Healing the Hardwired Hustle; How Trauma, Biology, and Rest Intersect
Vicki Johnson 
That exhaustion isn’t laziness or lack of motivation, it’s often the echo of a childhood where emotional safety was uncertain.
The Childhood Roots of Rest Deficit
You can schedule self-care, drink your green smoothie, and still feel exhausted down to your bones.
Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith calls this rest deficit, a depletion across 7 dimensions of being, not just sleep. But what keeps many of us chronically depleted goes deeper: it's the early imprint of emotionally immature parents....your nervous system learns that rest, true rest, isn't safe.
Dr. Gibson, a clinical psycologist and author of Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, describes emotionally immature parents as caregivers who may look competent or even accomplished on the outside, but remain developmentally underdeveloped emotionally (Gibson, 2021).
They can be intelligent, socially polished, or professionally respected, yet unable to manage emotions, tolerate stress, or offer empathy. In childhood parents are "the god of our world," Gibson says. Their tone, facial expressions, and reactions shape our core identity. A parent's impatience, disapproval, or contempt isn't just seen, it's absorbed.
"From a parent's reaction, a child learns what kind of person they are." ~ Dr. Lindsay Gibson
When the reflection is distorted, when our needs are dismissed, our emotions called "too much," or our presence feels like a nuisance, the body begins to associate rest with rejection.
We learn:
- "If I relax, I'm lazy."
- "If I need comfort, I'm needy."
- "If I show emotion, I'll be punished or ignored."
So instead, we hustle, fix, perform or caretake. We stay busy because stillness feels dangerous.
And that's how trauma, specifically relational trauma, becomes a lifelong rest thief.
Rest, Trauma & the Biology of Belief: If you've ever strggled to truly rest, even when you're bone-tired, it's not a lack of discipline. It's biology.
As Dr. Bruce Lipton explains in The Biology of Belief (2005), every cell in our body is wired with antennas, protein receptors that constantly receive signals from our environment. These receptors determine whether our biology shifts into growth (open, connected, safe) or protection (defensive, shut down, survival mode).
When we experience trauma, especially early in life, our system learns that protection equals safety. That "always on" state of vigilance can persist long after the danger is gone. The result? Even something as simple as rest can feel threatening.
When we add the insight from Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith's Sacred Rest (2017) and Dr. Lindsay Gibson's work on emotionally immature parents (2015), a clear picture emerges:
- Our bodies are bilogically programmed for survival.
- Our nervous systems were shaped by the emotional maturity of our early caregivers.
- And our capacity for rest is directly tied to how safe we feel, inside ourselves.
Why Rest Feels Unsafe for Trauma Survivors
Emotonal immaturity isn't the same as "bad" parenting, it's developmental. Because emotionally immature parents often:
- personalize everything ("You made me angry")
- react impulsively without reflection
- lack empathy or repair after conflict
Children can internalize the belief: I'm responsible for everyone's feelings. That belief wires the body for vigilance. It's why as adults, many of us can't truly rest, our systems are still scanning for emotional danger.
The nervous system stays stuck in fight, flight or fawn, confusing safety with people-pleasing and sillness with risk.
Dr. Lipton's research in epigenetics teaches us that consciousness itself influence gene expression. The beliefs we hold, especially those formed in childhood, literally regulate our biology.
From birth to age 7, the brain operates primarily in theta, a state similar to hypnosis. During this window, we're not just learning behaviors, we're downloading "programs" about who we are and how the world works.
If your early environment was filled with emotional unpredictability or criticism, your subconscious likely learned:
- "stillness is dangerous."
- "safety means staying alert."
- "my needs are too much."
These early programs run 95% of the day, even when your conscious mind wants peace.
As Lipton notes, "You can't move toward growth and protection at the same time." The moment we perceive threat, real or remembered, our biology prioritizes survival, rerouting blood from the prefrontal cortex (the "thinking brain") to the survival centers. In this state, rest can feel impossible.
How This Shows Up in Adulthood
Adults who grew up with emotionally immature parents often:
- feel guilty resting or doing "nothing."
- need to stay useful or productive to feel safe.
- overfunction in relationships.
- collapse into exhaustion but never feel restored.
- confuse high stress with high purpose.
There are internalizers Gibson describes as the ones who take too much responsibility, seek to "fix" others, and intellectualize pain to maintain connection. They're the ones who read every self help book, take every course (hi 👋🏼), and still feel a deep invisible tiredness. That's not failure. That's survival.
