Emptying your cup

Self Care? Self Maintenance?

I have done a lot of thinking and reading about self care since the start of the pandemic. I’ve prioritized it and done more of it myself, and tried to encourage friends and colleague to do self care. I have also worked to incorporate self care emphasis into my course curriculums, even requiring my students to engage in self care activities and checking that they do so, through homework assignments, journal entries, etc.

Though, before I go further, I want to be careful to explain what I understand as self care, what it does and does not entail.

Self care does not mean you have to spend money, to engage in consumerism, participate in what capitalism would have you believe is all there is to self care.

Self care also doesn’t always fall into one category. There are many categories, we all should understand are ways that we can address self care.

Self care is a check in with yourself, an honest evaluation that your needs are being met. And if they’re not, then making sure that you do stuff to help your needs to be met.

Self care can be fun, rejuvenating and make us feel better. Some self care can be easy.

But self care can also be more challenging things that we may not enjoy doing at the time, but stuff we know we need to do them to help our future selves. (Think seeing and sticking to a budget, perhaps.)

Various categories of self care may include, but certainly are not limited to:

• Emotional

• Physical

• Mental

• Social

• Spiritual

• Financial

• Environmental

• Professional

• Intellectual

I recently listened to Glennon Doyle’s “We can do hard things” podcast on self care. And, especially with how it was geared toward women, I really appreciated their insights. I recommend this for anyone struggling to know how to understand self care and do it better. Doyle and her sister, Amanda, emphasize how it often involves knowing your own boundaries, setting them, and sticking to them.

Self care is important for anyone to do regularly. It has to involve checking up on/with(in) yourself, evaluating where you are and how are you right now, and honestly considering what you need to recharge/refill yourself. Then doing that.

Self care involves self-awareness. It means being in touch with your own person and what your own needs are. Knowing that they change day to day.

For example, I’m a very social, outgoing person. I’m very heavily tipped on the scale of an extrovert compared to my introverted moments. Admittedly, I am the poor sack who almost always gets energy from being around people (even when I don’t necessarily always like people, in general, or the specific person.)

But I’d be the sucker to pay for the overpriced cup of coffee to sit in the coffee shop because I could people watch and feel the energy from being around others. This is also why—in addition to books—I love libraries and had to write my dissertation there, mostly, as opposed to at home in my pajamas, which are some people’s jam.

But I know not everyone is like this. Some people need alone time to recharge. (I’m envious. Sometimes I wish I could be like this, but alas, it’s not how I am made.)

The important thing though, I think, isn’t self judgment or comparison, but knowing yourself, or learning about yourself, and being honest about what you need. Then make time, prioritize doing that.

As I said, everyone needs this. But I do think that often times women especially need to hear this and heed this advice because we are socially conditioned to be caretakers, mothers, nurturers. Many parts of society reinforce the message to women that our worth is based on our relationships and service to others. Many of us embrace that message. And it isn’t all bad, because we need mothers and caregiving partners and nurturing friends, etc, but if we go too far, to forget self in the midst of that, we’re of no help to anyone.

I also think that we need to emphasize this and teach this to girls and women because we don’t want martyrs. We send the message all the time that a selfless woman—wife, mother—is a good thing. And it’s not always when it’s denying one’s self. It’s not sustainable. It’s not healthy.

We all (genders) need boundaries and we need to choose self sometimes. I appreciated when Doyle noted that selflessness is really selfishness because we can’t deny our own self and its needs indefinitely. It’ll catch up to us eventually. We’re hurting ourselves and, by extension, others, if we don’t work to achieve this balance.

It brings to mind that good ol’ familiar flight attendant on the airplane message:

“Remember to put on your own oxygen mask before helping others with theirs” bit.

Some people are already so good at helping themselves. And it’s their first nature. But not everyone is. Some of us need to be reminded of it, and yes, even certain men. Because both men and women can be too heavy as givers, as all genders can also learn too much to the other side as takers.

Also, I’ve come to believe that another indispensable part of self care is rest. Allowing ourselves that, without feeling guilty about not being always busy, always working or being productive. Capitalism would have us believe that we always have to be busy and making money, but we are allowed to rest and to just be. (Even though I know that many, who are parents and struggling financially, often times have limited time and feel they don’t have this, that it is a luxury.)

When I was in my doctoral program I had to learn this: sometimes when I had the least time for a break and for self care was when I needed to do it the most. The paradox. But, it was a trade off, an investment in time for a greater reward/pay off in my productivity in the long run. Because if I allowed myself some social time or down time with good food and a movie, etc, then when I did go back to work, I was so much more productive than I would have been had I not given myself a break.

I tell my students this often. Mostly because no professor ever did talk about this with me, not until I got to my doctorate program. And I want them to start earlier. And they’re living during COVID times.

My undergraduate college years (2001-2005) was a very different time period. I feel immensely grateful that my undergraduate experience wasn’t plagued by a pandemic.

But I also don’t think it’s ever too early to start talking about, modeling and emphasizing self care, which inevitably involves self exploration, self awareness, self growth.

After all, knowing oneself is a lifelong journey; and we might as well start that learning process while we’re young.

I also firmly believe that all of the ways that we engage in self care help us to release some of the pressure we feel at points.

To borrow the metaphor from the cup that runs over (with suicide), that I mentioned in a previous post, I think self care acts help to act as a drain of the stressors, that crappy liquid in the too full cup, so it doesn’t flood and spill over.

And we all need that. Especially during a pandemic, a time period where we do all experience the collective trauma of COVID. To borrow a phrase I’ve heard many mental health professionals use during this time:

“We may not all be in the same boat, per se, but we are all in the storm.”

(Eh, that doesn’t sound adequate—how about a tsunami shitstorm with thunder and lightning and torrential downpours?)

So, yeah. We’ve all got to drain our (self) boats from time to time.

And engagement in that self preservation, that self maintenance, is critical.