Moving Towards Authentic, Sustainable Self Care
This morning, I heard an advertisement for Yogi Tea that started with “check self care off your to do list” and went on to promise how lavishing of an experience you’d have with their chamomile.
*rolls eyes*
NO, NO, NO!! I didn’t know whether to be angry or amused.
Here’s the crux of the issue. Self care is not a pleasurable experience or even a collection of nice fluffy experiences. It is a way of being.
Most of us are living in situations where a plethora of things are constantly battling to gain our attention — work, finances, caregiving, shopping, entertainment, social media, cooking, housekeeping, and our personal flavor of the endless to do list. On top of this, we are exposed to a myriad of advertisements and electronic stimuli designed to capture and sustain our attention. The result is that the systems in our brains devoted to managing attention and motivation are overloaded. We are trying to manage too many things at once and it leaves us restless at best.
If you’re like me, it’s more like: exhausted, overwhelmed, empty, exasperated, frustrated……you get the point.
Then we say, hmmm, I think I’m too stressed — I need some self care. I’m not taking care of myself like I need to, I need self care. I’m developing physical health issues because of my overexertion, I need self care. I feel exhausted, empty, numb, disconnected. It feels like I’m just going through my life and there’s no joy — I need self care.
We also have millions of people trying to convince us that they know what self care for us should look like, that we are lacking it, and they have our solution, for a price. We have a whole market designed to make a profit from selling us “self care” often under the promise of ‘you’re going to feel so much better if you do this’ or ‘you really deserve this for yourself’. Sound familiar?
So these are critical things that we have to understand in order to create self care that is going to actually work for us.
- If our lives require so much of us that there is barely room for us to truly sit still and relax, self care isn’t going to fix the issue. This is the equivalent of adding a green smoothie into a diet based on processed, unhealthy foods. And this is exactly how most of us relate to self care. It will never work. We are going to have to make the hard, necessary changes on the larger scale of how we are living our lives in order to create the space that we need to truly nurture ourselves.
- Self care has been taught to us as someone else’s formula for wellness resulting in many of us relating to self care as a chore. “I really should be doing ________”. Self care will never be sustainable or effective if it based in what you “should” be doing. For two reasons: first, ideas of what “should” be happening are always disconnected from what you actually need and want. Shoulds are based on others’ values, not yours. Second, should is not a good motivator, precisely because it’s not connected to your truth. When should is motivating, it’s largely to avoid guilt. I will feel guilty if I don’t do this because I really should be doing it. The truth is, we resent being motivated by guilt. You already know that’s true!
So, to recap, authentic, sustainable self care requires us to take an honest, big picture look at our lives. We cannot expect self care to solve problems that are rooted in our time and energy being overextended. The first step in self care is prioritizing our well being enough to create the changes needed to actually give ourselves a chance at achieving it. We have to make room for ourselves in our lives and be willing to let go of the things that are not truly required. Many of our “obligations” are self imposed. Paradoxically, one of the biggest forms of self care that we need in the beginning is removing the barriers to self care.
This first step often requires taking a deep dive into actually acknowledging our dissatisfaction — really feeling it.
Cry about it.
Write about it.
Paint about it.
Say it out loud to yourself.
Look at yourself in the mirror. Really look. Keep looking.
Tell someone about it.
Break shit. Come totally undone.
Do whatever you need to do to come to terms with the dissatisfaction you feel about your life. Most of us are only superficially aware of our lack of fulfillment. We need to give ourselves the time, space, and permission to be honest with ourselves emotionally about the reality of our lives.
What is it that you need to let go of to make room for YOU in your life?
Hire the babysitter
Leave the social group that you don’t love
Quit the soccer team your kid doesn’t give a shit about
Let the friend that’s been offering help you
Ask for a raise
Quit your dysfunctional job
Leave the partner you’ve been wanting to leave for years
Cancel the Netflix that’s eating up your time and leaving you empty handed
Stop pretending that you don’t need therapy
Stop buying the stuff that you know you don’t need when you’re approaching the checkout
Do what you need to do.
You are intelligent and wise. You know what it is that needs to change. You know what is wasting your time and energy. We become complacent about these things and expect change to magically happen. It’s a matter of taking responsibility and ownership of our lives.
After identifying and dealing with what is causing our dissatisfaction, we open up the space to turn to what we value.
We need to get clear on what it is that we truly care about. This is not surface level desires. This is about knowing what makes us feel truly, deeply fulfilled. What brings us joy and makes us feel alive. What matters most?
If you’re not sure, you might do a quick experiment. Imagine that someone is coming to erase your entire life (like the memory charm in Harry Potter) in 20 minutes, and anything that you don’t write down before then is going to vanish forever. GO!
And if you really want to clarify what matters even more, do the same experiment with a 10 minute timer, a 5 minute timer, a 1 minute timer, and finally, a 30 second timer.
We have to abandon all notions about what self care is to discover what it looks like for us. If you don’t truly care about your health, there is absolutely zero point in you joining a 21 day group devoted to healthier eating. You will not follow through with nourishing your body in the long run.
All of my self care initiates that have failed have this in common — I haven’t been connected to the meaning of the action. It may have been a good idea, but I didn’t really care about it. I didn’t feel clear on why I wanted to do it. I have been successful in maintaining my meditation practice for years because I am deeply connected to the value that it brings to my life. That’s the only reason I can overcome the resistance I feel to sitting over and over again. I know for damn sure why I’m doing it and I’m committed to my why. It matters to me — more than anything, second only to parenting, in fact.
