Issue 13. Rest

Through stories of her grandmother and her own life in Ukraine, the author of this essay, who is a psychologist, describes how endurance and perseverance, especially in wartime, can make rest feel impossible and unnecessary. She looks at how generations of hardship have shaped a culture of pride in carrying on. This essay highlights that rest is not weakness, but an essential form of care.

How many jokes feature Ukrainians who love complaining about how hard their lives are? I won’t lie: I do it too. It’s something I learned from my grandmother. She was born in Ukraine in 1924, and survived everything that you can imagine. She had the character of a fortified stone house. Though she did have her little pleasures.

My grandma would phone her neighbor every morning until that woman passed into the next world. And every morning she’d start with the same spiel. “Hello, Shurochka?” she’d say in a feeble voice, faltering with pain. “Shurochka, how are you today? You couldn’t sleep last night? Me neither, not a wink. God, my legs hurt. How will I get through the day? It’s so hard, I can’t bear it.”

This would go on for five minutes. And then Grandma, now warmed up, would go on in her regular voice, which could fill a large hall without using a microphone. She’d excitedly discuss the indecent affairs of the other neighbors. “Do you know what Mukhotasyk’s wife did?!” she would grumble in a lively voice, even laughing. Yes, she lived through a lot, but she really lived through it and left it in the past.

I was forty when I noticed something interesting one morning while talking to a girlfriend. We had already discussed our respective migraines from yesterday, and the day before, and how we’d had enough of our periods, how much can one suffer, and, lord, there’s so much to do . . . And then it hit me. “This is my grandma [speaking]!” I laughed. It was my dear grandma, who would always hang on and keep on, because everything was on her shoulders, and nobody but her could do it. It was terribly hard, but she would still get up at five in the morning to knead the dough to make buns.

That was the moment I grasped that this experience of enduring hardship had been passed down through the generations. I realized that this legacy is not mine alone but belongs to countless Ukrainian women and even to some men. It’s true that Ukrainians are known for complaining. But if you listen to the complaints of the people around you, I am sure the majority will be about having too much work and other responsibilities—and about how hard it is to hold up. Since the 2000s, and up until recently, it was typical in Kyiv for friends to say “Hang in there” when parting. It’s not about feeling sorry. It’s a matter of principle—and of pride.

I don’t mean to make a tragedy of this, though you may feel it. After all, Ukrainians’ respect for hardship is informed by terrible sociohistorical experiences. I could tell you about how hard my grandmother’s life really was, or about my objectively difficult life circumstances in Kyiv in 2026. Instead I’ve decided to share some humorous observations about morning phone calls to demonstrate another dimension of suffering: we, humans, have learned to take pleasure in our difficulties.

Perhaps this pleasure is less sophisticated than an evening at the philharmonic. Perhaps it lacks the dopamine rush of birdwatching, when after waiting five hours in the Holosiivskyi forest, you grab a photo of a little owl peeking out of a hollow. No, this pleasure is as plain as sliced white bread and just as easy to come by. And we value it tremendously.

Together with respect for hardship comes disdain for avoiding it. Every objective must be pursued in the most difficult way. Disdain for avoiding difficulty makes rest impossible. Rest is for the weak.

This is both a superpower and a curse. It’s a superpower because we are actually capable of enduring a lot, and now (especially now, though not for the first time) it helps us hold out in war. Respect for hardship helps us hold up with dignity. It even generates a bit of energy through the pride and pleasure we take in holding up so well. It helps us survive, keep our spirits up, and produce fruit from our labors that will ensure the future existence of our country.

A Ukrainian hero is not defined by winning through cunning, strength, or the will of the gods. A Ukrainian hero endures the most difficult trials without breaking. This hero is burnished by sufferance, to borrow a phrase from the Ukrainian dissident poet Vasyl Stus. Ukrainians succeed by outwaiting their enemies. That is exactly what we are doing today. When we photograph a cup of coffee next to a vase of peonies in front of our shattered windows the morning after an airstrike, we affirm our capacity to endure. We signal to the Russians that there is no way they will overcome our vitality.

