Rest Is Healing

This week we've been rethinking self-care, not as something that fixes us, but as something that helps us carry life more sustainably. Today's edition turns to grief, where that distinction matters most.

Loss asks enormous amounts of our minds and bodies, and sometimes the most healing thing we can do is give ourselves permission to rest without guilt.

Today’s Quick Overview:

🔬 Science Spotlight: Why grief comes in waves…
🗣️ Therapist Corner: Rest is part of healing…
📰 Mental Health News: AI, activity, and mental health…
🫂 Community Voices: Learning to accept a compliment…

Let's check in on what actually restores you:

This week, what restored you most? Not what sounded nice, what actually brought you back? That's your real self-care. Build more of that into regular life, not just crisis moments.

Grief, healing, and growth all involve going backward sometimes. When that happens, what does your brain make of it?

The Real Shape of Progress

Progress is supposed to go in a straight line, that's what we picture, anyway. But real growth dips, stalls, loops back, and climbs again. This free poster maps out what that actually looks like, so the next time you feel like you're going backward, you can see it for what it is: a normal part of the path.

Grief as a Life Transition: Giving Yourself Permission to Rest While Processing Loss

Answered by: Tatiana (Tania) Ziaras, Registered Psychologist

More Than Just Sadness

Grief is often described as an emotional experience, but anyone who has lived through significant loss knows it is much more than just sadness.

It is a whole-body experience that affects our thoughts, emotions, relationships, physical health, energy, memory, concentration, and sense of identity.

It affects our heart and can present so differently for everyone depending on the nature of the relationship to what you lost: a loved one, a loved one's chronic illness or dementia, a pet (usually considered a family member), employment, sense of community, moral safety, health status, or loss of the life picture you once envisioned. This list goes on.

Why You're So Exhausted

After more than 23 years working as a registered psychologist, one of the most common concerns I hear from people experiencing grief is, "Why am I so exhausted?" Many clients worry that they are not coping well because they cannot seem to function as they once did before.

They feel guilty for needing to slow down or take time away from work, social commitments, or daily responsibilities. This is not talked about or acknowledged enough.

There is continued stigma around needing to rest or take time to mentally recover. The old adage of "toughen up and push through it" or "my resilience is gone" is still present, and they are damaging and confusing.

The reality is that grief is not a sign of weakness. It is one of life's most profound transitions, and like any significant transition, it demands energy. Rest is not something separate from healing. It is part of healing itself. The problem is that life continues to go on in the face of grief.

Why Is Grief So Exhausting?

Grief requires us to adapt to a world that has fundamentally changed. Our minds and bodies are constantly working to process a new reality and find our way to what comes next.

This adjustment places enormous demands on our entire nervous system, psyche, and ways of conscious living again.

Many people notice they experience:

These experiences are common responses to grief. Your brain is continually processing memories, emotions, and the reality of what has changed. That work is invisible, and it is incredibly demanding.

Rest Is Part of the Grieving Process

In a society that often values productivity over wellbeing, many people feel pressure to "stay strong," return to work quickly, or appear as though they are coping.

Unfortunately, grief rarely follows our schedules.

Rest during grief is not giving up. It is allowing your mind and body the space they need to process an experience that cannot be rushed.

Healing rarely happens by pushing harder. More often, it occurs through moving gently between periods of engaging with life and allowing ourselves time to recover.

Just as the body needs rest after physical injury, the emotional system also requires recovery after significant loss.

What Does Rest During Grief Look Like?

Rest is more than simply getting enough sleep. Grief can affect many parts of ourselves, so restorative rest may involve different forms of care.

Sometimes rest means:

Some days, rest may simply mean accomplishing one essential task instead of ten.

That is enough.

Rest Does Not Mean You Are Forgetting

Many grieving people fear that if they begin to feel better, laugh again, or allow themselves periods of rest, they are somehow leaving their loved one behind.

This is a deeply understandable fear.

However, resting is not forgetting.

Healing does not erase love.