The 7 Types of Rest: Seen Through Trauma & Epigenetics
| Type of Rest | Restorative Intention (Dalton-Smith,2017) | Trauma & Biology of Belief |
| Physical Rest | Stillness and repair for the body. | When your subconscious equates stillness with threat, your body resists rest. Begin with safety cues, deep breaths, weighted blankets or grounding touch. These signal your biology(body): "It's safe to pause." |
| Mental Rest | Quieting overthinking and mental clutter. | The "thinking brain" often becomes overactive to predict danger. Mental rest starts by reprogramming subconscious loops - affirmations, mindfulness, and repetition create new pathways of safety. |
| Emotional Rest | Expressing feelings freely. | If your parents invalidated emotions, your subconsious stored "feelings=disconnection." Relearn safety by witnessing your emotions with compassion, what Dr. Lipton calls reconditioning the signal. |
| Social Rest | Reconnecting with nourishing relationships. | Connection once meant confusion or chaos, so your system may equate closeness with risk. Practice with safe people, or co-regulate through pets, nature, or community. |
| Sensory Rest | Reducing stimulation. | Trauma primes sensory hypervigilence. Dimming lights or quietly sounds helps downshift from protection into growth mode. |
| Creative Rest | Restoring as play and imagination. | In theta (the brainwave of early childhood and creativity), healing happens. Allow yourself to play, it reactivates the same state where the subconscious once learned fear, but now learns safety. |
| Spiritual Rest | Connection to something larger than self. | Spiritual rest heals the illusion of separation. When you reconnect to meaning, through prayer, meditation, or awe, you're shifting from isolation (protection) back into belonging(growth) |
Sleep: The Nervous System's Sacred Reset
Circadian flow is the process of understanding your biology so you can integrate habits, lifestyle and actions to create an effortless state of enhanced physical and cognitive health and well-being. This phenomena aligns you to work with your body and not against it. The result is efficiency, energy, and the expression of positive transformation as you awaken into greater states of health, wealth, and self. Your circadian flow is all about tapping into your potential.(Awakend, 2023)
When you understand your biological clocks, and how to work with them, your body, mind and life start to line up in ways you didn't even realize were possible.
Dr. Lipton calls sleep one of the body's greatest gifts of repair, but for trauma survivors, it can feel like surrendering control. If sleep feels hard or unsafe, know that your biology is simply protecting you.
Start with micro-moments of safety: deep exhales before bed, soft light, calming music, essential oils, or gentle affirmations like: "My body knows how to rest. It's safe to let go tonight."
Each time you do, you're re-writing the subconscious program that says, "Rest is dangerous."
The Repair Process
Emotionally mature parents, and partners, aren't perfect; they reapair. They can admit when they've hurt you and make amends.
Likewise, emotional maturity in healing isn't about never getting activated, it's about noticing, pausing, and repairing.
Everytime you give your body what it needs, stillness, honesty, quiet, play, purpose, you are reparenting your nervous system.
You are showing your inner child what safe rest actually feels like.
- Tune in to your sense of safety in the body: Notice any sensations that come up as you get ready for bed. Increased heart rate, discomfort with the silence or darkness. Slow breaths can reset your nervous system to a calmer state. Establishing a routine to ready yourself for bed can send signals of safety with predictability and consistency .
- Repetition and Habituation: Practicing new thoughts or behaviors daily until they become automatic. Affirmations should feel true to you. Simply saying the words without belief defeats the purpose, in my opinion.
- Energy Psychology: using techniques like EFT, EMDR, or somatic work can engage the body and mind simultaneously to create rapid rewiring.
Each of these can shift the nervous system from protection to growth, and from exhaustion to restoration.
Integrating it all
Rest is not the absence of activity; it's the return to biological safety. It's not weakness; it's wisdom. Every moment you pause, breathe, and soften, you're teaching your cells that the world is not longer a threat.
You're not just rewiring your mind, you're reprogramming your biology toward peace.
Final Reflection
Ask yourself: "What kind of rest feels unsafe for me, and where might that story have started?"
Rewiring means rewriting that story one pause at a time. Rest is not a luxury. It's how your body learns that survival isn't the only way to live.
Dive Deeper by enrolling in When Success Meets Stress: How the Biology of Safety Transforms Women, Parenting & Resilience
Join the Soul Essentials Free Wellness Community where transformation and freedom collide.
(Dalton-Smith, S. (2017). Sacred Rest: Recover Your Life, Renew Your Energy, Restore Your Sanity. FaithWords.)
(Gibson, L. C. (2015). Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. New Harbinger Publications.)
(Lipton, B. H. (2005). The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter & Miracles. Hay House.)
(Awakend, Rimka & Petersen 2023) A Circadian Flow: Circadian Flwo Workbook
Categories: : Resilience, Stress, Trauma
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