Self-Care During Times of Personal and Collective Struggle
Self-care can be tricky to define these days. As a social media buzzword, you’ve probably been exposed to many arguments about what it is and what it isn’t. For the purposes of this blog, I’m going to define it as: actions we do to promote our own wellbeing.
Before I made the choice to quit dieting in 2014, self-care pretty much meant “eating healthy” and exercising to me. Over the past eight years, it has obviously shifted, and most notable in that shift is the fact that self-care is no longer associated with any type of penance. Back in the day, I believed that it was my duty to keep my body in the best physical shape possible, so I exercised and restricted my food under pressure and from a place of fear. That was what self-care meant to me and I imagine many of you can relate to that experience.
Now, self-care is quite a bit more complicated because it can mean so much more. When I made the commitment to let my body be what it wanted to be, self-care became something entirely different. With help from The Body Positive, I started to realize that my self-care needs were fluid and that they changed not only from day to day, but from hour to hour. I was no longer simply following a set of prescriptive rules. I had to learn how to listen to the messages my body and mind were sending me, and choose to act from a place of love, rather than fear. Building that love is a whole process in and of itself (and it continues to this day).
It goes without saying that our needs are complex. I don’t endorse this book because it does not have a weigh-neutral, HAES-informed approach, but in her book Well-Nourished: Mindful Practices to Heal Your Relationship with Food, Feed Your Whole Self, and End Overeating, Andrea Lieberstein asserts that we have eight areas of needs: physical, emotional, psychological, social, intellectual, creative, spiritual, and worldly. She guides the reader to consider each of these areas of their lives to assess whether or not their needs are being met within each one. I think about it often because recognizing where we’re lacking can help us understand better how to care for ourselves. I also love the idea that caring for others (worldly needs) is a form of self-care. This notion is also very present in Yoga philosophy, as Karma Yoga (selfless service) is considered to be one of the four yogic paths to enlightenment.
Sometimes, figuring out our needs doesn’t feel like the priority. Sometimes it feels selfish to think about. Sometimes it feels impossible to think about.
Perhaps one of the biggest, more recent realizations I’ve had is that sometimes self-care simply means coping. It means doing whatever we can to make it through the day, get a paycheck, and care for those who depend on us. Sometimes we don’t have time or the capacity to feel and we fall back on old habits that bring us comfort or help us to feel numb. Sometimes it seems like we need to be numb in order to avoid falling into the depths of despair because who knows how long we’d stay there if we visited?
I want to remind you that however you care for yourself is valid. There is no wrong or right way to survive, and sometimes surviving is the best we can do. Particularly when the world around us seems to be crumbling, as lately it seems to be.
If that’s the mode you’re in now, or if you ever find yourself there in the future, trust that at some point, things will change. One day you’ll wake up and you’ll be ready for something different. You’ll see an opportunity and you’ll go for it. You’ll have the desire to try something new. Maybe you’ll feel inspired to do something for yourself, maybe it will be for someone else. Until that happens, try to remember that it’s okay to be where you are, that criticizing yourself for not doing more is not likely to help**, and that being stagnant and moving backwards is also always part of the journey forward.
If you’re looking for support to address your self-care with a weight-neutral community, you might enjoy being with us for an upcoming Move and Mingle, which takes place virtually on the second Sunday of each month. Learn more here.
**”Research shows that self-critics are much more likely to be anxious and depressed — not exactly get-up-and-go mindsets. They also have lower self-efficacy beliefs (i.e., self-confidence in their abilities), which undermines their potential for success. The habit of self-criticism engenders fear of failure, meaning that self-critics often don’t even try achieving their goals because the possibility of failure is unacceptable. Even more problematic, self-critics have a hard time seeing themselves clearly and identifying needed areas of improvement because they know the self-punishment that will ensue if they admit the truth. Much better to deny there’s a problem or, even better, blame it on someone else.” - The Motivational Power of Self-Compassion, Kristen Neff