Taking care of yourself does not diminish the importance of the person or relationship you have lost. Instead, caring for yourself creates the capacity to carry that love forward in a way that is sustainable.

Recognising When You Need Rest

Grief can disconnect us from our own needs. Many people become so focused on caring for others or meeting responsibilities that they overlook signs of exhaustion.

You may benefit from slowing down if you notice:

Rather than asking, "How much should I be doing?" it can be more helpful to ask, "What does my mind and body need today?"

The answer may change from one day to the next.

Grief Has No Timeline

One of the greatest myths about grief is that healing follows predictable stages or should be completed within a certain timeframe.

In reality, grief moves in waves.

Some days may feel manageable, while others can feel as raw as the beginning. Anniversaries, birthdays, familiar places, music, or unexpected reminders can bring emotions back with surprising intensity.

This does not mean you are moving backwards.

It means your grief is responding to what matters.

Allowing yourself periods of rest during these times is a healthy response rather than a setback.

Balancing Rest With Gentle Reconnection

Although rest is essential, healing also involves gradually reconnecting with life when you feel ready.

This does not mean forcing yourself to "move on."

Instead, it may involve taking small, compassionate steps such as returning to a favourite hobby, meeting a trusted friend for coffee, spending time outdoors, or establishing gentle daily routines that provide a sense of stability.

Healing often comes through finding a balance between allowing space for grief and slowly rebuilding capacity for living.

Both are important.

When Additional Support Is Helpful

While grief is a natural response to loss, there are times when additional support can make a significant difference.

If your grief feels persistently overwhelming, significantly interferes with your ability to function over time, or leaves you feeling stuck or isolated, speaking with a psychologist or another qualified mental health professional can provide valuable support.

Seeking help is not a sign that you are grieving incorrectly. It is simply recognising that some losses are too heavy to carry alone.

A Final Thought

If you are grieving, perhaps the kindest question you can ask yourself is not, "Why am I not coping better?" but rather, "How can I care for myself while carrying this loss?"

Grief changes us because love changes us.

Rest is not an interruption to healing.

It is one of the ways healing happens.

Give yourself permission to slow down. Your mind, your body, and your heart are doing important work, even on the days when it looks like you are doing very little at all.

Tatiana (Tania) Ziaras is a Registered Psychologist (Victoria) with over 22 years of clinical experience across private practice, occupational rehabilitation, and workplace mental health. She holds a Master of Counselling from Monash University and is a Full Member of the Australian Psychological Society. Through her private practice, Healthier Mind Healthier Body, she provides psychological counselling with a focus on depression, anxiety, life transitions, and complex biopsychosocial presentations. Her therapeutic approaches include Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Trauma-Focused CBT, and Mindfulness-Based practices. Contact Tania at [email protected]

Healthy Grief Isn't Linear: Your Brain Needs to Move Between Confronting Loss and Stepping Away

Read the Study

The Research: Researchers at Utrecht University developed the Dual Process Model of Coping with Bereavement, which describes grieving not as a sequence of stages but as a continuous back-and-forth between two types of coping. Loss-oriented coping means directly confronting the loss, sitting with pain, working through memories.

Restoration-oriented coping means attending to the practical and identity changes grief creates, managing finances, rebuilding routines, developing a new sense of self. Healthy adaptation requires moving between both, and the model argues that this oscillation is what actually allows people to integrate loss over time.

Why It Matters: The idea that grief means pushing through your feelings until you reach acceptance can make people feel like they're failing when they take breaks, find moments of lightness, or get absorbed in ordinary tasks.

The Dual Process Model reframes those moments as essential regulation, not avoidance. Continuous confrontation with grief would be unsustainable. Avoiding it entirely causes its own problems. Moving between the two is what allows people to process what happened while continuing to live.

Try It Today: If you're grieving and you find yourself laughing at something, absorbed in a task, or temporarily not thinking about your loss, you're not betraying anyone.

The more useful thing to notice is whether you're stuck in one direction, either unable to step away from the pain, or avoiding it so thoroughly that you never let yourself feel it. Healthy grieving involves both, and the balance looks different for everyone.

