Friday Feelings - SELF-CARE AND THE HOLIDAYS

Maybelline says, "This road trip is making me tired.  I'll just steal Becca's pillow."

I’d love to hear from you?

Is self-care difficult for you?

Do you do anything special this time of year to help you cope?

I’m too busy; I don’t want to inconvenience anybody; There just aren’t enough hours in the day; My family will hate me; I don't want to be selfish; Others need me more; My boss expects more of me this time of year.

Have you said those words or others regarding practicing self-care?  The list of reasons not to take care of ourselves this holiday season could go on ad infinitum.

While last week we discussed what the basics of self care are, with this holiday season coming up on us, self-care may not seem as much a priority against the plethora of activities surrounding the holidays.

Trying to recover in good times is difficult; add in family, shopping, food , and the overall chaos that ensues and you have all the elements brewing for a possible emotional breakdown.  And you can’t steel yourself against  or talk yourself out of a breakdown.  The only way to avoid an emotional collapse is to make self-care a non-negotiable prerequisite to the eventual stress.  

Twitter user Mana @fallingstar_x tweeted recently, (used with her permission)

• “I'm doing the best I can. Well, we are. Just have to get through the holidays. I can fall apart in January, not before, please not before. I'm struggling so much.”  

In response to a couple of my questions asking why she HAD to hold it together, she tweeted,

• “Because my family has enough to worry about and we're quite busy until after Christmas. I don't want to ruin anything, don't want them to hate me.”

Privately, she wrote to me (also used with her permission):

• During Christmas I always freak out and relapse. Nothing seems to help during that time and I'm really busy finding something I can do when I get overwhelmed, without offending my family . . . “

I would offer that Mana’s response is not uncommon.  

However, I wonder if families would really hate another member if they needed some downtime. I also wonder what we might discover if we stepped back from that thinking and really assessed how our loved ones would react to our taking care of ourselves. What if we asked them?

As for me, when I’m with my family and it gets to be too much, I say eff it and go do my own thing.  If I want to be at my optimum, I have to take care of myself, do things for myself, regardless if it inconveniences them or they disapprove.  That’s just the way it is.

Think of animals.  Of course my dog Maybelline comes to mind.  When I rescued Maybelline from the animal shelter, she was neglected, sad, peeking out from downcast eyes, listless, and with no spunk or enjoyment of life.  Now that I’ve been taking care of her, such as taking her for walks, feeding her, rubbing her belly, and playing with her, she is thriving and returns the love in kind with kisses and snuggles.  

The same is true of you.  If you take care of yourself  and practice self-care, you will put yourself in a better position to be balanced, happy, and engaging for yourself and for those close to you.

It is true, however, that our family, friends, and employers may not understand the concept of self-care.  My thoughts are that their approval is not predicated on whether I take care of myself.  Self-care is not selfish or inconsiderate.  It's for preservation. I am reminded of the quote below:

I laugh, but it’s true.  Self-care not only benefits me, but it improves my relationships with others. I can’t imagine how I would handle the world right now if I didn’t have some “me time.”

So when it comes to your sanity this holiday season, think of the benefits below.  Self care:

• Prevents burnout
• Makes you more energetic because you feel better
• Boosts confidence
• Maintains a healthy relationship with self and others
• Reduces stress
• Helps you refocus

Aristotle said we are what we repeatedly do. So if we repeatedly neglect ourselves, we burn out and will probably not be much use to anyone. However, if we repeatedly take care of ourselves, we will be in a position to contribute to the season, to our family and friends, and especially our sanity.

Next week in another addition of Friday Feelings, we’ll explore what to do if we feel we don’t deserve self care.

I’d love to hear from you?

Is self-care difficult for you?

Do you do anything special this time of year to help you cope?

FRIDAY FEELINGS - THE BASICS OF SELF CARE - VOL 1

Never really engaging in self-care, I had no idea what to expect, write, or suggest about it. I've been to enough treatment facilities that encouraged self-care, but I always believed I didn't deserve it, so I wouldn't even try.

But learning that self-care lowers stress levels, helps maintain focus on recovery, and helps boost personal happiness, I knew that whether I believed I deserved self-care or not, I was going to "fake it till I make it"; I was going to act like I deserved it. But where to begin?

First, the website Psych Central defines self care as "any activity that we do deliberately in order to take care of our mental, emotional, and physical health."

I appreciate the word used here: deliberately.  It implies an action that is not easy and for which planning will be needed.  It has to be a calculated, deliberate act of treating ourselves to a special activity in order for self-care to be effective.

