Why Rest Doesn't Always Feel Restful When You Have ADHD or Autism

Have you ever spent the whole week looking forward to a quiet weekend, only to find that when it finally arrives, you don't really know what to do with yourself? Perhaps you've got a rare afternoon without any commitments. You could read a book, watch something on television or simply enjoy having nothing to do. Instead, you find yourself wandering around the house, picking up your phone, thinking about the washing or feeling vaguely irritated that you're wasting the day. You know you're tired, and you've probably been saying all week how much you need a break, so why is it so difficult to actually relax?

For some people with ADHD or autism, this is a familiar experience. Rest isn't always as simple as stopping what you're doing, and sometimes the very things that are supposed to help us unwind can leave us feeling more unsettled.

When your brain doesn't seem to switch off

ADHD can make unstructured time surprisingly difficult. During the working week, there are often external demands keeping things moving. Meetings, deadlines, school runs, appointments and other people's expectations provide a degree of structure, even if managing all of those things is exhausting. Then the weekend arrives and that structure disappears. You might have lots of things you'd genuinely enjoy doing, but find it difficult to get started on any of them. You pick up a book, read a couple of pages, check your phone, remember something you meant to do and suddenly half an hour has passed. Nothing has been particularly enjoyable, but you haven't really rested either.

For autistic people, there can be different challenges. Routines and predictability can make life feel more manageable, and having an unexpected amount of free time may not feel as comfortable as other people assume. There may also be a need to recover from the sensory and social demands of the week. Even enjoyable activities can be tiring when they involve navigating noise, conversation, uncertainty or environments that don't quite meet your needs. For people who have both ADHD and autism, sometimes referred to as AuDHD, these needs can pull in different directions. You might desperately want something interesting to do while also feeling that you can't face any more stimulation. It's quite possible to feel bored and overwhelmed at the same time.

Why do we feel guilty about resting?

This is something that comes up regularly in my therapy work, and it isn't limited to neurodivergent people. Many of us have developed the idea that we should only really relax once everything else has been done. The house should be tidy, the emails answered, the washing put away and the various jobs we've been putting off finally tackled. Of course, there's always something else that needs doing.

For some adults with ADHD, there's another layer to this. If you've grown up being told that you're lazy, not trying hard enough, disorganised or capable of so much more if you'd only apply yourself, those messages can stay with you long after childhood. You might have become very good at pushing yourself, working harder to compensate for difficulties that other people don't necessarily see. Being busy and productive can become reassuring because it feels like evidence that you're doing enough, so when you stop, there's an uncomfortable feeling that you should be doing something useful. In CBT, we're interested in how these experiences shape the beliefs we develop about ourselves. If you've come to associate being productive with being worthwhile, doing nothing might bring up guilt or anxiety, even when you genuinely need a break. It's worth considering where those expectations came from and whether they're actually reasonable. Would you expect someone you care about to earn the right to rest, or would you recognise that they were tired and needed some time to themselves?

Are you resting, recovering or avoiding something?

I think this is an important distinction, particularly when we're talking about anxiety and neurodivergence. Imagine someone who has spent the whole week working in a busy office, managing conversations, concentrating through background noise and trying to meet everyone else's expectations. By Friday evening, they're exhausted and want to spend Saturday at home, doing very little. That might be exactly what they need.

Now imagine someone who would really like to meet friends but has gradually stopped accepting invitations because they're worried about saying something embarrassing or being judged. Staying home might bring immediate relief, but over time their world could become smaller. From the outside, both people are spending Saturday at home, but the reasons behind that decision are quite different. This is why I don't think it's particularly helpful to tell everyone that they need to push themselves out of their comfort zone, or equally that they should always listen to the urge to withdraw. Sometimes we need encouragement to approach things that make us anxious. At other times, we need to recognise that we've reached our limit and that pushing through will only make things harder. Understanding the difference takes curiosity about what's happening for that particular person, rather than applying the same advice to everyone.

Rest doesn't have to mean doing nothing

I think we sometimes have quite a narrow idea of what relaxation should look like. We imagine sitting quietly, perhaps with a cup of tea and a book, feeling wonderfully calm. That sounds lovely, but it isn't necessarily relaxing for everyone. For someone with ADHD, doing something engaging might be far more restorative than sitting still. Playing a game, gardening, making something, going for a walk or getting absorbed in a hobby can provide enough stimulation to feel settled without the pressure of everyday responsibilities. For an autistic person who has spent much of the day managing sensory or social demands, the most helpful thing might be time alone, familiar activities or simply being somewhere they don't have to think about how they're coming across to other people.

These aren't fixed rules, of course. Someone with ADHD might need complete quiet after a particularly demanding day, while an autistic person might find enormous enjoyment and relaxation in an absorbing interest. What helps one person recover might leave somebody else feeling drained. It can also help to think about what you're actually tired from. If you've spent all day making decisions, perhaps you need an evening where very little is expected of you. If you've been sitting at a computer for hours, getting outside and moving around might feel better than spending another evening on the sofa. If you've been surrounded by people, you may need time when nobody is asking anything of you.

When self-care becomes another job

There's no shortage of advice about how we should look after ourselves. We should exercise, get outside, practise mindfulness, establish routines, eat well, sleep properly and spend less time looking at screens. None of those things is necessarily bad advice, but I do wonder whether we've made looking after ourselves rather complicated.

I've worked with people who feel they're failing at self-care because they haven't managed to keep up with the routines they've been told will help them. What was supposed to reduce stress has become another thing to feel guilty about. This can be particularly difficult for people who struggle with perfectionism or have spent years feeling that they need to work harder than everyone else just to keep up. You don't need to turn resting into another project or have a perfect evening routine. Sometimes watching a familiar television programme, spending time on a favourite hobby or having an afternoon without any particular plans is enough. And sometimes it isn't. If you're experiencing significant burnout or prolonged exhaustion, an afternoon off may barely touch the sides. That doesn't mean you're resting incorrectly. It may mean that the demands on you are simply too great.

Finding what works for you

If you regularly find yourself exhausted but unable to relax, it might be worth paying attention to what happens when you have some free time. Do you struggle because you don't know what to do without structure? Are you feeling guilty about unfinished jobs? Do you need stimulation, or have you already had far too much of it? Are you withdrawing because you need recovery, or because anxiety is making something feel difficult? You don't have to answer all of these questions at once, and you certainly don't need to analyse every minute of your downtime, but becoming more aware of your own patterns can help you make choices that actually meet your needs.

For some people, a little structure makes a difference. Planning an enjoyable activity for Saturday morning might make the rest of the day easier to settle into. Others may benefit from deliberately keeping time free after demanding social or work commitments, rather than filling every available space in the diary. It can also mean adjusting expectations. Perhaps you don't need to spend your entire weekend catching up on everything you didn't manage during the week. Perhaps some things can wait, and perhaps being tired is a good enough reason to rest without needing to justify it to anyone.

How therapy can help

A lot of the work I do with adults who have ADHD, autism or anxiety involves understanding the expectations they've developed about themselves, particularly when they've spent years feeling that they should be managing things better. Sometimes that means looking at perfectionism or long-standing beliefs about productivity. Sometimes it's about recognising sensory overload, understanding patterns of avoidance or finding practical ways to make everyday life less demanding.

There's no single approach that works for everyone, which is why I think it's important that therapy takes account of how someone experiences the world, rather than simply expecting them to fit into a particular set of strategies. Rest shouldn't be something else you have to get right.