Knowing When to Rest Instead of Push Harder

What happens when we ignore our body’s signals

I made my chronic pain worse for six months by trying too hard to fix it.

My back had been in a flare for five days, but it was finally starting to ease. I need to fix this, I thought as I grabbed a lacrosse ball to roll out my back for the second time that day. My physical therapist (PT) had suggested a tennis ball, but it didn’t feel like it was doing enough. When I stood up, I immediately felt worse. My back was pissed off.

I kept trying to feel better by attacking my pain, treating the tension like a cancer I could cut out. More dry-needling, more massage, more stretching, more exercises. I was desperate and willing to try anything except… doing less.

My body couldn’t heal because it was too busy defending itself against me.

I see this pattern in my clients all the time. We discuss how a gentle morning routine might help. A consistent sleep schedule. Small ways to ground themselves during the day. But they want to feel better quickly! Who doesn’t? So they create a routine that starts at 5 a.m. They journal, meditate, and exercise before their kids wake up. They feel great. For about two weeks. Then they crash and burn because they tried to change too much too fast, white-knuckling it until their willpower ran out.

They didn’t change anything else — didn’t ask for help, outsource tasks, or create actual space in their lives. They just decided to function on less sleep. When it falls apart, they feel shame and give up entirely. They think, “Change isn’t possible for me.” “I’m just not a routine person.” When the solution was simply a five-minute morning routine.

Like me, they were forcing change instead of building it.

I understand how easy this trap is to fall into. I’m a therapist and I didn’t notice the pattern in myself because it was my body, not my mind. When my PT told me to do less, I started doing nothing — terrified of any movement that might screw something up. But that caused its own problems. Your body also doesn’t feel good when you don’t use it.

The internet doesn’t teach discernment. Most wellness content is binary: push harder or rest more. But real life requires you to know the difference between productive discomfort and harm. “Listen to your body or intuition” assumes you know how to interpret what it’s saying. Most of us don’t.

Researchers call this skill “interoception,” the ability to sense and accurately read your body’s internal signals. Some people are naturally better at it than others, but it’s not fixed. Stress, chronic pain, and trauma can erode this ability, making us worse at knowing what our bodies actually need.

Your body operates on a use-it-or-lose-it principle — if you keep overriding its signals, it stops sending them as clearly. But interoception can also be improved. Rebuilding it takes time but is possible. It starts with learning to distinguish what kind of “hard” you’re feeling.

Productive discomfort feels like resistance. You don’t want to do something, but nothing is actually wrong. Your brain is negotiating. This is dreading the workout but knowing you’ll feel better after. Telling yourself you’ll address the problem in your relationship eventually, just not today. Scrolling to avoid staring at the blank page of a document. This is when to push.

Harmful discomfort feels different. There’s a sharpness to it. A depletion.

This is four hours of sleep and eyes that burn. Getting sick but convincing yourself it’s allergies. Snapping at your kid over nothing because you have nothing left. Your body isn’t negotiating — it’s warning you to rest.

So instead of asking “Should I push or rest?” ask: “Am I avoiding discomfort or honoring a real limit?”

The tricky part: sometimes rest feels like giving up. Sometimes pushing feels like self-care. Your brain will convince you that whichever you’re not doing is the right choice.

If you’re still unsure, zoom out. Ask yourself, is this action moving me toward or away from the life I want in five years?

People hear this and assume it means they should push. Sacrifice now for future gains. But think about what your future 75-year-old self actually needs. Stretching and weight training, setting boundaries and building community, saving for retirement and spending on a life worth remembering.

Your future self doesn’t need you to grind until you collapse or avoid hard things until it’s too late. It needs you to have done both.

Most of us veer too far in one direction — or swing between the extremes. That’s part of the process. It requires experimentation. You won’t always know you’ve pushed too hard until you’re already sore, or that you needed rest until you’ve already crashed. The skill isn’t getting it right every time. It’s noticing when you’ve gone too far, and adjusting before you break.