For many of us, there is a learning curve because self-care doesn't come naturally.  It doesn't feel normal.  We are more prone to hurting ourselves than to taking care of ourselves.

After thinking about self-care and doing some research, I came across the above image exploring different types of self-care.  Physical, Emotional, Spiritual, Practical, Social, and Financial.  The list is brilliant in breaking down the types of  self care and provides examples and suggestions on implementing it.  For instance, under Social Self-Care, the idea to work on friendships is given.  Perhaps you may call up an old friend or acquaintance and prepare some questions you'd like to ask him or her over coffee or tea.  If hanging out with someone is too overwhelming, maybe you could send them a text, let them know you are thinking of him or her.  You could even investigate some clubs or groups you could join where people have similar interests.  

The idea is to just do something.  Let's get out of our comfort zones and deliberately plan an activity that might make us feel better.

I am deliberately choosing to use Practical Self-Care by vacuuming my apartment this weekend.   I love the feeling I get when my home is clean, so this activity will help me accomplish something that makes me feel good and calms.   What about you?

I'd love to hear from you.

Does self-care come easy or hard for you?

What is one deliberate act of self-care you can take to make yourself feel better?

What are some of your ideas on how you take care of yourself?

BROKEN, BEATEN, AND BULLIED

I can count on it.  I depend on it.  And it never lets me down.  The nighttime, from 6-10, is the graveyard where my pretenses  go to die.   

It’s kind of good in a way . . . to feel this despair, I mean.  Before I would try to steel myself against the pain, but now innocent tears plunge down well worn pathways, and my resolve is lost.  I become that bullied child again.  

I often think I should just get over it.  They were just kids, weren’t they?  Did they know better?  Does it matter?

Ask my insecurities.  They’ll tell you.  They’ll scream the truth if it were safe.  

Ask why we constantly need other’s approval or help in making decisions.  Ask why we can never trust ourselves.  Ask why our adult-self cannot make friends, trust others, and fears being social.  Ask, ask, ask away.  The answers agree and never disappoint.

Now, decades later, so many years have ticked off the calendar, but I still see that emotionally beaten and bullied child, 6th grade, head down on desk, tears bursting through failed attempts of constraint, embarrassed they caught her in their grasp again.

Sadly, I remember that girl.  She was me, and I was her.  And neither of us are okay tonight.   She still cries, and I still watch, helplessly.  We take turns when it gets to be too much . . . and tonight it’s too much . . . for both of us . . . and I want so badly for someone to listen.  

I don’t feel well.  I have been dissociative, spacey, and dizzy all evening.  There’s a sense of urgency to write, and I can’t escape it.  I must, I must, I must eject what’s in this crazy, demanding  head.

I was anxious this morning, but I knew I would be taking my dog Maybelline for a walk and that would help dissipate some anxiety, and it did.  After our walk, my anxiety lessened until this evening.

But this evening the anxiety shot back up, and the dissociation made it impossible to think and speak clearly.  I’ve had some things on my mind today, and I’m wondering if there is any correlation to my dissociation and anxiety.  These are not things of which I want to write, and I’m angry that I’m being pushed into doing it.

I don’t know if I’ve written about it before on this blog, but these memories came crashing into my head today, fresh and new, and I feel the need to document it.  I don’t know why it’s necessary to write on it, but I feel something  propelling me forward.  

What has my brain so rattled is the memory of me as a child sleeping on the floor because I was afraid of my bed. Stupid, right?  I don’t know exactly when it started, but I was somewhere between the ages of 7 through 9.  But that’s just a guess.  My memory just starts with me sleeping on the floor because I didn’t want to sleep in my bed.  The bed seemed scary.  I just remember finding sleeping on the floor comforting.  The next thing I remember is sleeping on the floor in the bathroom.  I honestly don’t know why I moved from sleeping on my bedroom floor to the bathroom floor, but something made me seek shelter in the bathroom.  

For years I slept anywhere other than a bed until I got married; of course then I started sleeping in the same bed as my husband, although there are still some nights that the couch is safer than the bed.

Why does this matter?  I don’t know.  Perhaps it doesn’t.  I don’t attach meaning to it, but somewhere inside I felt the desperate need to share it.  I know the writing is paltry, skimpy and scattered.  It is very dispassionate and non-descriptive, and it doesn’t really paint a picture of what was going on at the time.   But I don’t have a clear picture, and I don’t understand why it was so important to write about it tonight.  But I couldn’t not write.  As stupid as it sounds, writing this tonight was for survival.

I hate myself.

I would love to hear from those reading this.  Am I alone here?  Have you ever experienced your bed being scary, or  would you sleep in strange places?   

