For as long as Stephanie Peterson, 25, can remember, she's lived in overdrive. The founder of a Colorado-based company that supports female entrepreneurs, she's go-go-go from morning to night, week to week, year to year. When she does get a break, she does what makes her most comfortable: She works some more.
Take her honeymoon to Antigua: The plan called for zip-lining, beach bumming, and candlelit dinners. The reality was Stephanie in her room on her laptop, overlooking the beach on which everyone else was relaxing.
Things weren't much different on a recent trip with friends to Steamboat Springs, Colorado. The group had splurged on a chalet, complete with glass elevator and hot tubs. But as everyone lounged around the living room, Stephanie kept sneaking off to her room to check e-mail. "There were a few nights where I just stayed there and didn't go back out," she says.
Some might call her a workaholic, but Stephanie contends that high gear is simply her normal speed. She's way more content being productive than sitting around "doing nothing." And she's certainly not alone: Nearly 63 percent of the women in the exclusive survey conducted by Women's Health and The Doctors said they rarely prioritize daily downtime. What's more, women spend less time on R&R than men do, and a whopping 91 percent of all millennials blow off the concept of relaxation altogether, according to Pew Research Center studies.
The trouble is, when chronically being "on" becomes normal, lulls in activity become abnormal, even uncomfortable, for the body and mind. The idea of getting some rest can, paradoxically, make women feel restless. "So many women now have a very difficult time stopping, relaxing, and getting centered," says Melissa McCreery, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist and founder of TooMuchOnHerPlate.com. And that short-circuited capacity to unwind comes at a surprisingly unhealthy price—especially when it goes unrecognized or unchecked.
The Growing Disquiet
The unwillingness-turned-inability to relax stems, in part, from shifting ambitions. Some 15 years ago, around 25 percent of women considered a high-paying career extremely important; today, 42 percent of women do. "But it's not necessarily all about the money," says Nicole Williams, author of Girl on Top: Your Guide to Turning Dating Rules into Career Success. Enter the 21st-century concept of "having it all," which feeds the mindset that every moment you take to decompress is a moment you could be using to get ahead.
Add an unstable job market to the mix, and women aren't just striving for success, says Williams. They're fighting for a competitive edge, working double time to learn as much as they can as fast as they can. This keep-up-or-else mentality blurs the line between personal and professional time, upending the notion of work-life balance, says Elisabeth Kelan, Ph.D., author of Rising Stars. As such, downtime is falling further by the wayside, and those who are pressing pause are often racked with angst: Fifty-five percent of the women in our survey said they feel guilty about taking time to relax.
Fueling restlessness even more is the fact that women are rarely unplugged. Some 83 percent of young adults have slept with their cell phones, according to the Pew Research Center, and, per our survey, 30 percent of women consider their smartphones their lifelines. "Before smartphones and social media, you could only compare yourself to those around you," says Larissa Faw, a writer who covers millennial issues for EPM Communications. "Now you can see what the entire world is doing in real time, making you constantly feel as if you should be doing more."
Being perpetually too busy is also an ubercommon way to push off tough life decisions, says Toronto-based psychotherapist Kimberly Moffit. "Women often avoid relaxing because they're subconsciously afraid that if they do, they'll come face-to-face with what's really bothering them," she explains. In other words, not having downtime equals not having to deal. But this kind of emotional evasion can be habit-forming, creating huge pileups of mental tension, warns clinical psychologist Elizabeth Lombardo, Ph.D., author of A Happy You: Your Ultimate Prescription for Happiness. The result: a spin cycle of can't-sit-still, can't-stop-now restlessness.
A Broken "Off" Switch
Unlike Stephanie Peterson, Sharon Rosenblatt, 25, does remember a time when she felt less frantic. "I used to totally relax," she says, "and just sit in bed and watch movies." Now, however, after a few years at a busy I.T. consulting job in Silver Spring, Maryland, Sharon finds herself scheduling every minute of every day.
The handful of times she's tried to really unwind were short-lived: A soak in the tub lasted only minutes before restlessness overcame her and she sprang up to tackle her to-do list. A recent massage was a relaxation disaster: "The masseuse told me twice I needed to stop talking because I was beginning to stress her out," she says. At night, her racing mind keeps her awake, but that's still preferable to totally decompressing, which, she admits, now seems even more daunting than keeping so busy.
Restlessness like Sharon's fires up the body's fight-or-flight stress response, and it exists on a sliding scale. Harnessing a moderate amount of it can "actually be valuable to help motivate you to get a job done and to do it well," says Travis Stork, M.D., an ER physician and cohost of The Doctors. "But if you never take the time to relax, you actually lose your ability to do so at all." Staying continuously restless means the body never returns to a calm baseline state—it's been rewired to be all stress response, all the time.
That means the adrenal glands are working 24-7, pumping out the stress hormone cortisol, consistently high levels of which have been linked to a bevy of woes such as indigestion and fatigue. The longer you go without relaxing, the bleaker the picture becomes: A new study found that a major side effect of restlessness is a reduction in vigor. (Vigor is defined as a combination of physical energy, mental acuity, and emotional well-being. Think of it as the polar opposite of burnout.)
"As their vigor falls, people can succumb to the detrimental effects of chronic cortisol overexposure," says study leader Shawn M. Talbott, Ph.D., author of The Secret of Vigor: How to Overcome Burnout, Restore Metabolic Balance, and Reclaim Your Natural Energy. Those include heightened risks for stress-related diseases like depression, anxiety, and heart disease. If left unchecked, restlessness can also lead to irritable-bowel syndrome and reduced sex drive.
What's more, in attempting to cope with chronic stress, women become vulnerable to destructive behaviors such as alcohol, drug, or food abuse, says Amanda Skowron, Psy.D., a clinical psychologist at the Casey Health Institute in Gaithersburg, Maryland. In fact, some women turn to bad habits like overeating instead of slowing down because they just can't figure out how to effectively relax, says McCreery.
Reclaiming Calm
How can you tell if your own overdrive has become overkill? For starters, if you snag downtime only by accident—say, if someone cancels a dinner date—or if you afford yourself fewer than 15 minutes a day to relax, you could be edging toward restlessness, says Lombardo. Other red flags: Like nearly 40 percent of the women in our survey, you fill up your rare free days with busywork or non-crucial errands. Or, like almost 30 percent of women, you don't start unwinding until day four of a vacation.
The good news is that just about anyone can learn to decompress. "Think of relaxation as a muscle you're gradually strengthening," says McCreery. You might not be graceful at it at first, but even awkward attempts to unwind will eventually segue into the real thing. If the process makes you feel uncomfortable or guilty, stick with it, says Stork. "Remember, it's doctor's orders."
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