Cork Views: Why can't we dislodge the guilt around taking a break? 

Why is it that my friends in their twenties, and my parents in their fifties, and my gran in her eighties can’t dislodge the guilt of taking time for themselves?

Why am I just as hypocritical, getting palpitations at the thought of stepping away from my work for one hour to recuperate?

The pressure to push yourself and your limits can come from all sides of your life in the modern world. It’s not a bad trait in small doses, but with the rise of social media silently pressuring you to monetise your hobbies, and the cost of living ironically living rent-free in your mind, it’s not wholly surprising that we are constantly burned out or on the verge of it.

A lot of us may feel responsible for bearing a large emotional load or workload because of our upbringing, past worries with finances, or believing our salary and availability equates to our self-worth. In our modern age, we’re expected to be contactable at all times, so work can slip in after your shift has finished or long after you’ve gotten into bed.

It’s extremely difficult to accept that, as well as your kids or friends - you also deserve to take your own advice and take a break.

In school, when we were told to take breaks between studying, it was never clear to me exactly what that entailed or for how long a break was acceptable. It was the first time in my life I can pinpoint feeling guilty for doing the things I enjoyed.

That guilt hasn’t left me since, it’s morphed into an anxious voice in my head that appears in aspects of my life that have nothing to do with work. This fear hammers away at my self-worth for deciding to stay in and watch a movie instead of ‘seizing every day’ and getting extra work in.

When I’m told to take a break, I usually don’t feel I’ve earned one unless I’m physically and emotionally exhausted. It’s completely illogical, as this is the state I am actively trying to avoid. But it’s a cycle I’ve spent the last decade trying to break.

Many people I know are in some constant battle with themselves to prove their worth - and many see themselves as exempt from needing to take a break.

With every age come self-appointed expectations for the milestones you should have achieved by now, or how you should or shouldn’t look by now. The reality is that everyone - regardless of age, gender, work schedule, financial status, or familial status - not only deserves but requires a break.

Implementing an hour’s break into one day isn’t unreasonable or impossible, you just need to treat it as something that is just as necessary as the work you are doing.

What constitutes a break looks different to everyone, but it’s something that doesn’t require much mental energy, isn’t interrupted, and simply makes you feel content.

An hour’s break could look like going to your local cafe to drink a coffee. It could be taking one uninterrupted hour to yourself to watch a show, listen to music, or play a game. Having a long shower and relaxing after, attending a hairdressing appointment, or scheduling a slow walk at a certain time each day.

It’s not a break if it takes from your hours of sleep, or involves scrolling online where it’s certain you will see some upsetting news or an influencer you’ll compare yourself to. Online shopping will exhaust you further as you’re convinced by websites to spend money on things you won’t grant yourself the time to even use.

To help your breaks become a non-negotiable part of your routine, it’s important to schedule them - and to provide a Plan B should life genuinely not allow you to take your hour.

However, if you are exhausted, sick, busy, or are taking a break, it’s not selfish to say no to a request if that can be fulfilled by someone else. It’s not selfish, it’s human. You can’t be everything to everyone.

Just because you can push through and crash later doesn’t mean you should, it shows how you view yourself as expendable when you would never put the same expectations on someone else. Why is an hour of contentment so contentious?

Another way to help integrate a break into your routine is talking to the people you live with. When you become an adult, people tend to stop congratulating you for getting through difficult days - but everyone appreciates recognition, no matter their age.

If every adult in the household helps out with chores like unpacking the shopping, cleaning, cooking, or helping with homework, everything can feel a lot more balanced.

Remember to thank each other, to check in with each other after a long day. This doesn’t need to be a huge discussion when you’re both exhausted, it can be sharing cups of tea, planning your respective breaks for tomorrow, or doing nothing together. Doing nothing can do a lot for your health. Navigating the guilt around it is the difficult part.

For me, I’ve banned certain social media apps at night. I have time blindness, but I’m working on making sure I take my hour between jobs to have a cup of tea and to disappear into one of my beloved video games.

I try to meet my best friend once a week, and if our schedules aren’t aligned, we check in on the phone in whatever way is comfortable for both of us. I challenge the guilt when it appears, and often find it’s part of the fear of falling behind.

I have different priorities to friends or colleagues, and I also have my own set of circumstances that places limits on what I can do at one time. I also spiral and get stuck in work I’m doing. But the key part is I’m trying. Trying to become less hypocritical, trying to remind myself I deserve a break, trying to remember that I’m a person outside of an employee or other roles.

You don’t have to be ‘the man’, you don’t have to be ‘supermom’, you don’t have to be the perfect golden child turned super-adult. If you ask the people who love you what they love most about you, none of them would choose your job title, or familial role.

One of the most reassuring things about life is that nothing lasts forever - please remember that you and your energy are included in that.

Living is a balancing act, but practice can make it pretty good.