Learning to Embrace Unstructured Time
Do you have unstructured time on your calendar? As we approach the end of the year and the holiday season, exhaustion can start to set in. We develop this deep need for rest and stillness in order to recover – a need to relax in the quiet of long winter nights.
It led me to pull out my tarot cards this week and take a look at the Queen of Cups and the High Priestess.
Both of these cards focus on getting quiet, doing nothing, listening, and allowing yourself to be still enough that you can allow the universe in.
And as I started to think about these cards, I started to think about how difficult it is for me to stop – to not do a structured activity and really just be still and listen to the voices in my head.
I don’t think I’m alone in that. I think most of us spend our lives trying to structure every moment. Even when we have unstructured time, we fill it with activities that are still active, like scrolling through social media, watching random videos, reading, or listening to podcasts.
When I thought more deeply about this, I realized that most of us developed these habits as children. We learned them by watching our parents and/or the other people in our households.
A lot of the clients whom I work with grew up in households where they experienced some sort of trauma or where they had to be hypervigilant.
By hypervigilant, I mean that maybe you had a parent who struggled with addiction, anger issues, or mood issues – which meant that, at any moment in time, there could be an eruption.
Maybe you were someone who had to parent your parents, who always had to be aware of what was going on. Maybe you grew up in a house full of conflict and learned to tiptoe around your family members so as not to set anyone off.
I know that, in my own household, I often felt like my mom could erupt at any moment. I learned to be careful around her and to smooth as many feathers as I could between her and my other family members.
I know that many of us relate to situations like this. And if that was the case for you, chances are that you never really got the chance to turn your nervous system off – to let your guard down, to be unaware, to not be looking out for yourself or someone else.
So there was never time for you to truly rest – because it wasn’t safe for you to do that.
We often don’t realize how much we carry these behavioral patterns into adulthood. We fill every moment of our lives with doing, doing, doing – doing for ourselves or doing for others – with hypervigilance about the world and what’s going on.
Sometimes that spreads to being hypervigilant about things that you cannot change through direct actions, like the environment or world news.
When I started to make this connection, I realized that part of me didn’t feel safe amidst calm – that didn’t feel safe doing nothing.
This realization made all the difference because suddenly I could give myself permission to just stop. I could remind my brain that it was safe for her to turn off.
And that is my invitation for you this week. If you relate to this article – maybe you experienced trauma growing up, maybe you’ve always had to be hypervigilant for one reason or another – I want you to watch yourself this week.
When you have moments in between clients or time for relaxing on Saturdays or Sundays, I want you to notice whether it feels safe for you to do nothing.
Does it feel safe for you to shut down your phone, turn off the TV, close your laptop, and just be with your thoughts? If it doesn’t, that is more than OK. Remind yourself that you are safe. You are an adult now. You’re living in a different situation, and you’re allowed to take a rest.
It might take practice to get good at this. You might have to start by reminding yourself over and over and over again.
But just telling my mind and my nervous system that I’m allowed to do nothing, to take care of no one, to have moments where my mind is clear and all I have to do is be – that has made the biggest difference.
So here’s to that next moment of sweet quiet and finally giving yourself full permission to relax into it. Enjoy your unstructured time!
