We've all heard of self care. You know, taking care of yourself and not forgetting to do things to recharge your own mental and physical health. Self care involves things you want to do that are fun for you and not a huge drag of responsibility. It gives you something positive back, which makes you feel good; instead of taking something away from you, which can make you feel worse. Honestly, I used to think that was just psychotherapy nonsense and a way for people to just check out of life and be lazy. I believed "self care" was synonymous with "selfish". Much like this...
But you know what? I was wrong. Totally. Taking care of yourself is NOT selfish. It's NOT wrong and you NEED to do it. I've been thinking a lot lately about the fact that my daughter is all grown up and on her own now. (UGH! - She'll forever be 6 years old to me!) I don't have to take care of her anymore - not like I used to anyway. My job now is to concentrate on taking care of myself. I need to help make myself well and that is really hard for me because I'm a caretaker by nature. As a nurse, wife and mother, I took care of everyone and everything - except myself. Now it's time to take care of me. Which doesn't make me selfish and it doesn't mean I'm lazy. It means I'm trying to become healthier - inside and out.
With all of the things I have going on with my health, both mentally and physically, I have realized that this self care thing is super important. When I was doing everything for everyone else and I finally had a little time alone, it became very easy to only contemplate all of life's problems. I also spent a great deal of that sparse free time planning on what I could do next for other people instead of how I could recharge myself. Neglecting myself in this way seemed like it made everything worse for my health because I never had the physical or mental energy to go the next round, and it was exhausting. I pushed myself way too hard most of the time. I sincerely just wanted to help everyone else but, in turn, refused to help myself. That definitely needs to change.
Here are just a few things I've started doing to accomplish self care:
1. Writing. More and more writing. Writing of all kinds. Journaling, blogging, jotting notes in my phone, creative story writing, writing letters I may or may not send... just writing. Getting emotions, thoughts and feelings out and sorting through them helps me. It also helps me remember important things because my memory just isn't the same as it once was. Writing is something I have enjoyed doing since I was a very little girl and it is very cathartic for me.
2. Music. I cannot do much of anything without music playing anymore. Although whenever I'm doing anything and certain songs come on, I inevitably find myself uninhibitedly "dancing it out" - no matter what. Grey's Anatomy style! It's amazing. Of course, I am exhausted after about two minutes, but for those two minutes I feel so great!
So that's just some self care things I'm doing. They seem to be much more helpful than being self destructive, which I could just as very easily do. But these are way more fun and much healthier. There will be a part 2 of this Self Care post so stay tuned for that. In the meantime... did someone say dancing it out? Yes Taylor, I will Shake It Off, thank you!
But you know what? I was wrong. Totally. Taking care of yourself is NOT selfish. It's NOT wrong and you NEED to do it. I've been thinking a lot lately about the fact that my daughter is all grown up and on her own now. (UGH! - She'll forever be 6 years old to me!) I don't have to take care of her anymore - not like I used to anyway. My job now is to concentrate on taking care of myself. I need to help make myself well and that is really hard for me because I'm a caretaker by nature. As a nurse, wife and mother, I took care of everyone and everything - except myself. Now it's time to take care of me. Which doesn't make me selfish and it doesn't mean I'm lazy. It means I'm trying to become healthier - inside and out.
With all of the things I have going on with my health, both mentally and physically, I have realized that this self care thing is super important. When I was doing everything for everyone else and I finally had a little time alone, it became very easy to only contemplate all of life's problems. I also spent a great deal of that sparse free time planning on what I could do next for other people instead of how I could recharge myself. Neglecting myself in this way seemed like it made everything worse for my health because I never had the physical or mental energy to go the next round, and it was exhausting. I pushed myself way too hard most of the time. I sincerely just wanted to help everyone else but, in turn, refused to help myself. That definitely needs to change.
Here are just a few things I've started doing to accomplish self care:
1. Writing. More and more writing. Writing of all kinds. Journaling, blogging, jotting notes in my phone, creative story writing, writing letters I may or may not send... just writing. Getting emotions, thoughts and feelings out and sorting through them helps me. It also helps me remember important things because my memory just isn't the same as it once was. Writing is something I have enjoyed doing since I was a very little girl and it is very cathartic for me.
2. Music. I cannot do much of anything without music playing anymore. Although whenever I'm doing anything and certain songs come on, I inevitably find myself uninhibitedly "dancing it out" - no matter what. Grey's Anatomy style! It's amazing. Of course, I am exhausted after about two minutes, but for those two minutes I feel so great!
3. Yoga. I've started doing yoga. It's good for my body - especially my Fibromyalgia. It feels good surprisingly. It's relaxing and it's healthy. I'm doing it at least once a week but my goal is to try for three times a week. Baby steps though. Again, I am very tired a lot and my though yoga feels great, my body doesn't always cooperate and my balance is shit. But I have fun and that's the whole point.
4. Rest. I don't rest like I should. I don't sleep well at all so I need to take time to just shut the door, tune out the world, be alone and rest. No matter if that rest takes ten minutes or five hours. No matter if I'm just lying there or actually sleeping. My body needs rest and I'm going to give it what it needs. It's hard to come down from that state of hypervigilance and feeling like I should constantly be doing something, but I'm trying. And my body deserves the rest. Anxiety be damned.
5. Therapy. Actual real therapy where I talk and deal with the real issues that have been weighing me down for years that I thought I had dealt with, that I pushed deep down and tried to ignore, and forever pretended that they didn't exist anymore. Those problems are there though, they aren't going to go away until I properly address them, and they are physically coming out in ways that medical doctors can't figure out or fix. Perhaps the problems are much deeper and it's time to grow up and deal with them instead of stuffing them down and pretending they don't hurt and don't matter. This isn't my favorite self care task but it's necessary. It's also embarrassing to admit but it shouldn't be.
6. Allowing myself to not be okay. No, that doesn't mean laying in bed and isolating myself from the world for days at a time and listening to sad songs in order to feel sadder and eventually just wanting to kill myself. (Though with depression it is tough to fight that sometimes.) It means allowing myself to feel sad or angry if I am sad or angry about something and take a moment to feel it and then move on. Not try to ignore it and put that brave face on and pretend to be okay. Sometimes I'm not okay and it's okay to not be okay. But also giving myself a time limit to do this - so I'm not just continually ruminating on things that eventually spiral me into a that type of dark depression that is way too hard to get out of - is the best way I can allow myself to sometimes not be okay.
7. Drawing. Doodling mostly. It's creative and you can do it pretty much anywhere. Waiting in all those doctor's office waiting rooms especially. Sometimes staring at the phone playing Candy Crush gets old. Give me a pen and a piece of paper and I'm a happy girl.
Self care. It's good!
Comments
Post a Comment