Raise your hand if you’ve ever been crashed on the couch, snacking and Netflixing, having much-needed downtime, but with a constant ticker-tape of guilt and should-be-doings making it feel a little (or a lot) less restful.

Yep, looks like most of you.

We need rest. Right now, at baseline, even in moments when you feel you are doing nothing, you are actually engaged in something major: being a human, living through 2020 on this earth. There are hardly words for the degree of change, disruption, and distress that our world is coping with, each of us with our own constellation of factors producing our unique experience. Consciously or not, this is taxing your system somehow. And then, there’s everything else you’re doing!

On some level, we are all dealing with a “too much to do, not enough resources to do it” equation. Whether it’s in our bodies, our minds, our hearts, our bank accounts, our coping abilities, or all of the above and more, most of us are overwhelmed somewhere. Our society requires us to work harder for what we need than is good for us. We are made to strive for maximum efficiency, while running on minimum nourishment. No wonder we’re so burnt out.

At the same time, we are told that if we aren’t okay, we’re doing something wrong. Do more self-care, they say. Maybe you need to be more productive, they say. We do our best, because being unproductive is a threat to our perceived worth. They tell us about work-life balance and we try to be productive at that too. Yet the system is not designed to promote, or even allow for, balance.

This is gaslighting, and it is a perfect recipe for guilt.

We all have things we can’t do, no matter how hard we try. We all experience blessings, and misfortunes, that have nothing to do with what we do or don’t do. We all have needs: for example, rest. Rest is a biological imperative. No way around that (sorry, caffeine drinkers). And yet because we’re being run ragged but still not keeping up, we feel guilt about taking the downtime. In fact, many of us don’t take it on purpose, but energizer-bunny through our days until we fall apart.

One way or another, we end up on the proverbial couch. Enter guilt. Maybe it’s a whisper of your undone to-do’s, a punishing voice yelling at you to get up, or a sneaky little gremlin running amok and kicking up stressful thoughts and feelings. However it shows up, guilt makes sure you get the memo that this rest crap is a bad idea. It reminds you that “you don’t have time,” or that “you haven’t earned this,” or that “you should be xyz-ing instead,” or whatever your guilt tells you. For however long you hang out on your couch, guilt will be there, tirelessly working to get you back in the game.

The thing is, guilt really wants to help you not do something wrong. That is guilt’s job, and it is a respectable one. It makes some valid points: maybe you really don’t have time. You probably do have way too much to do. Maybe there are some big consequences if you don’t get those things done. Being unproductive is an existential threat! Guilt is trying to help you manage the unmanageable, so things won’t get worse. It blames you, creating a terrible feeling, to motivate you back to work. It doesn’t know that this isn’t your fault. When exactly would it have learned that?

It can learn that now.

The next time you’re on the couch and you notice that guilt is up to something, here’s my invitation: think about rest as the absolutely critical necessity that it is, and pick an amount of time you feel you can truly afford to rest in that moment. The rest does not have to be perfect. This is not about maximizing, optimizing, or any other forms of toxic productivity. This is only to see if guilt can step away from the couch, even just a few steps, and let you better restore there for a while.

Then, set yourself a timer. Turn to your guilt, and kindly let it know that it’s okay for you to rest now, that the world won’t come undone, that you’re giving it a break. Maybe guilt would even like to rest along with you for this time: it, too, is over-taxed. Think of what you’d say to a friend who really needs a nap, and turn to yourself with that same tone and heart. Heck, find a friend who really needs a nap (most friends need naps), and say these things to each other.

Set your timer, and see what happens. Can you have that rest a little bit more?