The Difference Between Resting & Escaping

Hey,

Most of us know what rest is supposed to look like.
Basically, stepping back long enough to feel like ourselves again. But the harder question is: Am I actually resting, or am I just avoiding something I don’t want to face?

#Edition96 is about the difference between the kind of pause that helps you return to your life with more capacity, and the kind that becomes somewhere to hide.

Inside this Edition:
👉 The Difference Between Resting & Escaping
🥗 What she’s watching, listening, doing
📰 5 headlines worth her time
✨ Her Spotlight
🤍 Note to Her

Sometimes, the real question is not whether you stopped. It is what that stopping is helping you come back to.

Sometimes you don't need to fix your life. You just need to sleep. Cancel the plans. Put your phone away. Sit somewhere quiet. Watch something stupid. Spend an afternoon doing absolutely nothing. That is rest.

But there is another kind of pause that can look almost identical.
You keep scrolling because silence might make you think. Postpone the conversation. Avoid the decision. Book the trip. Start another routine. Tell yourself you're protecting your peace when, somewhere underneath it, you're protecting yourself from something you don't want to face. That is escape.

Rest gives you somewhere to return to. Escape gives you somewhere to hide.

You can’t always tell you which one you're doing. A weekend in bed can be recovery. A weekend in bed can also be avoidance. Turning your phone off can give your mind the quiet it needs. Or it can mean there is one message you don't want to answer. And avoidance doesn't always look unhealthy. Sometimes it arrives dressed as self-care.

You can meditate and still avoid the conversation. Journal around the decision without ever making it. Take the vacation and still bring the problem home with you. That doesn't mean escape is always bad.

Sometimes you genuinely cannot deal with something today. Sometimes distraction is mercy. Sometimes you need dinner, a shower, television and sleep before tomorrow-you have the capacity to face it. Distance can be part of recovery.

Problem begins when temporary distance silently becomes a permanent strategy. When not today keeps becoming tomorrow. When every uncomfortable feeling requires another distraction.

Rest doesn't always solve the problem, but it gives you more capacity to meet it.
Escape gives you relief without changing your relationship to what you're escaping from.

If the pause brings you back to yourself, your relationships, your creativity, your work, your body, your actual life, then it is doing its job.

If you keep needing somewhere else to go, something else to watch, another reason not to look directly at this— pay attention.

The goal was never to become so good at escaping that your life becomes something you constantly need to escape from.

💬 Ideas to tune into when the world’s too loud.

🎬 WATCH: Wild (2014)
A woman walks away from her life but the film slowly asks whether leaving is always escape, or whether distance can sometimes be the thing that finally makes you face yourself – Grief, avoidance, solitude, and the difference between disappearing from your life and returning to it differently.
🎧 LISTEN: Experiential Avoidance: The Hidden Way We Play-It-Safe
This recent episode of Playing-It-Safe is about how sometimes we are not avoiding the task/situation, but how it will feel to face it. It connects avoidance to procrastination, overthinking and people-pleasing without being too clinical.
🚶 DO: Take a “No-Escape Walk”
Go for a 20–30 minute walk without a podcast, music, or your phone in your hand. And before you leave, ask: What have I been giving myself a break from that I eventually need to return to? The point is to notice what comes up when you stop immediately filling the quiet.

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Physician and author Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith (@drdaltonsmith) built her work around a simple idea: sleep and rest are not the same thing.

Her framework identifies seven kinds of rest — physical, mental, emotional, social, sensory, creative and spiritual — because exhaustion doesn’t always come from lack of sleep. Sometimes the thing draining you is overstimulation, emotional labour, constant decision-making or never getting enough space from what asks something of you.

Real rest should restore something. It should give back some of the capacity that life has been using up, not simply keep you occupied until you have to face it again.

Her work is a useful reminder that before asking “How do I switch off?”, it may be worth asking: “What exactly am I tired from?”

✨ Know more at drdaltonsmith.com

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