I don’t think I truly know what it means to be relaxed. I hear it said all the time. “You need to relax.” “It would help if you relaxed and took some ‘me’ time.”

I hear it, but I don’t understand what that means. I get it on both sides though, the whole damned if you do and damned if you don’t thing. That, added with my Aspergers makes me so confused that people can’t just leave you alone. Why do people even need to make a comment?

I try to be super mom and make sure everything gets done and is easier for other people: “you need to share the load with your husband, don’t spoil him like that.” Or I go out to a movie with my mother-in-law: “Wheres your babies? Who has your kids?” This is really irritating, especially since these comments are coming from people I know, who know me and my family.

So even if I did try to relax…I would get called out for being lazy. Nice. So that seems like a people pleasing trait…listening to what everyone says.

Let’s take a step back. Let’s close our eyes. First, let’s define relaxing the cheesy way. Here is the definition: Relax (transitive verb): to make less tense or rigid, to make less severe or stringent, to relieve from nervous tension. I looked this up in Merriam-Webster’s dictionary.

From what I understand this means to take longer than a deep breath. As in, sit still long enough to clear your head. I’m sure I can do that; I just need to shake the efficiency and logic programming I was raised with. I realized what I do to make sure I’m always busy, was a trait that came from my dad. A trait praised and respected from males is efficiency and logic. I tried to squeeze even the smallest droplet of praise out of my dad growing up because that’s what every little girl needs: compliments and praise from daddy. He expressed approval when I demonstrated these traits which made me want to do it more and more. So much so that I conditioned myself to only do those because it got his attention and the other males around growing up. I thrived on being called adorable or smart or impressive. It changes as you grow up, but I didn’t change with it.

Now let’s go forward. I need to relax. I need to not have something going on at every interval. I don’t think I can realistically plan a time each day. I can just take time when it comes up to take a deep breath though and sit. I need to change my mind and habits of thinking to realize it’s not lazy.

Have you ever felt like people were thinking or saying you were lazy because you knew how to relax. Did you care or not?

I sat down to write things that relax me and my mind was blank the entire time. This lead me to the idea that I don’t know how to relax. So I decided to write down activities that don’t involve my kids or husband or anyone else, that make me smile. I used to do a lot of hobbies. As in a considerable amount. I liked learning new things and I catch on pretty quick. My favorite ones were cross-stitching and painting by numbers. I really like trying new things so I guess I could count that as well. I’m getting ready to move soon, and I just know the first project I will start on, which planning also makes me smile.

Is it possible that everyone relaxes in a different way and it’s not just sitting?