Knowing what you value is the single most important factor in creating authentic, sustainable self care. We devote ourselves with stunning conviction to what we truly, deeply, madly care about, willing to withstand whatever hardships await us in the pursuit of these things. We need THAT kind of grit to create sustainability in self care.
Essentially, it looks like this. “I am really suffering, I see this suffering clearly and I care about it. Here’s why it’s happening, here’s what I need to address, and here’s what I really care about”. Without knowing this, you can kiss your beautifully packaged self care goodbye. It ain’t gonna work, because it’s not authentic.
Whew. Let’s take a breather. That was a lot.
Now that we have that covered, let’s notice that it’s very hard to truly land in the moment with nothing to do for long, isn’t it? You might check this out for yourself. See if you can stop yourself at random moments throughout your day and do nothing for awhile. Chances are you’ll find it hard. Anyone who has practiced meditation knows that the mind is continuously looking for things to manage, plan, analyze, fret about, etc.
This brings me to:
3. At this point, because of the pace of our lives up to now, our nervous systems are programmed to keep us in a stimulated state — always anticipating and planning for what’s coming next. And this has been adaptive. We’ve needed to stay in this managing, doing state to keep up with life. For those of us with trauma histories, this is exacerbated. There is a way that we’ve learned that being “on” is what keeps us safe and in control. I’ll call this state the executive director.
This is a real barrier when it comes to self care. Things that are truly self nurturing, that are connected to what we need and/or value, do not register as important to our executive director. They register as optional, so they are demoted to the bottom of our to do list, which registers as very important and time sensitive, even when it’s not. The executive director is very good at managing, analyzing, and prioritizing tasks, but it’s not good at listening to what is happening within us in the present moment.
What this means is that we have to shift out of this state in order to respond to our self care needs.
Authentic self care is connected to the life of the moment. It originates from our ability to connect with our bodies and our emotions. Only when we are connected to ourselves in this way can we identify what we truly value and need.
The problem is that when the executive director is running the show, we’re not connected to ourselves. We are going through the motions as if a few feet away from ourselves, falling into the next moment with little to no self reflection. How many times per day do you typically stop to take a break and check in with what you are needing and/or how you’re feeling?
If you’re like me, you’re very accustomed to hearing a voice inside you giving you self care recommendations as you’re doing tasks. You ignore or override these suggestions, again, because the state of being you’re in, the executive director, does not register these suggestions as important.
So here’s the deal. We have to be regulated in order to recognize and respond to our needs for self care. This means being able to slow ourselves down, pause, drop our agenda, and become aware of the life of the moment. We need mindfulness.
Here’s an immaculately timed real life example of this at play. I’ve been writing for awhile at this point and I’ve got two competing things happening inside me. The executive director is urging me forward to complete this writing task. I’m enjoying the process and I feel compelled to push through to completion. However, when I slow down, coming from a stimulated state to a more relaxed, present state, I notice that I feel tired and what would feel most nourishing right now is to do yoga or go for a walk.
My executive director’s opinion on this current situation? “I really need to do yoga because I haven’t done it today.” I would sit here and keep typing if that was all that was going through my head because I don’t really give a shit about what I should be doing, I need to finish this! Instead, I recruit mindfulness and I recognize:
A. I’m going to feel energized, relaxed, grounded, more present, and resourced if I do yoga right now. My body lets out a big metaphorical and literal sigh orienting to it in this way. It’s that type of yummy. (what is my need?)
B. I really want to feel present, relaxed, and grounded. I am actively working to cultivate this regulated state of being in my day to day life. I deeply care about occupying this state of being. It is my home. The rest of my day will be much more relaxed and sweet if I take this time to reset and come back to myself. (what do I care about?)
So I close my computer now and I go do yoga. I come back to finish when my body lets me know that I have the energy and desire to take on challenge again, without a sense of urgency.
I’m back……with a sweet wrap up.
- Get real with yourself. That means taking a long, honest, emotion centered look at the state of your life, right now. We have to get clear on what is serving our well being and what is driving it into the ground.
- We need to let go of the things that are preventing us from having the time to we need to take care of ourselves, which, by the way, actually means taking care of ourselves. Taking yourself out to the movies once/week is great, but I’m talking about being in daily, regular connection with activities that nurture your soul. We need SPACE to explore and find out what this looks like for us and we need the time to do these things daily. There’s no way around this.
- Authentic, sustainable self care is rooted in your values. You must abandon all notions about what self care is supposed to look like to find it. Can you be inspired by the ideas of others? YES! Can you follow someone else’s self care protocol and expect it to stick or have any lasting impact? NO. Find out what truly matters to you, and create self care goals based on these values. If your goals aren’t linked to your values, you will abandon them within a month.
- Authentic self care is connected to the life of the moment. It requires mindfulness. Self care is about making commitments to do the things that feed you on a regular basis, and it’s also about listening and responding to what is happening in your heart and body right now. It requires you to stop, drop your agenda, and tune in to what’s happening inside — and make this your priority over and over again. Often times when we do this we find that we need rest, water, quiet, comfort, connection, food, and nature.
