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Why your body resists slowing down

And why rest, pleasure, and self-care still feel out of reach

The RHR Digest | Publication Date: November 14th, 2025

Key Points:

  • Internalized beliefs from high-control religions, such as the idea that rest is laziness or pleasure is sinful, can make taking care of yourself feel wrong or impossible.
  • Chronic exposure to fear-based teachings can dysregulate the nervous system, causing your body to misread calm or rest as danger and triggering anxiety, restlessness, or numbness.
  • Cultural messages in the U.S., including the Puritan Work Ethic and hustle culture, reinforce the belief that productivity equals worthiness and that rest must be earned.
  • Even after leaving a high-control religion, your mind may understand that rest and pleasure are safe, but your body can remain stuck in old survival patterns.

If you grew up in a high-control religion, rest may feel inaccessible. Pleasure might trigger guilt. And self-care may seem selfish or indulgent, even though you logically know it shouldn’t.

Here’s how this might play out.

You lie down for a nap and suddenly feel anxious or “on edge” for no clear reason.

Or you try to enjoy a meal, a hobby, or time with friends only to feel a subtle pressure that you should be doing something “productive” instead.

If this sounds familiar, you should know that this experience is probably the result of two intersecting factors: internalized beliefs about unworthiness and nervous system dysregulation from chronic exposure to fear-based teachings.

To help you process what might be behind this difficulty in accessing states of rest or pleasure, I want to unpack both of these contributing factors.

Towards the end, I’ll also touch on how living within the U.S. (which is where I, and many of my readers, are from) compounds these struggles through the deeply ingrained philosophy of the Puritan Work Ethic.

Before we go further, I want to acknowledge that this piece centers the psychological and nervous system barriers to rest that come from religious conditioning.

But I know many of you are also managing chronic illness, disability, chronic pain, or fatigue—conditions where rest isn’t just emotionally difficult to access, but a medical necessity that requires different strategies, accommodations, and support.

If that’s you, the dynamics I’m describing here may layer on top of your physical reality, and both deserve attention.

This piece won’t address the structural or medical side of rest, but it may still offers some useful language for the psychological patterns you might be working through.

Why Rest, Pleasure, and Self‑Care Can Feel Wrong

If you were indoctrinated into a high‑control religion, it makes sense that rest and pleasure might feel unsafe in your mind and in your body.

Two forces often work together here: the beliefs you were taught about what you deserve and the nervous system patterns your body learned under fear.

In the next sections, I’ll name both clearly and show how they reinforce each other so you can start to make sense of your own reactions.

Let’s begin with the belief layer → the messages that covertly train you to feel unworthy of care.

Internalized Beliefs About Unworthiness

Beyond controlling your behavior, most high-control religions also control your beliefs about who you are and what you deserve.

You may have heard messages like:

  • Rest is laziness, and laziness is sin
  • Pleasure is idolatry—anything you enjoy “too much” could become a false god that competes with your devotion
  • True righteousness means constant self-denial, self-sacrifice, and service to others
  • Your body and its needs are not to be trusted (i.e. the “flesh” is weak and must be brought into submission)
  • Earthly rest is selfish because there’s so much work to do for the kingdom
  • You are inherently broken, sinful, unworthy, and only through suffering, sacrifice, and striving can you hope to be “good”

In my experience with evangelical Christianity, these types of teachings were repeated, reinforced, and tied directly to my sense of worthiness, safety, and belonging.

I wouldn’t be surprised if it was similar for you.

Teachings like these were woven into sermons, small group teachings, parenting styles, and even the daily rhythms of home and community life.

Over time, these messages become deeply ingrained and internalized, especially if you were raised in a system like this.

Unfortunately, this means that even after you’ve intellectually rejected the belief system, the feeling that rest or pleasure is wrong can persist.