The ability to endure is particularly important for our defenders. For those who spend years living in trenches, being able to ignore how tired you are and disregard hardship is invaluable. Even showing yourself no mercy, however harsh that may sound, is invaluable. I see this in the defenders with whom I’m close, and I see how it helps them survive while maintaining a sense of self.

According to the dictionary, the Ukrainian word vidpochynok, which translates as “rest” or “recreation”, means “refreshment of strength after exertion through a pause or change in activity; spending time on holiday, at leisure, not working; a short break from work; a stop during travel”. At the root of the word vidpochynok is the Proto-Slavic pokoi, which means “quiet, peace, calm”. Interestingly, there are several rarely used synonyms from the same root, including supochynok and prypochyvok.

Neurobiology has shown that one can focus on a task effectively for a limited amount of time. After that, it becomes harder to concentrate, and you need to change your mode of activity to recover. From this perspective, rest is part of a set of actions needed to achieve a given result. We rest so we can get back to work.

So what happens when you ignore the need to rest? It disturbs the balance between effort and relaxation, which is vitally important.

This balance allows you to make an effort (tense your muscles) when necessary, and feel happy (relax) when you achieve the result. During relaxation, the human body releases dopamine, which is the pleasure hormone and a neurotransmitter that helps make another effort in anticipation of the next dopamine release. You need a break in activity to assess how much you’ve done and to feel good about it. If the cycle is disrupted, you experience a lack of dopamine.

Not being able to enjoy your accomplishments is directly tied to depression. It’s great that we can take pleasure in how well we endure tremendous difficulties, but this may not be enough to release the dopamine we need. In addition, overstraining yourself releases cortisol, the stress hormone. In situations of chronic stress, cortisol interferes with dopamine production.

Also, during periods of rest and relaxation, the brain analyzes, systematizes, and gives meaning to the information it has received. This is the process of integration, where new experience is incorporated into the whole of what you already know, and this can change how you understand certain recent or past events. A break is a chance to reflect and observe your own thoughts and feelings. Your attitude toward a new experience is shaped by measuring it against your values, what it means, and morality: is what I am doing good or evil? You decide what (not) to do next.

If you don’t pause for self-reflection, perhaps the only thing you’ll get is an interesting story for literature or film. Glancing at my bookshelf, I see [Gabriel Garcia] Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude blushing from between the heavily bookmarked psychology books. It provides a perfect example of life lived on auto-pilot: generations of the Buendía family never paused to observe their own actions. Without reflection, the protagonists remained trapped in a cycle of suffering, which only ended with death. Right next to it is The Children’s Book by A. S. Byatt, where the heroine repeatedly ignores the feeling that something is not right and persists with her creative process, with tragic results. Cinematic examples include any film by Quentin Tarantino or my favorite Coen brothers movie, Burn after Reading.

But I’m sure that none of us would like to be a character in a Tarantino film. For that reason, a significant part of any process of psychotherapy involves developing the habit of stopping and reflecting before reacting to stimuli (an event, somebody’s offensive words, etc.). Also, in general, it is important to learn how to bear both strain and relaxation, i.e., “doing nothing”.

It’s not true that psychologists don’t give advice. We just call it a “recommendation”. Guess which recommendation psychologists’ clients ignore most often. To rest. It’s easier to convince a client to see a psychiatrist than to go on holiday. And that is no easy task here, in Ukraine, where psychiatry was stigmatized for decades and often used as a threat in Soviet times.

However, when it comes to the need for rest, the most amazing things start to happen. There are reasons for this, beyond the above-mentioned cultural specificity of Ukrainians, who take such pride in their ability to withstand hardship.