I can let grief move through me today in whatever form it arrives, without needing to manage it into something more acceptable or push it toward a resolution it isn't ready to reach.

Think of one person or memory connected to a loss you've carried, not what you lost, but what you were given by having it at all, and what it means that the love behind the grief is still real and still yours.

It's okay if grief catches you off guard today. It's okay if it arrives in the middle of something ordinary and takes the floor out from under you for a moment. That's not a setback. That's just what grief does, and it doesn't mean you're doing it wrong.

If you're carrying any kind of grief right now, a loss, a change, an ending, give yourself two minutes to simply acknowledge it without trying to move through it or make sense of it. Just let it be what it is today. And if you find a moment of lightness today, let that be okay too. Both belong.

"My Coworker Complimented My Work and I Didn't Believe Them"

Shared by Martin

My coworker complimented a project I'd worked on. Said it was really well thought out, that I'd solved a problem she'd been stuck on for weeks.

My immediate reaction was to downplay it. I made it seem like luck or timing, anything to push the credit away. Later I realized I do this all the time. Someone compliments something I did, and I immediately find reasons why it wasn't actually good. I can't actually accept a compliment. My brain won't let me.

I tried accepting it this time. I said, "Thanks, I appreciate that." But the whole rest of the day I felt uncomfortable. Like I was lying by not disagreeing with her. I don't know where that comes from. Maybe it’s how I grew up. But now, I'm hyperaware of it and still can't fix it.

When someone compliments me, there's this voice that says they're wrong, or they're being polite, or they don't really mean it. And I believe that voice way more than I believe the actual person standing in front of me.

My friends say that I should work on self-compassion. That I deserve credit for things I do well. I am working on that, but knowing that logically doesn't stop the voice.

Share Your Story

Have a mental health journey you'd like to share with our community? Reply back to this email. All submissions are anonymized and edited for length with your approval before publication. Each published story receives a $10 donation to the mental health charity of your choice.

Evening Reset: Notice, Write, Settle

Picture the ocean on a day with no predictable rhythm, waves arriving unevenly, some small and manageable, others sudden and larger than you expected. You can't time them or prepare for each one. But you're still standing. Some waves knock you sideways, and you find your footing again. Some pass almost gently. The ocean isn't trying to overwhelm you. It's just doing what it does. Tonight, let yourself be someone standing in that water, not controlling the waves, just finding your footing each time one passes.

Spend three minutes writing: What has grief asked of me lately that I haven't given myself full permission to feel, and what would it mean to stop managing it for just a few minutes and let it be exactly as big as it actually is?

Close your notebook and ask yourself: Where did grief arrive unexpectedly today and how did I meet it? Where did I find a moment of lightness and did I let myself have it without guilt? What does my mind and body need tonight to carry this loss a little more gently into tomorrow?

"Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees." — Joan Didion

Grief doesn't arrive on a schedule and it doesn't leave on one either. You're not behind. You're just in it, and that's exactly where you're allowed to be.

Article: "What Science Knows About Grief" by Amanda Petrusich (The New Yorker)

Read: "What Science Knows About Grief" by Amanda Petrusich (The New Yorker)

Pop critic Amanda Petrusich's essay moves through her year after her husband's sudden death, describing grief as a whole-body experience that demands enormous energy. She writes about how grief mangles cognition so completely that remembering her daughter's birth date felt like solving a math equation, and about the specific guilt of needing to rest while society expects you to bounce back on a timeline that has nothing to do with how grief actually works. Her therapist kept telling her to stop fighting it, to let herself suffer, and in that permission something shifted. The essay is long and deeply personal, but it's the kind of reading that makes you feel less alone in the exhaustion.

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Coming Monday: Watching TV very often in midlife shrinks brain regions tied to memory and decision-making decades later, but sitting at mentally engaging work protected the brain instead.

Researched and edited by Natasha. Designed with love by Kaye.

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*The Daily Wellness shares educational content only and is not a substitute for professional medical or mental health advice and diagnosis. Please consult a licensed provider for personalized care.