This is why you might:

  • Feel guilty for taking a day off, even when you’re exhausted
  • Struggle to spend money on yourself without justifying it as “necessary” or “practical”
  • Dismiss compliments or feel uncomfortable receiving care from others
  • Default to serving, fixing, or helping, even when you’re running on empty
  • Feel like you have to “earn” rest by being productive enough first

One of the most insidious aspects of religious indoctrination is that the belief that you’re unworthy of care, comfort, or joy often lingers in your thoughts, your choices, and your body, sometimes even for years after separating from your high-control religion.

Nervous System Dysregulation

But it’s not just about what you believe. It’s also about what your body learned.

High-control religions frequently rely on fear-based messaging: threats of eternal punishment, social exclusion, divine wrath, or the loss of your family and community.

You may have been taught that god is always watching, that sin leads to suffering, or that stepping out of line could result in spiritual or relational consequences.

Living in constant fear—or even low-grade chronic anxiety—teaches your nervous system to stay on high alert.

Your body learns that danger is always nearby and that vigilance is survival.

Here’s where it can get confusing: When your nervous system has been chronically activated like this, it can misread calm as danger.

This phenomenon is connected to your vagal system, which helps regulate your body’s response to stress.

When the vagus nerve is constantly dysregulated after chronic stress or fear, your body may actually feel unsafe in moments of rest, pleasure, or quiet.

This might show up as:

  • Lying down to rest and suddenly feeling restless, anxious, or like something is “wrong”
  • Enjoying a pleasant experience (a good meal, a warm bath, time in nature) and feeling an inexplicable urge to cut it short or feeling guilty while it’s happening
  • Feeling safer, more grounded, or more “like yourself” when you’re busy, stressed, or problem-solving because that’s the state your body learned to associate with survival
  • Experiencing numbness, disconnection, or a sense of “going through the motions” during activities that are supposed to be relaxing or enjoyable
  • Feeling vulnerable or exposed when you slow down, as if letting your guard down will allow something bad to happen

If you’re recognizing yourself in any of the above statements, please know that this type of nervous system response is your body simply doing exactly what it was trained to do, which was to protect you from perceived threat.

The problem is that the threat response system was activated so frequently and for so long that it now misidentifies safety as danger.

  • Rest feels vulnerable because you were taught to always be on guard.
  • Pleasure feels risky because you learned that letting yourself feel good could lead to punishment or shame.
  • Self-care feels selfish because your body associates it with the consequences you were taught to fear.

How Beliefs and Physiology Reinforce Each Other

Internalized guilt and a hyper-alert nervous system don’t exist in isolation. Instead, they create a compounding effect that makes healing particularly challenging.

  • You cognitively reject the beliefs.
  • You intellectually understand that rest isn’t laziness, that pleasure isn’t selfish, that you deserve care. You’ve worked hard to dismantle those old religious teachings and you know, logically, that they’re not true.
  • But when you actually try to rest or access pleasure, your nervous system activates.
  • Your body—still conditioned by years of fear-based messaging—interprets the calm as danger. You experience hyperarousal (anxiety, restlessness, tension) or hypoarousal (numbness, disconnection, shutdown). Even though your mind says rest is safe, your body hasn’t gotten that memo yet.
  • This physical response then reinforces the old belief.
  • When rest triggers anxiety or pleasure feels empty, it becomes evidence that something is “wrong” with resting or feeling good. Your body’s reaction makes it harder to trust that rest is safe, even when your mind knows better. The cognitive work and the somatic reality are out of sync, and that mismatch compounds the difficulty of healing.

This is why recovering from religious trauma can sometimes feel like you’re at war with yourself.

You’re doing the mental work, but your body hasn’t caught up yet, and your attempts to move past the internalized beliefs are undermined by a nervous system that’s still wired to perceive rest as unsafe.

Connecting This to Trauma Research

The concept of the window of tolerance, a common term used by EMDR and somatic therapists, can help explain why some of this is happening.

To access a PDF of the window of tolerance: Click Here.

Your window of tolerance is the zone in which your nervous system can handle stress and calm in a balanced way.

When you’re inside your window, you can think clearly, feel your emotions without being overwhelmed, and respond to life with flexibility.

