How do you take special care of yourself?
That’s part of your job, you know, to take special care of yourself.
The kind of care that feels soothing, the kind that nurtures your deep truth.
The kind that heals you.
This is hard to learn how to do. It’s been difficult for me. And painful. It has been tough trying to figure out when I need special care. And how to give it to myself. (On the upside, succeeding in this endeavor has also been sweet, restorative, and encouraging.)
We may outright resist the very idea our job is to give special care to ourselves.
We may not believe we deserve special care.
We may think we have to earn special care.
We may think we are not worthy of it.
We may be waiting for someone else to give it to us.
It’s really no wonder there are all these false ideas in the way.
We are taught to prioritize and pay attention to the world around us first.
We are taught to give our energy to what other people need and expect of us. To our more demanding roles. We are taught to focus on producing, persisting, competing, comparing and striving.
We are taught to look outward for accomplishment and meaning and success.
The crowding of all of those outward-facing ideas leaves little room for our inward care, for tending to the soul, to the deep self.
My eldest daughter is in her second year of college. She’s having an incredible experience on her own in a new city with challenging classes and work, and lifelong friendships she is growing.
At the same time, she’s starting to learn part of her job is to take special care of herself.
She’s learning this not because it’s gently tapping her on the shoulder and kissing her cheek.
She’s learning it because she’s getting overwhelmed and spun out and tired, and sick, and a little better, and sick again. Over and over.
Being the energetic, ambitious young woman she is, she hasn’t figured out yet that she cannot solider on forever, uninterrupted by her needs.
Unfortunately for my mother’s heart, she’s too far for me to fly in at the drop of a hat and provide her special care.
Fortunately for her independence, she is learning it, bit-by-bit (I hope), on her own. I am doing my best to guide her to give herself special care.
At the same time, my aching mother’s heart needs special care, too.
I’m still practicing figuring out when I need special care – and how to deliver it.
I believe I’m slowly improving at this. (Recently reading The Empath’s Survival Guide by Judith Orloff, MD has helped me acknowledge some of the circumstances that lead to special care spikes.)
Taking on the job of giving myself special care begins by acknowledging that my needs are unique to me.
And that my needs are human. And good. And not something to feel ashamed of, which I often do.
And that they rise in response to different stimuli than someone else’s needs might.
The second part of the job of giving myself special care is paying deep attention to what feels nurturing and doing it. Some examples…
As a highly empathic, sensitive person, a stimulating night out with friends who I enjoy very much might mean I need quiet time, time in nature, or time creating the next day to re-center myself.
As someone who loves to give to others, an intense period of output or listening or caring may call for total silence, and absorption in a good book for an hour or two.
As someone who loves to think and learn and explore, an intense yoga or fitness class, or a run, might help me reconnect myself to my body.
Special care might look like lighting a deliciously scented candle. It might look like picking out my favorite fruit and carefully slicing it up for a cool, crisp snack.
It might look like going to bed at 8:30.
It might look like walking around barefoot in the grass.
It might look like wearing a cozy sweatshirt.
It might be writing myself a letter or forgiving myself, yet again, for something I didn’t do as well as I might have.
It might be writing this love note to you instead of diving into my list of to-do tasks for work.
It might be all of these combined.
The last part of my job to give myself special care is to stay in contact with the deepest me.
We have all these roles in the complex, human lives we lead. For me, wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend, leader, entrepreneur, writer, strategist, speaker, volunteer, artist, and pet owner occupy most of my days, nights and energy. Separate from all of those is me, my essential self.
My essential self is not a role. She’s the deepest me. The one gently and persistently reminding me of my job. She doesn’t yell. Ever. Just issues many subtle, gentle, loving reminders.
She’s the one who will whisper that she is here. That she’s not gone anywhere.
She reminds me to listen.
She quietly tells me what she needs.
She guides me in my job to give myself special care.
And she helps me receive it.
What I know for sure: When I listen, and do my job, I’m better.
Hello there, I’m Emily.
I’ve been a writer for…ever. And a publisher of Thought Cookie for a year and a half. Thought Cookie is my written effort to make it a bit easier for us to be human.
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