Jan 03, 2018
If you’ve ever been told that you’ve harmed someone and felt so stricken with guilt, anxiety, or self-hatred that you couldn’t move forward,
Lots and lots has been written about the importance of apologizing when you’ve messed up, and how to do it well. That’s because it’s not easy and it’s not something most of us learn growing up.
One of the hardest things about apologizing is dealing with your feelings. It never feels good to get called out or to be told that you’ve hurt someone.
One of the hardest things about apologizing is dealing with your feelings. It never feels good to get called out or to be told that you’ve hurt someone.
people sometimes use that as an excuse to avoid apologizing and being accountable. Many of us have friends or partners who break down whenever we called them in or out on something or asked them to change their behavior, no matter how gently we try to do it.
This can even be a pattern of abuse, where every time you try to tell someone they’re making you feel bad, you end up being made to feel guilty for even bringing it up.
From the perspective of someone who’s been harmed, they may not matter – and that’s valid.
But that doesn’t mean they can’t matter to you, and it also doesn’t mean that they’re not influencing you.
This means that sometimes when you mess up and harm someone, you may need to do some self-care before you can approach the situation
Take Time and Space
If someone you’ve harmed is asking you for an apology or a conversation, it might feel like you’re obligated to give them that as soon as they ask for it.
Not only does that help make sure that you’re able to give the situation the thoughtfulness it deserves, but it also helps you process your emotions and keep you from saying things that you regret and that don’t reflect who you are.
Of course, some people use this as an excuse to delay accountability indefinitely. That’s not the same as “taking time and space”; that’s just avoiding accountability.
Name Your Feelings
Whether or not your privilege (or unawareness of your privilege) contributed to the situation, it’s important not to place your own feelings ahead of the feelings of the other person.
But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t process or understand your own feelings – it just means you shouldn’t make the other person manage your feelings for you
So, name and describe your feelings to yourself as honestly as you can.
Name the feelings even if you feel ashamed of them.
Give yourself permission to feel however you feel for the moment. Try to notice without judging.
Talk to Someone You Trust About It
Ideally, this person should be someone you trust both to affirm you and to hold you accountable – it might not help if it’s one or the other.
Someone who affirms you without holding you accountable might try to tell you that what you did wasn’t that bad or that the other person is being unreasonable. Someone who only cares about holding you accountable might invalidate your feelings or tell you to apologize to the person you harmed immediately.
Talking to someone can help put things into perspective.
If you find yourself ruminating and talking about the same thing over and over, that might be a good time to start talking about what you plan to do instead.
Try to Separate the Rational Negative Feelings From the Irrational Ones
Most of us have our own insecurities, traumas, and mental illness symptoms that can get kicked up when we mess up and hurt someone.
That’s why it’s so important to recognize which of your thoughts are coming from a mental illness or trauma (“jerkbrain,” as many folks like to call it) and which of them are a completely reasonable reaction to the situation.
Those thoughts reflect reality – I did do something crappy, and it makes sense to be disappointed with yourself when you act in a way that doesn’t live up to your values.
Explicitly identifying how your own mental health history is contributing to your reaction to the situation can help you feel more okay and move forward.
pologize and Make Amends
This might seem like a weird thing to include in an article about self-care, but self-care isn’t just about comforting yourself.
n the context of mental health, self-care can mean letting yourself cry or taking a bubble bath, but it can also mean forcing yourself out of bed, doing your laundry, and paying your bills.
Likewise, a crucial part of self-care during interpersonal conflicts or situations where you’ve harmed someone is to do the work of moving forward.
Jan 03, 2018
Taking time to care for yourself is needed. Even if that means canceling plans or withdrawing socially for a while.
It just means you’re taking time so you can be at your best later! It’s not fair to you if you’re not feeling good and people still expect things from you.
Your friends and loved ones care if you’re not feeling well. They can’t know if you don’t communicate.
Ask friends and loved ones if you have access. If not, don’t be afraid to reach out in online communities or look up other resources.
Exhaustion isn’t a goal. Mental breakdowns from being overworked should not be glamorized. Balance and inner peace should be.
Surround yourself with positive energy either alone or with friends. There is no set way to do self care.
Self-care is often a very unbeautiful thing.
It is making a spreadsheet of your debt and enforcing a morning routine and cooking yourself healthy meals and no longer just running from your problems and calling the distraction a solution.
It is often doing the ugliest thing that you have to do, like sweat through another workout or tell a toxic friend you don’t want to see them anymore or get a second job so you can have a savings account
True self-care is not salt baths and chocolate cake, it is making the choice to build a life you don’t need to regularly escape from.
And that often takes doing the thing you least want to do.
It often means looking your failures and disappointments square in the eye and re-strategizing. It is not satiating your immediate desires. It is letting go. It is choosing new. It is disappointing some people. It is making sacrifices for others.
It is letting yourself be normal. Regular. Unexceptional. It is sometimes having a dirty kitchen and deciding your ultimate goal in life isn’t going to be having abs
If you find yourself having to regularly indulge in consumer self-care, it’s because you are disconnected from actual self-care, which has very little to do with “treating yourself” and a whole lot do with parenting yourself and making choices for your long-term wellness.
Like so many other concepts built for the resistance and preservation of marginalized people, self-care has been appropriated for mainstream culture.
The narrative goes something like this: Take 15 minutes for yoga or meditation. Drink a glass of wine and watch a movie. Take a bubble bath.
