Why Rest is So Important to Knowing What You Want

Hi darling,

There is something I want more women to consider when they say, “I don't know what I want.”

Maybe you genuinely don't know.

Or… maybe you're just too fucking exhausted to even consider the question.

Society spends an enormous amount of time asking women to get better at knowing themselves. That's the point of half of the articles I've written! Because knowing yourself matters enormously. Knowing your own needs, your boundaries, what you want, what you enjoy, what you want from your relationships, what you want and don't want in bed, what your body is signaling you for, what your intuition is saying… all of it.

But it's so much harder to hear your inner voice when you're exhausted.

I'm not talking about being normal-tired after a long day. I'm talking about chronic exhaustion, constant decision-making, constant problem-solving, constantly thinking four steps ahead, constantly remembering things for other people, constantly anticipating other people's needs and jumping to tend to them, immediately responding to everyone, and constantly carrying an endless mental list.

If that's you, it's no wonder you have zero energy left to spend on figuring out what you want. Your brain goes, “LEAVE. ME. ALONE!”

You make decisions all day long.

Think about how many decisions you make in an ordinary day. When to get up, what needs to happen today, what to eat, what to wear, when to leave for work, whether you have enough groceries, whether you're packing lunch or buying it, the billion things you need to do for work, how to reply to those emails, how to handle a tough conversation, what to feed the kids, whether they did their homework, when the sheets were last changed, whether the dog got fed, when the dog last went outside, and on and on. And that's before we even get to the bigger questions about your relationship, career, finances, family, sex life, or future.

The reason the mental load exhausts you is because thinking is work.

Remembering, anticipating, planning, monitoring, and making decisions… these are all forms of cognitive labor, and they steadily chip away at the energy we have available while we're awake.

Take something that looks simple on the surface, like “What do you want for dinner?” That question isn't just asking what sounds good. It’s also asking, “What's in the refrigerator, what needs to be used before it goes bad, what everyone else will eat, how much energy you have left to cook, whether you need to go to the grocery store, what time everyone needs to eat, what you need to do tomorrow, whether you have enough time to make something, whether you should order takeout, what that will cost, and who is going to clean everything up afterward?”

So when someone asks, “So, what do you want?” your brain might run through all the other questions around that, and then be too tired to want to weigh in at all. 

The problem often isn't that you don't have a preference; it’s that you're too tired to go look for it.

Being well-rested helps you notice your desires.

Being exhausted doesn't just make you sleepy; it can also make thinking harder. Sleep deprivation and insufficient sleep can affect attention, working memory, cognitive flexibility, inhibition, and decision-making. Research also suggests that sleep loss can make cognitive effort feel heavier, while reducing our willingness to do it.

And that matters a lot when the question you’re trying to answer requires introspection, evaluation, and then choice.

“What do I want?” means also considering, “Do I actually want this, or do I think I'm supposed to want it? Would I choose this if nobody else were involved? Am I saying yes because I want to, or because I'm afraid of disappointing someone? Is this something I genuinely enjoy, or have I just gotten very good at tolerating it?” And that requires looking inward. So if your brain is basically running on fumes at that point, that inward attention is much harder to access. Because when you’re doing too much, you’re reacting, not reflecting.

So “I don’t know what I want” might actually mean, “I just don’t have the mental or emotional bandwidth to figure out what I want right now.” 

Once that bandwidth is restored, it’s much easier to notice what’s going on inside you and what choices you’d like to make for yourself in your life, at your dinner table, and in your bedroom.

Your brain needs to rest. 

You don’t need to become perfectly well-rested before you start looking inward a bit deeper. Just enough that you can breathe again. 

And by rest, I don’t just mean sleep. I also mean time when nobody needs anything from you, when you can be alone with your thoughts (or let your brain coast in ‘neutral’), not needing to make decisions or solve problems in that moment..

Rest is when you’re not trying to get things done, not trying to ‘accomplish’ anything, and not drowning in escapist distractions. Rest is time to just be.

Rest is relaxing, letting your thoughts float peacefully by.

Modern life is demanding enough as it is. I don’t want you turning self-care management into another labor burden on your jam-packed to-do list. 

Don’t take an “everything shower”; take a simple bath with your eyes closed and lots of deep breathing. 

Don’t doom-scroll on your phone; click a random YouTube video essay on a topic that’s interesting but not too deep, then sink into your couch and close your eyes.

Anything that requires little focus from you in the moment and leaves you feeling restored when you’re done is the goal – not relaxing “perfectly” with a 27-step routine that leaves you more tired than when you started.

Sometimes the rest you need is carrying fewer responsibilities.  

Maybe you don’t need to figure out how to squeeze an extra twenty minutes of peace into your day, but instead change who is responsible for what so the labor is distributed more equitably.

Maybe someone else needs to remember the appointment. 

Or figure out dinner. 

Or put their dishes in the dishwasher instead of the sink. 

Or buy new shampoo bottles when they start getting low. 

Or change their own damn toilet paper rolls and throw the empties in the recycle bin instead of on the floor. 

Or take any of the other 84,693 responsibilities off your plate.

And this matters sexually, too.

Imagine a woman saying, “I don't know what I want sexually anymore.” 

Some people would assume this is a libido problem. But what if she’s exhausted? Chronically stressed? Carrying the household mental load? Spending all day attending to everyone else's needs? Constantly thinking about what her partner wants? Rarely gets time alone to experience herself without simultaneously monitoring how someone else is doing? Of course this would make it harder for her to be able to turn inward and connect with her own desires. 

Desire doesn't exist in a vacuum. It exists inside a body, a brain, a relationship, and a (probably) very demanding life.

So when there’s no energy to figure out what you want for dinner, there’s probably also no energy to figure out what you want your partner to do for you in bed tonight, or what would turn you on right now.

Here’s your permission to do less.

Rest is a fantastic way to honor yourself. And denying yourself rest is another form of self-abandonment.

If you’re feeling exhausted and in “brain no go” mode, ask yourself this question: what can I do right now to make breathing a little easier? Then do that. Maybe that’s muting your phone, closing your eyes, taking a few deep breaths with your hand over your chest, canceling tonight’s plans, hiding in the bathroom for 5 minutes, whatever. Just go with your gut instinct, and do that right now.

You deserve peace, and sleep, and time alone, and moments when nobody is asking you for anything, when you don’t have to be responsible for making decisions, and when you can be taken care of, too. 

So before you demand that your brain tell you what you want in life and question why you can’t figure yourself out, maybe you need to give it a break. 

Because sometimes you don't need to think harder, you just need to stop doing so damned much.

Doing less, Caity

P.S. - Wondering whether you’re actually experiencing low desire or you’re just exhausted? My free self-assessment can help you start figuring that out.

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