Anxiety's Amusement

Once upon a time there was a paradox called Missing in Sight whose anxiety was so rampant and uncontrolled that ten minutes after waking on Saturday morning,  she took her usual cocktail of a Clonazepam and a muscle relaxer to chase the anxiety away.  Meanwhile, she felt she was going insane.  She would hit her head with her hand repeatedly to chase away the crazies.  When that didn't work, the wall took the brunt of her head.

Soon her medicine assumed her, and she went to sleep for about an hour.  When she woke, the same anxiety was expectantly waiting for her, licking its lips, eager to pounce on her.  She tried to think of other ways to deal with the misery, but to no avail.  She couldn't concentrate, so she wasn't able to read or color.  She had taken medications that left her tired and drained, so she couldn't take her dog for a walk.  She couldn't be still, so watching t.v. or a movie wasn't an option.  

She felt if she could just cry then she might be able to calm down, but a tear could not be found.

Once again, she took more medication to put her to sleep so she would not have to deal with the anxiety.  This time she slept a little longer, but when the meds wore off and she woke to reality, the monster of anxiety woke with her, and she could not escape the roar of its meanness.

She tried to last it out.  She thought maybe if she put on her favorite movie then she could endure the panic; however, the movie turned rancid to her eyes.  She did not know why, but she could not tolerate her best movie.

All this while, Husband was home, but he was asleep off and on.  He didn't know what to do for Missing in Sight.  She suggested to him that he go to the store and buy beer because she knew it would take the edge off.  So off he went.

While he was gone, she took round three of meds, but this time she tripled the dosage.  The possibility of accidentally overdosing broached her mind, but she could not comprehend what this actually meant.  Childlike, she only wanted the anxiety to go away, away, away.  So she swallowed the pills and fell asleep.

Husband eventually came home with the beer and later woke her to tell her goodbye.  It was mid-afternoon, and he had to leave for work.

She fell back asleep for another hour, and when she woke she was all alone in the early evening hours.   Stunningly, it seemed her anxiety had lessened.  Her breath found its way back to her chest, the butterflies in her stomach shushed, and her heart quit slamming between her thoracic walls.  The hurricane of anxiety had weakened to a small thunderstorm.  The beer did not seemed to be needed now.

She tried to do relaxing tricks that she could not do earlier in order to keep the angst away: color; music; movies; dog.  However, she could not get rid of the residual anxiety.

She decided to drink a beer.  Then another.  And another.  She thought all the meds she had taken over the course of the day would have left her system by that time, and nothing bad, whatever that might be, would happen.

She fell asleep again.  Or more accurately, passed out.  One knows not how long she would have slept if not for the hallucinations of voices and noises that kept waking her from what felt like vivid but aggravating dreams.  

So, half awake but completely drunk, over-medicated, and anxiety's amusement, she stumbled off to bed, and fell face first into the blackness of the night, anticipating in her dreams of the anxiety that would startle her awake the very next morning.

Time's Confessions

The thick, heavy hours creep behind me, lethargically following me into my personal hell.

Life slows down and elongates itself into eternity.

Time spawns replicas of itself, burgeoning forth as every instant feels like infinity.

Each second hurls itself at me, expectantly waiting for me to placate the duration with purpose.

But I am trapped in the confessions of my head.

Anxiety spectacularly begins to surface. Panic reproduces itself.

Each moment breeds another moment, another opportunity to surfeit upon the frenzy of disquieting thoughts in the indiscernible distance.

The battle continues.

My thoughts stage a hostile takeover, targeting my unwillingness to listen.

Against my will and with the sanction of time, the merge is complete.

The new memories come to me in waves, but I nor my tears could have been prepared.

Time may stop now.

The Hostage

Hostage

Slowly the evening falls upon me.

The possibility of peace is shattered into a fairy tale as

the night struggles and collapses into the blackest hole.

With her naked eye the moon stalks me into hiding.

No light is spared.

I hear the footsteps of my thoughts scatter inside my mind,

running rampant, tunneling through the darkness until I'm found

crouched in fear.

A tightly woven web of chaos is assembled around me.

Motionless, I sit under the glare of tyranny.

With unbridled abandon they advance upon me:

Closer. Closer. Closer.

The moment is surrendered to madness.

History threatens the illusion of control.

My entire armor sheds in defeat.

Sanity becomes a desperate bargain,

a violent negotiation between the authorities of life and death.

My mind holds me hostage.

Little by little, piece by piece,

I am completely swallowed,

but no one can tell that I am missing.