Self-care is a whopper so I’m going to do it in two parts: Fundamental Changes in Thought and Basic Self-Care
Fundamental Changes in Thought
When I was at my worst point during the adoption, I found myself pushing and prodding myself to continue the process despite realizing that the chaotic conditions, the endless waiting and worrying, and the constant fear that it would all fall through were taking a toll on my health. Everyday more and more of my ability to function was slipping away. The little that I had to give went into caring for the girls and soon that was beginning to slip too. Still, I worried about Steve. I worried whether or not he would stay married to me if I called it off. I worried what people would think of a woman who couldn’t finish the process of bringing an orphaned child into a better life. I worried about all the stories that certain people kept throwing at me about attachment disorders. I was afraid that the love I had to give would never be enough. These last thoughts made it clear to me that I was not ready to be an adoptive parent. I was deeply ashamed of myself and fearful if I talked to anyone about them that I would be thought less of. I felt that he deserved better than that from a parent. But what I didn’t recognize was that I deserved something better too. I deserved to know that if I wasn’t ready or hardy enough for the uncertain process of adoption then that was enough of a reason to stop. Ultimately, it was my job to take care of myself first if I was ever going to be of any use to my two current children, let alone the one on the way. Those days were the most difficult days of my life.
Sadly, I wasn’t brought up to believe that my needs were very important. I was always the giver, the fixer, the doer. I came last in my life, and at the time of the adoption I was still coming last on the list. Even while I was coming apart at the seams, I was still putting everyone else first. My experience with anxiety was inevitable. Eventually, adoption or not, I would have ended up there.
The good news is that anxiety taught me that my old ways of living weren’t working and that I had to change. One of those ways I already mentioned--I had to reprogram my self-talk to be reassuring, patient, forgiving, optimistic and more reflective of reality. I had to teach myself that the world was NOT going to come tumbling down if I made a mistake or couldn’t live up to an invisible and external standard. The second and equally important thing anxiety taught me was that I had to put myself first some of the time, because if I didn’t, anxiety wasn’t going to be a phase in my life, it was going to be my life in its entirety.
Before I could even begin to address this issue, I had to be clear that I was ready and WORTHY of being cared for. If your experience was anything like mine, feeling worthy after a lifelong sense of worthlessness might seem insurmountable. So for now, just take it from me. No matter what any person, culture or religion tells you, you are just as important as the person sitting next to you. Recognizing that you are worthy is the first fundamental change in thought that has to take place or everything else falls away. As you begin taking care of yourself as laid out in Basic Self-Care you will be sending yourself the daily message that you are loveable and worthy of goodness.
Though intrinsically tied to the first change, the second warrants having its own line item. You have value outside of your ability to serve. This is particularly hard for people who have a theosophy which centers around their purpose of existence being to serve and praise God. It would take me a lot longer than a few lines to address this issue, but I will say that there is ample reason to have been created by God that has nothing to do with endless service and praise. I truly believe that God’s love extends beyond our ability to give anything in return. You can only do so much for others while not caring for yourself before you fall into an unhealthy state of resentment, ill-health or destructive coping. I’m pretty sure that’s not what God was going for.
There are other reasons to de-emphasize service to others. Firstly, there is value in allowing others to be of service to you when you need it. In allowing someone to care for you, you establish a bond of love and their gift reinforces your sense of being worthy and loveable. Secondly, there are times when being of service is not appropriate. I have experienced many times in my life where I have not been self-aware enough to know what motivates my impetus to serve. I learned the hard way that in blindly giving you can ultimately end up hurting yourself or the person you mean to help. Knowing why you feel compelled to serve requires time for reflection and a deeper understanding of your own needs. The better you understand what it means to care for yourself, the better you will be able to care for others. Excessive anxiety is a good indicator that you are not taking care of yourself in a fundamental way. As Anne Morrow Lindbergh said, “If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others.”
