Leaving my therapist last session she told me I should look into what a “low demand lifestyle” was. My first thought was “f u, no???” and my second thought was “okay but how do I actually incorporate these things?”
I would be grateful to hear how folks of all support need levels have incorporated this concept into their lives.
In my particular situation I have a huge amount of autonomy in my life so most of my struggles are from self demands. It’s a lot easier for me to act on demands from others (so long as I agree they are good demands, things that make sense or that I don’t really care about but care about the person asking so I can do it without too much resistance).
And any downtime can feel like wasted time, and dopamine is king and slave driver giving seemingly kind rewards.
But burn out is no fun.
(To be clear, that’s “no fun”. Not merely “not fun”. ~ As in it sucks all the fun out of all the rest of life too.)
A big deep long dive into burn out is a hard lesson to bear… But it has helped me reframe time dedicated to rest and recuperation as its own kind of productivity, eliminating any self (or socially or societally) imposed sense of guilt or shame for not being maximally productive.
Stress is a killer.
Stress is expectation’s child.
Much less of that the more we learn to stop “shoulding” on ourselves. :)