“I have come to believe that caring for myself is not self –indulgent. Caring for myself is an act of survival.” – Audre Lorde.
The importance of establishing a self-care routine that meets your mental, physical, emotional and psychological needs is paramount to your own well-being and those that you love. Your body and mind respond well to having their needs met and soon recognise the rewards of a healthy self-care habit. After a period the body craves what the body gets. For example, if your body is regularly exercised it will begin to automatically expect this and feels deprived if it doesn’t get it. It is the same with the mind, if you start a regular meditation practice and then abandon it, your mind will miss the windows of peace that the practice brings to your life.
If you have ever had a pet, let alone a child, then you will know how much care and attention is needed. There is an episode of the Simpsons where Homer is surprised his dog is so angry. ”Hey, why is the dog so angry,” Homer asks and Bart replies, “You never feed him, take him for a walk, or let him go out to pee.” A sure way to breed negative emotions such as anger is to starve yourself of the fundamentals that we need in life. Once we have cared for these needs, there is a healthy space where everything else can start to fall into place and there is room for you to reach your full potential.
Once again, the analogy of how we care for our children and our pets illustrates the importance of implementing a self-care programme. Picture this, you wouldn’t expect your children to wake after a restless four or five hours sleep where they tossed and turned all night worrying and then you forget to feed them breakfast because you were too rushed and send them off to school in the morning in the hope that they have time to grab a quick snack at lunch if they have time to stop their school work.
Yet, many of us treat ourselves in this manner and wonder why we feel worn out, exhausted and struggle to think clearly. It is important to emphasise the necessity of choosing and establishing a self-care programme that works for you. The words to note here are “self” and “care”. When you care for yourself you love yourself and have a healthy respect for serving your own needs. With this deep sense of love and compassion for yourself, your confidence, self-esteem, ability to communicate and relationships will grow stronger and stronger.
Humans have varying needs and while one person may need nine hours sleep a night another could do just fine with six or seven. It is important not to compare yourself to others but to understand your own individual needs and then to realise them for a sense of positive well-being. We all want a lot of things, but assessing how much we need of something is an important start. If our needs are being fulfilled we often find we don’t want any more than that. It is when we are out of sync with our needs that we start to desire things that we believe will satisfy the need that has not been met.
A good example of this is skipping lunch and eating a chocolate bar for a quick hit. Or working really hard for weeks and having no social interaction then going out to a party, drinking too much and sleeping all the next day. These unfulfilled needs have built up and we often try to fix them quickly by overindulging. However, anyone who has suffered from a bad diet or a hangover will agree that this method is completely counterproductive leading to a crash and burn situation.
When our defences are down because of, for example not getting enough sleep, having a bad diet, a sedentary lifestyle and a lack of social connection we put our mental health at risk. If you are already vulnerable to anxiety or low moods then not having your basic needs met puts you at an even greater disadvantage in starting to tackle the issue and to begin to feel better. It is of course when we feel bad that we resist the very things that will help us and I see this with my clients every day. However, it can help to think of yourself as Bart’s dog – you wouldn’t leave him hungry and neglected. Caring for yourself is the first and vital step towards reaching your full positive potential. This shines when you feel physically healthy and strong.
In Ireland, there is a culture that promotes the idea that ‘loving yourself’ is a negative thing; when I was a child the emphasis was always on putting other people’s needs above our own. It is, of course, essential to help other people, but how can we do this if we are burnt out ourselves from a lack of self-care? Think of the last flight you took – the advice that is always given in the case of emergency is to tend to your own oxygen mask before you attend to your children. When you care for yourself you become a kinder, more compassionate, caring and fun person to be around.
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