Self-Care, But Make It Intuitive
It turns out that self-care is less mystical but more complex than we thought - with both helpful and not-so-helpful approaches.
“Self-Care” has become such a buzz word in recent years that I often find people throw it around as if it is just common sense. I recall coming out of grad school with this new term that was often used to shame someone - if you are not mentally well, you are not doing enough self-care. Tsk tsk.
So what is this mystical thing that is supposed to magically solve all our problems? Well, let me start by saying no, it does not solve all problems.
But.
It is a complex concept that we all need to continually learn about and apply. It can go a long way to helping us manage our problems while we seek deeper solutions. Now let me echo many of my clients and colleagues - "Who has the time??" Especially when we spend 8 hours a day working and the rest of our time running after joy and families and seeking the fullest experiences we can in this thing called life. And if we are facing hardship and challenges it can be overwhelming - how many hours can one spend at the gym? How does one fit in and force an elusive perfect 8 hours of sleep and wake up fully rested? Particularly if sleep is dramatically affected by stress levels and runs from us the more we seek to force it to be here? Ooops, and now my precariously balanced self-care regimen and life activities are thrown off because I rolled my ankle or my basement flooded or my partner asked for a divorce or a pandemic hit so now I’d better find another 3 hours to exercise and I need to eat better and make sure to breath and do more yoga but don't lose out on any sleep....
Stressed yet?
Ok! Me too!
More recently, I came across something new and has changed my view on this elusive and exponentially expansive concept - Intuitive Self Care.
The experiences I just described above are related to what I refer to as Maintenance and Prescriptive types of self care. Maintenance Self Care refers to the basic things we all need to maintain the machine that is our human body. As much as we can, we need to eat well, exercise regularly, and get a decent amount of sleep. For example:
General guidelines are that less than 6 hrs of sleep is detrimental for us but most people do not actually achieve 8 hrs of perfect sleep. Somewhere between 6 and 8 is good enough.
Exercise is always good and necessary for maintaining our wellness in general and there is a lot of different advice here- some say just to move regularly or daily, some say 20 minutes of cardio a day, some say 10,000 steps, and still others say increase your heart rate 2 to 3 times a week. I would say do what’s fun and feels good for your body.
And then diet…well, I won't even attempt to go there. You likely have your own philosophy on what is healthy for you.
This is Maintenance. It’s necessary and an important starting point.
Then we have Prescriptive Self Care and it’s my least favourite. This is often a route to shame others. This is where people tell you “You should be” engaging in some form of self care because "it’s good for you." It consists of things that we have all heard are usually and generally good for a human being such as take a hot bath, do yoga, meditate, eat your greens, talk it out with someone, draw boundaries, think positively, forgive others. This advice (while generally well intentioned and often helpful) forgets the key thing that makes us all unique - we don't all respond the same way to these things! This is often where armchair psychology thrives and everyone thinks they know better than you about what you need.
Let’s look at some examples:
Two very different people choose to take a hot bath and indulge in some self-care. Susan lights candles and relishes the moment to be in solitude and peacefulness. It’s warm and fuzzy. Nancy sits in the tub, bored and ruminating on anything and everything currently tormenting her. What was meant to be self-care ends in a shame spiral of crying for an hour.
Or perhaps Susan finds a quiet spot in her yard and meditates, finding more loving ways to speak to herself and breathing in a moment of peace with zero pressure. Meanwhile, Nancy finds the quiet has her fantasizing about ending her life and while she may feel soothed, she is certainly at more risk of harming herself than before.
“I encourage you to take prescriptive self-care and advice from others as merely a suggestion.”
For these and many more reasons, I encourage you to take prescriptive self-care and advice from others as merely a suggestion. You should never engage in these if they feel wrong or make things worse. These societal wisdoms can give inspiration for self-care but nothing more.
So now what? How do we keep ourselves from an ever shrinking ledge of time with increasing demand for self-care tasks?
I refer to it as Intuitive Self Care. Author Ashley Davis Bush also refers to this as “Micro Self Care.” This means learning to listen to what your body is communicating to you and following it in a moment-to-moment awareness. It can take all of one minute or much longer. The idea is to follow what you know is true for your body based on it's signals. Let me show you.
Feeling like someone is being way too intense and you find yourself instinctively wanting to run away from them? Allow yourself to take a step back, lean back, or place something between the two of you to get that distance.
Leaving a work meeting and struggling with how the discussion went? Rather than go back to your desk and stuff the feelings down and feel trapped, go for a walk around the building or take a lunch break in the sunshine - just long enough to feel calmer and more balanced before you jump into the next thing.
Noticing that you’re holding your breath? Perhaps just take 5 seconds to slow it down and breathe. Maybe even watch a funny cat video.
The key is to notice what is happening for you in a given moment and then practice the techniques unique to you which you’ve found helpful. Sometimes this takes a little trial and error. You may need to ask others for some prescriptive suggestions to explore. You may need to pick your therapist's brain.
“The key is to notice what is happening for you in a given moment and then practice the techniques unique to you which you’ve found helpful. Sometimes this takes a little trial and error. ”
Yet as you practice these new exercises, your self care time commitment shrinks from massive chunks of time unpacking pent up and accumulated emotions, to just a moment-to-moment awareness that you can slowly cultivate and implement. If it is hard to know what you are feeling or what your body needs, don't sweat it! This is a skill that takes time to develop.
So happy experimenting and as always, we are here to help if you need more ideas!
