Emotional Rest: The Rest I Did Not Know I Needed
By: Kate Piatkowski
My first reaction hearing that there are seven kinds of rest was along the lines of: “There are multiple types of rest? Not just one??” Up until this issue, I thought “rest” was a single, all-encompassing concept. However, the seven different kinds of rest make a lot of sense. People use a variety of methods to relax, so why would there only be one kind of rest? It certainly made me curious about my own habits, so I took the Rest Quiz online to see where I was currently at. It turns out I could do a lot better with my physical and my emotional rest. This led to my second surprise, that mental and emotional rest are different! I had assumed that they were one and the same. In many ways, mental health and emotions go together, and that is likely where my assumption came from. But, based on Dr. Dalton-Smith’s talk, emotional rest is more about how we process our emotions (NPR, 2026).
Many professionals, especially teachers, carry labour (both physical and emotional) with their jobs. Dr. Dalton-Smith states that when we cannot express or process our authentic emotions right in the moment, it leads to an emotional rest deficit (NPR, 2026). This deficit can lead to people feeling anxious, depressed, angry at their lives, or always focusing on their failures. Personally speaking, I think emotional rest depends on your situation too. When I was working at a different university, I remember staying up until 3 AM trying to finish lectures and coming up with ideas for my classes. It was almost non-stop work throughout my first year there. And when I felt anxious about a class idea, I had no one to talk to since my colleagues and I were all very busy. I ended up being burnt out and emotionally exhausted. I strongly believe now that I also had an emotional rest deficit, likely before I experienced emotional exhaustion. Frankly, I am still recovering from it. Had I heard of emotional rest before, I would have seen the deficit as a warning sign that I was heading towards burnout.
This experience also made me wonder how emotional rest deficit differs from emotional exhaustion. I believe an emotional rest deficit is the step before reaching emotional exhaustion. Based on Dr. Dalton-Smith’s talk, it alludes that a rest deficit is easier to recuperate from once you take time to properly rest. With emotional exhaustion, it is based on your stressors and can only be fixed when you remove the stressors from your life (Cafasso, 2025). It is also not as easy to recover. It is worth noting that emotional exhaustion is when a person feels emotionally worn out, drained, or stuck due to their personal or work life. In my experience, emotional exhaustion can create bigger emotional reactions and a deeper sense of depression. It is also a strong indicator that someone is experiencing burnout. Some of the symptoms of emotional exhaustion overlap with a few emotional rest deficit indicators. Emotional exhaustion can also include a lack of motivation, trouble sleeping, fatigue, hopelessness, apathy, or depression (Cafasso, 2025). Understanding my past experiences now, I know that having an emotional rest deficit can already affect your work and wellbeing in more ways than you may realize.
There are several ways to reduce emotional exhaustion. As stated above, and somewhat ironically, the first suggestion by Cafasso (2025) is to remove the source of stress in your life. Easier said than done, depending on your situation! A common stressor, for example, is your job. Unfortunately, I have had too much experience with stressful jobs; so much so that I eventually broke my contract and stopped working for an extended period of time. Again, leaving a job suddenly is not always realistic. Therefore, exercising, eating well, and getting enough sleep can help if you cannot leave a job or you have a non-job lifestyle stressor (Cafasso, 2025). Also, two other suggestions include practicing mindfulness, like journalling, or talking with a trusted friend or therapist. These last two suggestions are the same strategies you can use to attain emotional rest. Journalling allows you to reflect on the emotions you experienced throughout the day. It can also help if you have no one to talk to or do not want to confide in anyone (NPR, 2026). If you do not want to talk to anyone and do not like journalling, any creative task, like playing guitar, can also work to help you process your emotions. When talking with friends, be sure that you are discussing your emotions and not just retelling the event or venting. While talking about your issues is important, the actual rest comes from the emotional discussion (NPR, 2026). For example, my previous colleagues and I would have venting sessions after work. This involved mostly complaining to be honest. Complaining about the job, the tasks, and the general lack of support from our superiors. I think this is fairly common among many people, but while venting, we did not discuss our feelings and I never felt better after venting. This is something I did not notice until writing this article! I often vent with friends and colleagues about my troubles, but I don’t feel rested or better. I just feel angry or hopeless. So, the actual rest comes from acknowledging the emotions you were feeling at the time. I wonder how differently I would have felt if I talked about how stressed, overwhelmed, and disrespected I actually was.
However, I also think emotional rest is not only about processing emotions after they happen, but also about preventing unnecessary emotional strain in the first place. Talking about your feelings is important to do, but it will not help much if you do not set appropriate boundaries to protect yourself. While setting boundaries was not explicitly mentioned as a way to achieve emotional rest, I believe that creating good boundaries can help with processing your emotions and giving yourself a break. From my own experience, my lack of boundaries led to me being more tired, less pleasant to talk to, and I felt much more pressure. For example, I used to let students submit their assignments late, but it is too much work for me to keep track of and grade at the last minute. So now, I intend to be more strict with my students on their deadlines. As you can see, boundaries are something I am still working on, because it is challenging to know how to create proper ones. McAdam (2024) states what makes a good boundary is not telling people what they can or cannot do but deciding what you will and will not allow in your own life. We cannot control the emotions or actions of others, but we can control our own. However, creating and maintaining boundaries is challenging because people, like me, are often taught to say “yes” more often than “no.” For example, saying yes to joining events even when you’re tired. Or saying yes to extra work that you might not have the time for. Or saying yes to hugs even when you find it uncomfortable. While “yes” certainly sounds nicer or more pleasing, saying “no” for yourself leads to self-care and respect.
In my opinion, a lot of people are not explicitly taught about boundaries. This includes myself, because I did not know about boundaries until recently. If you are not sure how to make a boundary yourself, there are apparently three steps (McAdam, 2024). The first step is stating your request out loud. Most boundaries are simply requests that communicate what you will and will not allow. Both being assertive and being a good communicator are important here. Try to use “I” statements to explain how you feel before stating your boundary. For example: “I feel unprepared for this meeting. Please give me two days’ notice in the future.” Once you voice your boundary, the next step is to continue being assertive and using if-then statements . For example, “If you speak to me like that again, then I will stop talking to you.” The key here is that whatever boundary you stated before, you are asserting yourself and introducing a consequence that you can control. The final step is consistency. Whatever boundary you make, you need to be steadfast in maintaining it! This is arguably the hardest part, but keep in mind that compromising your boundaries can lead to confusion and people likely crossing them again.
Before researching and writing for this issue, I never knew about emotional rest, or the six others. Now, I think it is one of the most important forms of rest to understand, especially for people in emotionally demanding professions like teaching. If more people recognized the signs of an emotional rest deficit earlier, they might be able to take steps to protect their wellbeing before reaching burnout.
References
Cafasso, J. (2025, July 11). What is emotional exhaustion? Healthline. https://www.healthline.com/health/emotional-exhaustion
McAdam, E. (2024, June 30). Boundaries for anxious folks in 3 steps. Therapy in a Nutshell. https://therapyinanutshell.com/boundaries/
NPR. (2026, February 2). 7 kinds of rest (other than sleep). https://www.npr.org/transcripts/nx-s1-5694017
Rest Quiz. (n.d.). Rest quiz. https://www.restquiz.com/home-page/
Kate Piatkowski is a language instructor at Kwansei Gakuin University. She has been teaching ESL for the past ten years in both South Korea and Japan. She enjoys researching topics related to Social and Emotional Learning and figuring out how both teachers and students can improve their mental wellbeing.