For instance, the absence of stress can provoke anxiety and feelings of guilt. Anxiety sounds something like this: “If I’m not completely worn out, then I haven’t done anything of value, so I have to work harder.” Guilt has a similar voice: “I haven’t done anything special, so I don’t deserve a break.” The problem is that classifications like “completely worn out” or “something special” are subjective. You can always be more exhausted or do a little more: there is no limit when it comes to diminishing the value of your own work. As a psychologist who works with artists, I can attest to the fact that it is possible to belittle anything you’ve achieved. Even if you’ve received a statuette and a banner with “Great job!” written in big red letters.

An absence of stress can also provoke a sense of shame. It could be shame before those serving in the military. You think: “How can I go on holiday when the people defending me haven’t been able to leave their positions for over a hundred days, or sleep, or eat enough?” Feelings of guilt and shame can be very destructive. Check in with yourself: Am I really doing something bad? Will I cause anyone harm by resting? It’s more likely that it will help both you and your loved ones. My colleague the psychologist Oleh Pokalchuk likes to reiterate that the primary job of civilians in wartime is to survive. Their second job is to help the army. Therefore there is no reason to feel shame or guilt for remaining alive and able to work. In fact, we ought to take these responsibilities seriously.

Working as a psychologist has taught me to take proper holidays without bringing work along, as well as to include time for rest in my daily schedule. I literally write it in my calendar. It is my responsibility to the people who need me to be in top intellectual form. Sometimes I take a nap between sessions to ensure that the next client will get a psychologist who is refreshed, full, calm, and stable without fail. What kind of hypocrite would I be if I advised my clients to rest while I went on working through holidays and weekends?

When I first set out on the path to becoming a psychotherapist, I was struck by the claim that workaholism and alcoholism both act as a defense mechanism in equal measure. The only difference between them is their destructive power: alcoholism is more dangerous for your life and health, while workaholism can help you earn money to pay for things like psychotherapy. But both of them provide ways to avoid contact with your actual life. If you work twelve-hour days, then you don’t have time to think about how much you don’t like your work. You don’t have to think about how you feel about the situation at home, or anything else for that matter.

There is a connection between not being able to stop working and your professional role. Let’s say that I work as a journalist, or the head of an organization. At work I know what I have to do and how. If we take apart the Ukrainian word for rest, vid-po-chyn-ok, we can think of it as a break (vid) from your role (chyn). Who am I when I’m not in my professional role? The less I do, the less difficulty and effort I take on, the more chances I have to think about various questions that I’d rather not think about. The sad irony is that one needs to rest to sense that one’s life is not in vain. However, the fear of discovering that your life has been lived in vain is so great that people don’t dare to take this vital break.

What’s interesting is that we don’t always rest when performing actions intended as rest. You can rest while lying down, but you can also lie down without resting. You can go on holiday and relax, and you can also have an unrelaxing holiday. You can be tense or relaxed while lying down. Have you ever tried being supine and tense? I have. I remember how once, while having a delightful face massage I noticed that I was clenching my fists. My body was on the massage table, but my thoughts were on hard work.

In a similar vein, you can remain stressed while on holiday by worrying about what’s going on at work, or whether the sky will come crashing down while you’re away, or about what might happen if you don’t catch up with all your assignments once you get back. Anxiety can consume all the energy you accumulate during your wonderful holidays.

If what I am saying resonates with you, then take this moment to relax your shoulders. Make a gentle movement, as if you were slipping off a small backpack. Now relax your jaw. Relax your eyes. Notice your arms and the rest of your body. If you’ve managed to relax, that’s wonderful. If not, let’s go to Plan B: appreciate what you have.

As lousy as it may be not to relax, berating yourself for not being able to is even worse. After all, as we’ve already discussed, hanging on and keeping on are national values and strategies, and pretty successful ones at that. I’ve always liked to think that someday I will develop the character of a stone house, just like my grandmother.

Translated from Ukrainian by Larissa Babij

Illustration: Anna Gavryliuk