Self-Care: Becoming Your Own Best Friend

Need someone to work extra days?  Ask me.  Someone who’ll clean up the place because we’ve scheduled an open house?  Sure.  I’ll even bring the cleaning supplies.  Need someone to baby-sit your kids while you go away for a weekend?  I’ll do it.  Stay late?  Cook extra?  Loan money?  Run an errand?  Give up my bed, my book, my best outfit? You bet.

“This was my life,” said Betty, 42.  “I thought I had to do anything and everything people asked. Even if they didn’t ask, I’d find ways to accommodate them.  And if I couldn’t, I felt guilty.”

Betty was an expert, no-holds-barred, genuine “accommodater.” Somewhere along the line she learned that her needs weren’t important. In fact, she had been accommodating others for so long and doing it so well, she didn’t even know what her needs were.

What she did know was that she was unhappy, that she sometimes felt angry and almost always felt guilty.  She realized she allowed people to use her, but she didn’t know how to say no.

“To me, self-care had something to do with giving myself breast exams,” she said.  “If someone mentioned boundaries, I thought they meant property lines.”

“Self-care is an attitude toward ourselves and our lives that says, I am responsible for myself,” wrote Melody Beattie, author of Codependent No More. It doesn’t mean you become selfish, cold, and dispassionate.  But you first become compassionate with yourself.

I often say in my work that the most important relationship that you need to nurture is the one you have with yourself.  Just like you might call and check in on loved ones every so often, you need to check in with yourself on a regular basis.  To practice self-care you must continually ask the question, “What do I need to do to take care of myself?” Even asking yourself the simple question, “What am I feeling right now?” can go a long way in helping you become your own best friend.

To be sure, self-care can take the form of gifts to yourself and pleasurable activities, but it can also mean work.  For example, you may need to change some behaviour or take care of some responsibility.  Sometimes just saying “no” is the hardest thing you have to do.  Especially early on when new behaviours are foreign to you.

Self-care also means asking others for what you need and want, everything from returning an iron that doesn’t work to requesting help around the house from your partner.

Practicing self-care means you become your own best friend, confidante, personal counsellor and spiritual advisor.  One thing is true: practicing self-care will always improve any situation you are in.  It’s the basis from which you give to others, and function effectively in this world.

Following are some self-care qualities:

* Being financially responsible.  This means being aware of your financial situation and taking responsibility for living within it.

* Taking care of yourself physically.  Eating healthfully and exercising; practicing preventive health care. Being in touch with your body is the first step.

* Having fun, playing, and laughing. You’ll feel better physically if you include laughter and fun in your life.

* Setting and maintaining boundaries.  This is what I will or won’t do.  This is how far I will or won’t go.  This is what I will or won’t tolerate.

* Maintaining nurturing relationships.  Spending your time with people who are kind, loving, honest and appreciative.  Giving and accepting compliments, hugs, love.

* Affirming and nurturing yourself.

* Seeking professional help when you need it.  Remember, you don’t have to do it alone.

“Self-care isn’t narcissistic or indulgent. Self-care is the one thing I can do that most helps me and others too.” —Melody Beattie

Author’s content used under license, (c) 2008 Claire Communications

Listening to Our Bodies: They Know More Than We Do

The body holds much of the information we need to function at our best, but too often we ignore its messages and plow ahead with what our minds tell us. Perhaps because we’re not taught from early on to pay attention to internal messages as well as external demands, we frequently ignore our body’s communications.

So we take another extra-strength aspirin rather than investigating what’s causing our head to ache. We use more caffeine or sugar to give us a lift when we feel tired, rather than hearing our bodys message about needing rest or recognizing our fatigue as an early symptom of burnout we’d do well to heed. Or perhaps we’re so disconnected from the wisdom of our bodies that we have no idea what we really want to eat, reacting instead to the temptations that abound in our imagination and in the ads we see.

We fail to take into account the thousand little messages communicated to us by how we’re holding ourselves: the mouth that’s pinched and tight rather than relaxed. The fact that our shoulders are up around our ears, the knot of tension in our stomach as we promise to do something when closer consideration might tell us we are already over-extended.

These days it’s not uncommon for us to put deadlines ahead of the protests of aching bones or inadequately nourished bellies. (Is there hidden wisdom in calling a due date a deadline in the first place?) Instead of asking our body what it wants, we go for the quick fill-up or the comfort food that may be the last thing we really need.

So what to do to give your body an equal say in how you use it?

* Start with the breath. Breathing consciously is a major part of body awareness. Turn off your thoughts and just let yourself experience the inflow and outflow of breath. Label them, “In. Out. In. Out.” Note how and where you are breathing or failing to, a clear sign something important is going on.

* Allow yourself quiet time. Sit for ten minutes just observing yourself, even (especially!) in the middle of a busy day. Meditate. Take a walk or a nap. Allow time to do nothing. Soak in a hot tub rather than taking a quick shower.

* Get a massage. It’s not self-indulgence to be massaged; it wakes up the whole nervous system and helps you tune in to your body, its tensions as well as its sensations of pleasure.

* Use your journal to dialogue with your body. Ask your body how it’s feeling, what it wants, what’s going on. Give that sore wrist or stiff lower back a voice and let it tell you what its message is.

* Eat when hungry, sleep when tired. Take a week and really pay attention to your body’s most basic needs. Do your real rhythms for eating and sleeping conform to the habits you’ve established? If they don’t, change them!

* Do a body inventory to relax. Start with your toes and work upwards. Scan your body from the inside. Or try tensing each part slightly, then relaxing it to release residual tension.

* Practice mindfulness. Get used to tuning in to your physical self, wherever you are, whatever you’re doing.

And if your body suggests rolling down a grassy hillside, taking flight on a playground swing, or skipping down a winding path, why resist? Its impulses hold the key to our well-being!

Enjoy discovering the hidden messages your body holds, and learning to develop a two-way stream of communication.  Your mind and body will thank you for it!