In Mary Oliver’s poem The Journey, she describes the moment when she realizes that she has to leave behind the needs of others and focus on hearing the voice of her own need. (See the link to the left.) This beautiful poem is a difficult one for me to read. I, like so many others I know, have had relationships that were vampiric in nature, where I felt obligated to make another’s life “okay”. I have felt the pull to “mend” another’s life while my own was falling apart. I too have struggled to turn away from the pain of those around me even when my own pain was too much to bear. Still, does a drowning person ever save a drowning person?
Sometimes, when a person is first learning about their own needs and how to meet them, it becomes necessary to put “high need” or unhealthy relationships on pause. This can be particularly difficult if the person on the other end of that relationship is a parent, spouse or adult child. A person who relies on you for a great deal will not likely appreciate having that energetic supply removed. Still, I have found this to be good advice. Temporarily removing myself from these relationships enabled me to better focus on understanding myself, my function in the relationship, and what steps I needed to take to improve the relationship for my own mental health.
So much of how we feel, how we perceive the world, and our ability to experience happiness, is internal and fluctuating. The responsibility to make and keep another happy is a moving bar that we will seldom be able to reach. In the end you will fail and consequently feel like a failure despite the fact that the task was impossible to begin with. By adopting good self-care habits and recognizing your own value, you will be better able to set boundaries and provide useful, healthy assistance to those in need. You will also be able to better identify unreasonable or unhealthy pleas for your attention.
The last fundamental change in thought is the ability to differentiate between want and need. In the busyness of our culture we often confuse these two ideas. Needs, which are covered in a general sense in the Basic Self-Care section to follow, are required for good physical and mental health. Wants are everything outside of that. The big exception to this is, of course, the requirements of parenting. Children need to be fed and held and nurtured, but these days much of what I see parents killing themselves over is not need. It’s want. Examples of need are ample sleep, regular nutritious meals and snacks, access to water, moments of quiet where nothing is required, hygiene, physical and emotional safety, affirmation and affection, clear and established boundaries, and an outlet for emotions. Wants are things like extracurricular activities such as sports and music lessons, a perfectly clean and orderly home, volunteer activities, time in front of the television, video games, and junk food. Doing regular activities with your child demonstrates interest in your child’s life and development. However, constant doing is not healthy. It teaches children that their value exists in doing and not in simply being.
If you are a constant doer like I was, stop to consider the possibility that your “doing” is masking your “feeling.” Permit yourself to say no to an activity in favor of a bubble bath, or force yourself to just sit for 20 on the couch with nothing in hand, TV off, no conversation. Notice how that makes you feel. Are you more anxious? Do you feel useless? If so, you may have figured out something really important about yourself and the root of your anxiety. When your value is in doing, anxiety is not far away. When will you have done enough? When you do in order to avoid feeling, anxiety is the manifestation of your repressed feelings. You will have to stop the doing and feel the feelings before your anxiety will subside. This anxiety is often associated with a fear of losing control of yourself whilst experiencing intense emotions. If this is you, you may want to seek the services of a trained therapist to help you establish a safe place for those feelings to come to the surface.
Eliminating the unnecessary doing creates space for your feelings to be addressed. In my effort to declutter my life, I found it useful to make a list of the things I had planned for the day and break them up into want and need. Needs got first priority, then came wants that fed my joy and growth. Everything else that just took up space or that I was doing to meet someone else’s standard got dumped. Once I started doing this, I found that my anxiety was lessened and more manageable. When I had moments of intense emotion I was better able to process those feelings because there was space and energy in my life for that work. I also spent more time interacting and engaging with my kids, more time talking and listening to my husband and I had more energy for my friendships.
So to recap the fundamental changes in thought: 1) You are worthy of being cared for by yourself and by others. 2) You have value outside of your ability to serve. 3) You have to understand and help yourself before you can be of service to others in a healthy way. You may have to put relationships temporarily to accomplish this. 4) Differentiate between want and need. Then use this new understanding to reprioritize and declutter your life and to create space for feeling.
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