It’s time to reset: How therapy helps restlessness
Welcome to the “It’s time to RESET,” blog series, where I unpack the RESET acronym to talk about when it's time for you or someone you love to see a therapist. For this blog, I will dive into how it feels to be Restless and show how therapy can help.
What does it feel like to be Restless?
You know that guy at the circus twirling plates above his head as they delicately balance on the end of a stick? Being restless feels something like that. Most things in life feel like one of those plates, constantly spinning, and if you don’t focus on it, it will fall and break on the ground. But there isn’t just one plate. There are several.
For college students, each class, exam, on-campus job, and social event feels like one of those plates. For emerging adults, their job, living on their own, balancing their finances, and adulting in general feels like a bunch of plates spinning chaotically overhead.
Over time, it's hard not to be constantly anxious about them, causing an intense worry that one of the plates will fall and force the rest to come crashing down. Whenever alone, it can be a struggle not to think about each plate spinning in the balance and get overwhelmed by how many there are and how easy it would be for one to impact the rest. Soon, it becomes easier to keep busy than it is to be alone with your thoughts… so you work more, go out more, and give yourself any excuse to be actively doing something to avoid thinking about the many plates.
Does anyone else feel anxious just reading about that? If you resonate with it or see someone you care about feeling that way, it’s time to see a therapist.
Why would someone who feels restless not be in therapy yet?
Imagine that you’re someone with half a dozen twirling plates you feel anxious about. Would you want to add one more? Of course not. Even if you did, it would be pretty difficult to take the time to add the next plate while all of the others are spinning, so you’d put it off until you felt like you had time.
With so much going on, it can be hard for someone experiencing restlessness to take the time to sit down and find a therapist, even if they want to. Over time, it falls lower and lower on the priority list until it’s disappeared from view.
Here’s something most restless people don’t realize though: Therapy isn’t adding one more plate. It’s picking a therapist to come alongside you to help you prioritize and better manage your plates.
How Therapy Can Help
When a restless person starts working with a therapist, something special happens. In their sessions, they take the plates off of the sticks, stop them from spinning, and set them safely on the ground without the threat of them breaking. Now that they aren’t all spiraling threateningly above you, you can look at them together and prioritize, “Which plates do I want in my life? What priority do they have? How do each of them serve my goals?”
When everything in your life isn’t spinning chaotically with the threat of falling apart and instead sits somewhere where you can put it down, you gain an ability to walk away for a while, relax, and return when you’re rested. You can just enjoy a moment alone with your thoughts, be present in whatever you’re doing, and come back to work with one plate at a time instead of all of them at once. You can feel more secure, like one little thing won’t break your life.
Feeling rested, and secure helps us deal better with each facet of our lives. We become more confident, create better boundaries, and deal with life’s curveballs without feeling anxious, scattered, or threatened.
Rest and security are only a call away. If you’ve been feeling restless or know someone who is, consider finding a therapist or recommending that your loved one pursue therapy.
In the next blog of this series, I will unpack the S in RESET to talk about what it's like to feel highly sensitive and how therapy can help. If you want to pursue therapy or ask any questions, please reach out using the button below, I’d be happy to help you.
