The Illusion of Stillness
- Donna Woodrow
- Jul 7
- 7 min read
Why Your Body Knows the Difference Between Rest and Numbing Out
I have just returned from a mid-year family vacation, it was a deliberate, quiet pause designed to help me slow down, disrupt the routine of life, and return to my own centre of wellbeing.
But if I am being completely honest, even as an Art Therapist and Enneagram practitioner, practicing what I preach isn’t always a straight line. I guess it has something to do with being human, and I haven’t found a way around that yet.
There were moments early on in my break, where I found it hard to slow down. My mind kept revisiting an expectation of a to-do list. What had to be done next? A trap I’ve caught myself in more times than I care to count. Especially in the last 4 years as motherhood became the operating program. I had to mentally grant myself permission to do ‘nothing’. It was HARRRRDDD.
After about a day or so of this mental clutter, and realising there really was naught to do, my body got the message that it was time to rest. And perhaps more accurately, I realised that what I was doing wasn’t ‘nothing’ at all - it was intentional rest and recovery. It was almost as though the forced stop allowed my parasympathetic nervous system to come online. What followed was a sense of ease and peace. Peace with just being... and then I got a cold.
And really there was not a better place to have a cold, but a Fijian resort where responsibilities were few, and support was at hand. I wasn't even that bothered about being sick on a holiday that I had waited a year to have, and yet even in a positive mental state my Personality found its way back to me. Because through colds, come discomfort, the kind of discomfort that my personality was designed to defend against.
In the midst of my cold, after a long day of sunshine and poolside lounging, I was tired, exhausted. And there I found myself in bed at night, on my phone playing sudoku for hours on end, like it was nobody's business. And it quickly became the worst part of my trip. Not because I was sick, but because I had allowed myself to check out of reality to the point that I had abandoned myself. I was no longer intentional about my healing and health, I was simply trying to avoid the discomfort and get through the hours.
I was slipping into my personality's favourite defence mechanism: narcotisation. I was numbing out. Sure, who can blame me, I was sick and wasn’t supposed to be ‘doing’ anything anyway. Yet no matter how much compassion I offered myself, I knew that in those moments I had abandoned myself.
Upon reflection the next morning whilst nursing a self-abandonment hangover, I was able to answer for myself what I would have done differently if I were able to, what would have truly nourished me? Cuddling up to my husband to watch a show together, allowing myself to be held. Taking another hot shower. Giving myself a foot rub. Laying in bed drawing. Reading a book. The list of things I would have rather done than check-out from reality was endless, so choice wasn’t the problem, what was? It was my level of presence and awareness in that moment.
For a Type 9, this is a common loop. But the truth is, regardless of your Enneagram type, our modern world has made numbing out incredibly easy, socially acceptable, and deeply addictive.
To find our way back to true vitality, we have to learn how to tell the difference between a body that is genuinely resting, and a body that is checked out from reality.
The Anatomy of Checking Out
We often think that if our physical body has stopped moving, we are resting. We sit on the couch, pick up our phones, scroll, or play sudoku in bed for hours. But our nervous system tells a different story.
When I was playing sudoku, my physical body was mostly static and yet my internal system was still trapped in the sympathetic nervous system (our fight-or-flight or freeze response). My brain was still scanning, processing, and reacting to a constant stream of stimuli, and avoidance reactions.
Have you noticed that even when you are supposedly relaxing on the couch, a part of you may still be in motion? For many of us, it’s a foot that keeps twitching, a leg that bounces rhythmically, or a jaw that remains tightly clenched. That is the somatic signature of a body trapped in the sympathetic state. Your mind has labelled this time as "leisure," but your nervous system is still running a low-grade marathon.
Real, regenerative pause is entirely different. It requires the activation of the parasympathetic nervous system, the "rest, digest, and restore" state. Only when the parasympathetic system is online can our bodies actually perform their maintenance and healing work. This is when our immune system is supported, our digestion functions optimally, and our tissues heal. True rest doesn’t just mean our limbs have stopped moving; it means the mind, the breath, and the intricate inner pathways of the body have been given permission to let go of their constant defending.
Why We Can't "Talk" Our Way Out of the Loop
When we realize we are caught in a numbing loop, our default response is usually cognitive. We write a to-do list, we tell ourselves to "snap out of it," or we try to logically analyse why we are feeling so unmotivated. And even those who love us tend to help us in this way too. When I shared my self-abandonment hangover feelings with my husband, he was terribly kind in justifying my participation in the sudoku championships by reminding me that we were on holiday, I did nothing wrong, and I’m allowed to divulge in a rare case of bingeing.
