt for years striving, holding, achieving. You’ve learned to cope by staying ahead. Staying productive. Staying on.

Because at some point in your story, doing more felt like the only way to feel safe, seen, or valuable.

So now, when you finally slow down. Your body doesn’t celebrate. It panics.

Stillness feels like a threat because for a nervous system that’s spent years in survival, calm is unfamiliar. And unfamiliar doesn’t feel safe. It feels vulnerable. And why on earth would it choose to feel this? Exactly. It wouldnt so it gives you every cue it can to keep you active - cue the restless legs, the figeting, the feeling like you have forgotten something, oh load more thoughts etc etc. Its clever and this is survival in action and will definitely keep you from the threat of resting. So this is why it feels so hard to slow down, to rest.

This is what I see over and over again in the high-achieving, deeply caring women I work with:

You want rest. But rest also triggers old wiring that says:

“You’re falling behind.”
“You’re being selfish.”
“You should be doing something useful.”
“If you stop, it will all fall apart.”

So you don’t stop. You can’t stop. Even when you’re on the edge of burnout.

Rest Isn’t a Luxury—It’s a Regulation necessity

This isn’t about better boundaries or a more structured bedtime routine. If your nervous system doesn’t feel safe in stillness, no amount of productivity hacks will change that.

Here’s what’s actually happening:

When you’ve spent years in sympathetic dominance (fight/flight mode), your body becomes fluent in doing. And rest? Rest lives in the parasympathetic state, where healing, connection, and presence happen.

But if your system has been living in hypervigilance, it doesn’t know how to drop in safely. It hasn’t practiced rest in a long time.

That’s why it feels edgy. Confronting. Even wrong.

But here’s the good news: This can change. And it doesn’t take forever. And this is something I get to witness and support my clients through all of the time.

If You Can’t Rest, Start Here

Instead of forcing rest or waiting until you burn out completely, begin with curiosity.

Ask yourself:

What does my body believe will happen if I stop?
What would rest mean about me?
What part of me feels unsafe when I’m not “doing”?

For many women, rest brings up more than tiredness. It brings up emotions that have been pushed down for years. It activates parts of you that learned, early on, that being still wasn’t allowed.

This resistance isn’t a failure, it’s a flag. It’s your system saying: “This doesn’t feel safe yet.”

And that’s something we can absolutely work with gently, respectfully, and at the root.

This Is the Work We Do Inside The Freedom Formula™

If you can’t rest, even though you’re exhausted—your system needs something deeper than surface-level self-care.

Inside The Freedom Formula™, I guide women like you through nervous system re-patterning, subconscious integration, and emotional regulation that actually lasts.

We don’t just manage the symptoms. We shift the internal experience, so that rest no longer feels like a threat.

Because when your body learns that calm is safe, Everything changes.

Ready to Finally Feel Safe Slowing Down?

If you're tired of pushing through and you’re ready to reclaim your clarity, calm, and energy from the inside out, this is your next step.

Book your 1:1 Connection Call. This is a safe, spacious conversation to explore what’s keeping your system switched on, what real rest would look like for you, and whether my private support inside The Freedom Formula™ is the right fit.