When ‘Self-Care’ Is A Scam: Reclaiming Rest as Resistance
If you’ve ever added “self-care” to your to-do list and then felt guilty for not getting to it… this one’s for you. Modern self-care has been turned into a whole industry—candles, subscriptions, $200 weighted blankets—and somewhere along the way, rest got repackaged as a luxury good instead of a human need. Wellness culture tells us to fix our burnout with face masks, while capitalism quietly hums, “Get back to work.”
At Soma Roots Therapy, rest is not a prize you earn for being productive enough; it is a birthright and a form of resistance. Rest interrupts systems that treat bodies—especially Black, brown, disabled, fat, neurodivergent, and otherwise intentionally made vulnerable bodies—as endlessly extractable resources. Many activists (including Nap Ministry founder, Tricia Hersey), scholars, and healers describe rest as political, naming it as a way to push back against grind culture, white supremacy, and the lie that worth is measured in output.
What “Rest as Resistance” Looks Like in Real Life
Rest as resistance is not an aesthetic; it’s not about the perfect morning routine or a color-coordinated nightstand. It’s messy, uneven, and deeply personal. It might look like turning off notifications at 7 pm even when your brain screams, “You’re falling behind!” It might be choosing a 20-minute nap over one more email, or canceling a non-urgent commitment because your nervous system is already red-lining.
For neurodivergent folks, rest often requires translating a nervous system that doesn’t match the “standard issue” settings. Many autistic and ADHD nervous systems need more frequent breaks, more sleep, more downtime, and more sensory-friendly ways to reset. The world rarely honors that, so choosing to rest—before everything crashes—is a quiet rebellion. Rest becomes less about “doing nothing” and more about tending to interoception, those internal signals that say, “Hey, we’re done for today.”
Why the Self-Care Industry Leaves So Many People Out
Under capitalism, even care gets commodified. Self-care becomes another way to show you’re “doing it right” if you can afford the right products, retreats, or aesthetics. This leaves out the very people who most need rest: caregivers, low-wage workers, disabled folks, people navigating racism, fatphobia, transphobia, and other systems that drain energy just to exist in public. When care is sold back to us as a product, it hides the truth that many people are exhausted not because they lack hustle, but because the system is built on their exhaustion.
The radical roots of care were never about solo “treat yourself” moments; they were about collective survival and community care. Movements have long used rest, nourishment, and care as strategies to sustain resistance and protect people most impacted by oppression. Naming that history matters, because it reframes rest from a personal indulgence to a shared responsibility and a justice practice.
How Soma Roots Therapy Honors Real Rest
At Soma Roots Therapy, rest isn’t homework tacked onto the end of a session—it’s woven into the work itself. Sessions might include:
Slowing down enough to notice what your body is saying, not just what your thoughts are yelling.
Exploring what “enough” feels like in your nervous system, not in your productivity app.
Unlearning shame around napping, stimming, canceling, or needing “more” rest than the people around you.
Instead of asking, “How do we get you back to maximum output?” the questions become: “What if your body’s demand for rest is wise?” and “What kind of life makes sustainable pacing possible?” For neurodivergent and intentionally made vulnerable clients especially, this can mean designing rest practices that respect sensory needs, energy rhythms, and access realities—not what an influencer’s morning routine looks like.
Messy, Imperfect, and Completely Valid
Rest as resistance will never look perfect. Some weeks it might be a full day off; other weeks it might be three extra breaths in the car before going inside. Sometimes it looks like saying no; sometimes it looks like letting someone help you carry the load. It’s okay if part of you still panics when you slow down. That’s what happens when a system trains you to equate stillness with danger or failure.
If you’ve been treating rest like an item on a checklist, consider this your official permission slip to do less, and to call that practice sacred. At Soma Roots Therapy, there’s room for your exhaustion, your resistance, your “I don’t know how to stop” honesty. Together, we can untangle the scam of capitalist self-care and slowly build a relationship with rest that feels like what it was always meant to be: humane, liberatory, and deeply yours.