While I was admittedly grateful there wasn’t another set of judging eyes turned on me, I was also aware that these traditional cognitive strategies often fail because they try to solve a body problem with a head solution. Not to mention our justifications and defences often fail to acknowledge the real state of our inner world, which in itself is another mode of abandonment.
I’ve written before about when our nervous system is pushed into states of high anxiety or acute trauma, our language systems downregulate. Neuroimaging studies (such as those popularized by psychiatrist Dr. Bessel van der Kolk) show that during survival states, the left prefrontal cortex and specifically Broca’s area, the region responsible for translating thoughts into spoken words - can go offline.
The body has entered a survival state, and survival doesn't care about words, plans, to-do lists or our highest self; it cares about physical safety. The tension, the inertia, and the freeze are somatic experiences physically held in our muscles and fascia. We cannot talk about a release of tension, we need to physically experience it.
This is where Art Therapy serves as a somatic bridge. By bypassing the verbal centres of the brain, we invite the subconscious voice to express itself through materials. We let the hands do the talking.
The Healing Power of the Circle
When we are caught in a numbing loop, we do not need to do a deep dive into our oldest psychological wounds. Asking an exhausted, frozen nervous system to draw your deepest trauma will only send it running back into the safety of numbness.
Instead, we use abstract, containment-focused art practices to gently coax the brain back into the present moment. One of the most powerful tools we use for this is the mandala - drawing or painting within a sacred circle. So that’s exactly what I did. I started drawing a mandala.
Circles have been used across cultures for thousands of years as symbols of wholeness and unity, but they also carry immense clinical value. Modern neurobiology and clinical research confirm that a blank, infinite sheet of paper can actually overwhelm a stressed or anxious brain due to the sheer number of choices it represents. However, when you draw within a circular boundary, you create an immediate sense of visual and physical containment.
Drawing a mandala helped, and even though I didn’t complete the circle in that sitting, I was able to gather enough presence and self-connection to rejoin my family at the coral reef where I was rewarded with sightings of bright blue sea stars, tiny sea horses and the most sea cucumbers anyone has ever seen, ever.
A landmark study by researchers Nancy Curry and Tim Kasser (2005), later replicated by Van der Vennet and Lane (2012), demonstrated that colouring structured circular patterns (mandalas) significantly reduced anxiety compared to free-form colouring on a blank page.
The circle acts as a safe psychological container. The repetitive, rhythmic motion of filling its boundaries with patterns, colours, or soft watercolour washes gives the busy, worrying mind a focal point. It quietens the mental chatter, allowing the physical body to finally drop down into that restorative, parasympathetic state.
How the Numbing Loop Shows Up Across the Centres
While Type 9s are the "masters" of self-forgetting through comfortable numbness, every Enneagram centre has its own unique way of sliding into a numbing loop to avoid discomfort:
The Head Centre (Types 5, 6, 7): May check out by retreating into their minds. By overthinking, over planning, and constructing future scenarios to avoid feeling the vulnerability of the present moment. They lose contact with their physical grounding. Art therapy helps them by bringing them out of the abstract and into the tactile, physical reality of the world through the use of art materials.
The Heart Centre (Types 2, 3, 4): May check out by focusing entirely on their external image and relationships. Over-performing, over-giving, and focusing on the internal emotional overwhelm to avoid meeting their own core needs. Art therapy gives them a rare space to create something solely for themselves - with no audience to please and no image to maintain.
The Body Centre (Types 8, 9, 1): May check out through physical resistance, muscular bracing, and inertia. Freezing their energy to maintain a sense of internal control. Art therapy gives their body a voice to release the physical tension and move back into healthy, energized alignment.
Swapping Checking Out for Checking-In
The next time you find yourself caught in that late-night loop - your physical body static on the couch, but your foot twitching, your mind racing, and your thumb endlessly scrolling - I invite you to meet yourself with some grace.
You don't have to think your way out of the fog or make a to do list or a promise to be a better human, and you certainly don't need to apologize for being human. Instead, try a small somatic shift. Find a blank scrap of paper, draw a simple, imperfect circle, and just let your hand fill the space.
You do not need to have any artistic skill to experience the benefits of doing this short activity. In fact, having no artistic background is sometimes an advantage, as it frees you from the pressure of making something "good."
Play. Create. Have Fun.
Comments