The Importance of Self-Care

Discover the easy way to maintain your DIY self-care regime, reduce stress, boost your well-being, and feel great daily. Like it or not this is an essential part of life especially when you’re struggling to get through the dark days that we all experience from time to time.

I think there has been more talk about the importance of self-care since Covid than at any other time.  However, self-care has been a part of human life since we have been walking this earth.  People have always been anxious and stressed but about different things.  Our bodies still react to anxiety, stress, the fear of threat and worry as if we are still living in caves and being attacked by lions. Many of us are brought up to be selfless, put others first and just get on with it.  Leaving people split between putting others first and taking some time out for themselves.  The human brain goes into auto-response when we’re feeling these negative thoughts and feelings of the dark days and we can easily forget the reasoning behind self-care.

The Pressure to Prioritise Self-Care

Hand in hand along with more conversation about self-care than ever before puts more pressure on people to include it in their lives.  The experts state how much time we should be meditating each day,  how much exercise we should include into our weekly regime, breaking down the intensity and high-impact activities, as well as eating more healthily, less processed foods and so the list goes on. But when we’re experiencing the dark days after a traumatic experience it’s even more important to help see the sunshine and eventually feel excitement for each new day.

Why Self-Care Is Often Neglected

Whether we’re in a crisis or suffering the symptoms of a traumatic experience it’s easy to forget to look after ourselves before everyone else. Or we may feel it’s an unnecessary luxury that you can’t afford, timewise or financially.  This is human nature.

Whether we’re in a crisis or not we already do a lot to contribute to our self-care.  This will include the basics and may include:

Cleaning out teeth.

Washing our hands regularly.

Have a good bathroom routine.

Barriers to Self-Care

Let’s face it a lot of ‘stuff’ can get in the way of our self-care:

• Ever-increasing roles and responsibilities.
• The pressure from above – ourselves, our bosses, other family members
• Misconceptions of what self-care entails – time and finances
• Mental and physical health
• Guilt and selflessness
• Cultural stigma of hard work being busy over self-care and relaxation
• Crisis and unexpected situations

However, these misconceptions can be counterproductive because self-care is essential for maintaining overall well-being and balance in life. It involves taking intentional actions to nurture your mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual health.

The Benefits of Self-Care

Here’s why it’s so important:

• Engaging in self-care practices can reduce stress, anxiety, and burnout. By taking time for activities that bring joy, relaxation, or focus, giving your mind a break from everyday pressures and enhancing your emotional resilience. Overall improving your mental health.

• Physical activities like exercise, healthy eating, and sleep, all of which are crucial for maintaining your body’s health. When you take care of your body, it boosts energy, improves your immune system, and increases your lifespan.

• Whether in your job, relationships, or other responsibilities, neglecting self-care can lead to burnout. Regularly taking time for yourself ensures that you can give your best without overexerting yourself.

• Practising self-care helps you be more in touch with your emotions, providing a healthy outlet for them. This can help improve relationships by reducing reactive behaviours and allowing for more thoughtful responses.

• When you prioritise self-care, you enhance your focus, creativity, and energy levels, which helps you perform better in all aspects of life, whether at work or in personal projects.

Incorporating Self-Care into Your Routine

Therefore, taking time to care for yourself fosters a sense of self-worth and compassion. It reminds you that you deserve to feel good and permits you to take breaks without guilt. Incorporating regular self-care practices allows you to show up a more fulfilled you, supporting your health and your ability to care for others.  In other words, helping you to live your life better.

Incorporating self-care into your day and week doesn’t have to take up a lot of time or cost a lot but it’s about investigating what you need, how much time you can afford and then the best place it practise this in your day.

It’s important to invest in your own health and well-being so you can manage the dark days of the crisis more easily.

The First Step To Your DIY of Self-Care

If you are struggling to include self-care into your day then a great place to start is asking yourself the following questions by first placing your hand on your heart.

• How often do I intentionally take time for self-care, and what activities bring me the most relaxation and joy?
• Are there any signs of stress or burnout in my life that could be alleviated with better self-care practices?
• Do I feel guilty when I prioritise self-care, and if so, why?
• What small, realistic steps can I take today to improve my self-care routine?

You may feel none the wiser so here is a great set of guidelines to help you with your time allocation.

Time-Based Self-Care Suggestions

• If you have 5 minutes in your day – take a few moments to make a drink, sit quietly, breathe, allowing yourself to free your mind.
• If you have 30 minutes – take yourself outside, using your senses to notice what you can see, hear, feel, smell and taste.
• If you have an hour – take yourself for a short walk around the block, grab a drink, a book and take some time out to read, write or give someone you love a call to say “Hi”.
• If you have half a day – perhaps take a drive out to a park, the countryside for a walk.  Cook something you love and watch a film, meet up with a friend for a snack and a chat. Or maybe, grab your pencil or paints and sketch something that takes your interest. If you are more energetic then put your trainers on and go for a jog and notice the feeling of exhilaration from the activity. Absorb yourself in learning a new skill or hobby.

The important point to remember here is if you find the self-care part of the regime is stressful for you timewise or financially it’s not benefiting you.  It is going to make you dread the activity and do more harm than good.

A Real-Life Self-Care Adaptation

I was talking about this with one of my clients recently.  He liked to get up in the morning to practice his breathing, meditation and mindfulness exercises.  Unfortunately, it was being sidelined with family life even though he knew the benefits of this regime for himself and his neuro-divergent family.  We discussed shifting his self-care practice to a different time of the day and practising his meditation and mindfulness differently.  He finds great exhilaration, relaxation and focus from going to the skate park.  He is going to experiment with going to the skate park after taking his son to school.  First spending time practising his breath work and then mindful skateboarding using the rhythm of the skating action.