Chronic fear, however, narrows that window. Instead of moving fluidly between states, you may get stuck in:

  • Hyperarousal (anxious, tense, irritable, hypervigilant, panicky)
  • Hypoarousal (numb, disconnected, shut down, foggy, exhausted)

Both states make rest and pleasure difficult, sometimes even impossible.

In hyperarousal, your body is too activated to settle into rest.

You feel wired, on edge, and unable to turn off your mind.

Pleasure might feel threatening because it requires you to be present in your body, and your body feels like a danger zone.

In hypoarousal, pleasure doesn’t register at all.

You might go through the motions of self-care such as taking a bath, watching a favorite show, spending time with a friend, but you feel disconnected from your body or emotions.

It’s as if your nervous system has shut down access to positive sensation as a protective mechanism.

Trauma-informed practices help to expand your window of tolerance so that your body can safely experience a fuller range of states, including calm, joy, safety, and care.

This is why healing from religious trauma often requires more than just changing your beliefs.

It also requires re-training your nervous system to recognize that rest is not a threat.

How Culture Can Reinforce These Patterns

If you live in the United States, there’s another layer compounding all of this: the cultural glorification of productivity, often referred to as the Puritan Work Ethic.

This ideology—rooted in early American Puritanism—teaches that hard work is a moral virtue, that productivity equals worthiness, and that rest is something you have to earn.

That message is baked into the culture many of us grew up in, and it reinforces many of the same toxic beliefs that high-control religions teach.

In this framework:

  • Your value is tied to your output
  • Busyness is a status symbol
  • Rest is laziness unless you’ve “earned” it by being productive enough
  • Pleasure is frivolous or indulgent
  • Self-care becomes another form of productivity (optimize yourself! be more efficient!)

Hustle culture takes this even further by celebrating burnout as evidence of dedication and framing exhaustion as the price of success.

You’re told that if you’re not constantly grinding, you’re falling behind.

Rest becomes something you purchase (a spa day, a vacation) rather than something you deserve simply for being human.

This is especially harmful for people recovering from high-control religion because it means you’re not just fighting against internalized religious beliefs—you’re also navigating a broader culture that validates and rewards those same beliefs.

And these dynamics don’t impact everyone equally.

Marginalized communities—especially Black, Indigenous, and immigrant communities—have historically been denied rest and forced into exploitative labor systems.

The “right” to rest has always been unevenly distributed.

For many people, the barrier to rest go beyond internalized resistance. They are also up against structural, economic, and systemic barriers.

So if you’re struggling to rest, know this: you’re not just healing from religious trauma. You’re also resisting a dominant culture that profits from your exhaustion.

Beginning to Access Rest, Pleasure, and Self-Care

If these themes resonate with you, and you’re wondering what to do next, I highly recommend the following resources:

  • Pleasure Activism by adrienne maree brown—a book of essays discussing the ways reclaiming pleasure can be an act of resistance
  • Rest Is Resistance by Tricia Hersey—a manifesto on rest as a form of social justice and liberation, particularly for Black communities and other marginalized groups
  • Real Self-Care by Pooja Lakshmin—a psychiatrist’s guide to distinguishing between performative self-care and genuine practices that support mental health and well-being
  • Burnout by Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski—a science-backed look at stress, the nervous system, and why “self-care” often isn’t enough without systemic change

You may also want to work with a therapist or coach who is familiar with the nervous system and how high-control systems can cause rest or pleasure to register as threat in the body.

EMDR, Somatic Experiencing, Brainspotting, and Internal Family Systems are all excellent modalities to support recovery in this area.

Going Deeper

Here are a couple questions to journal about or to unpack during your next therapy session:

  • What internalized beliefs about rest and pleasure do you recognize in yourself, and how might they be influencing your ability to enjoy self-care?
  • In moments when you feel guilty for resting or enjoying pleasure, what physical sensations or emotions arise in your body, and how do they connect to your past experiences?
  • How do cultural expectations around productivity affect your understanding of self-worth, and what steps can you take to redefine your relationship with rest and pleasure?

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