Rest and avoidance can look identical from the outside — both involve stepping away from something. The difference is what happens afterward.
Rest leaves you with more capacity than you started with. You come back to the thing you stepped away from, even if you don't feel like it, because the underlying commitment hasn't gone anywhere. Avoidance leaves you with the same problem, just older, and a little more dread attached to it.
A simple check: after you rest, do you feel ready to return? After you avoid, do you feel a small relief followed by a longer unease? Learning to tell these apart — in the moment, not just in hindsight — is most of what mindset work actually is.