And while these proposals aren’t bad, this self-care narrative does nothing more than put a band-aid on the problematic way our culture treats work and productivity.
Radical self-care, like radical self-love, pushes against the boundaries of the ordinary. It is robust, proactive, and unconditional. It is genuinely radical – it gets to the root of our bodies, hearts, and minds.
So instead of taking random bubble baths and watching TV, I pushed myself to go for runs, even if I could only make it a few minutes without a break. I wrote bad poetry. I laid in bed and listened to loud music with my eyes closed, and I didn’t let myself fold the laundry or do the dishes while I did it. I met up with new friends and pushed myself to be open and honest and vulnerable and to have fun. I didn’t do these things to be a better worker or a better activist or for the approval of others. I did them because I wanted to. It was really that simple.
Feeling bad all day, every day, is exhausting. It’s not good for your body, or your heart, or your psyche. So when I reach day 3 of feeling sad and terrible, I force-feed myself pleasure, even though depression sucks all desire for fun and pleasure out of you.
Self-care can be completely terrible. Self-care includes a lot of adult-ing, and activities you want to put off indefinitely. Self-care sometimes means making tough decisions which you fear others will judge. Self-care involves asking for help; it involves vulnerability; it involves being painfully honest with yourself and your loved ones about what you need.
The other thing nobody tells you about self-care is that it’s nearly impossible to know if you’re doing it right, until months later when you either find yourself feeling better or shittier.
Recovery means hard, honest conversations with your loved ones about what you need, and what you don’t need. It also means doing your best to love and support the people who are loving and supporting you, at the very least on your good days.
Taking care of your relationships when you’re depressed or anxious can be hard. Not always, but sometimes. I am finding the only way to do this is through open, honest, direct communication.
Jan 03, 2018
SENSORY
When you feel stressed and need a calm mind, try focusing on the sensations around you—sights, smells, sounds, tastes, touch… This will help you focus on the present moment, giving you a break from your worries.
Breathe in fresh air.
Snuggle under a cozy blanket.
Listen to running water.
Sit outdoors by a fire-pit, watching the flames and listening to the night sounds.
Take a hot shower or a warm bath.
Get a massage.
Cuddle with a pet.
Pay attention to your breathing.
Burn a scented candle.
Wiggle your bare feet in overgrown grass.
Stare up at the sky.
Lie down where the afternoon sun streams in a window.
Listen to music.
PLEASURE
A great way to take care of yourself when you’re coping with stress is to engage in a pleasurable activity. Try one of these ideas.
Take yourself out to eat.
Be a tourist in your own city.
Garden.
Watch a movie.
Make art. Do a craft project.
Journal.
Walk your dogs.
Go for a photo walk.
article continues after advertisement
MENTAL/MASTERY
You can also give yourself a boost by doing a task that you’ve been avoiding or challenging your brain in a novel way.
Clean out a junk drawer or a closet.
Take action (one small step) on something you’ve been avoiding.
Try a new activity.
Drive to a new place.
Make a list.
Immerse yourself in a crossword puzzle.
Do a word search.
Read something on a topic you wouldn’t normally.
SPIRITUAL
Getting in touch with your values—what really matters—is a sure way to cope with stress and foster a calm mind. Activities that people define as spiritual are very personal. Here are a few ideas:
article continues after advertisement
Attend church.
Read poetry or inspiring quotes.
Light a candle.
Meditate.
Write in a journal.
Spend time in nature.
Pray.
List five things you’re grateful for.
EMOTIONAL
Dealing with our emotions can be challenging when we’re coping with stress. We tend to label emotions as “good” or “bad,” but this isn’t helpful. Instead:
Accept your feelings. They’re all ok. Really.
Write your feelings down. Here’s a list of feeling words.
Cry when you need to.
Laugh when you can. (Try laughter yoga.)
Practice self-compassion.
article continues after advertisement
PHYSICAL
Coping with stress by engaging the body is great because you can bypass a lot of unhelpful mental chatter. It’s hard to feel stressed when you’re doing one of these self-care activites:
Try yoga.
Go for a walk or a run.
Dance.
Stretch.
Go for a bike ride.
Don’t skip sleep to get things done.
Take a nap.
SOCIAL
Connecting with others is an important part of self-care. This can mean activities such as:
Go on a lunch date with a good friend.
Calling a friend on the phone.
Participating in a book club.
Joining a support group.
It can also mean remembering that others go through similar experiences and difficulties as we do.
We’re not alone.
Jan 03, 2018
I internalized the idea that taking care of myself was not work. It became relegated to the giant pile of things that weren’t “real” work, like talking to people on the phone, writing birthday cards, keeping up with news and other odds and ends. Something that should be done in one’s spare time, after work.
In fact, I took it a step further. I came to the conclusion that caring for myself was synonymous with avoiding “work” or being lazy or somehow ditching out on the sacred activity of capitalism: working for money or prestige or some related benefit.
Working was more important and by contributing towards someone’s vision of a better humanity, whereas taking care of myself was extra.
I sat down and made a list of all the things I had done in that day that I had not felt were worthy of being called work. This list included:
- emotional labor educating a privileged person on how they should work to educate themselves
- planning a trip for myself and another person, where I was trying to put in all the leg work as they were too busy doing the work thing
- balancing my checkbook/figuring out my finances and financial goals
- answered work-related emails
- planning my week
- doing a load of dishes
And yet somehow, replenishing myself didn’t take on the same importance as taking care of someone else in crisis until I was the one in crisis.
Why do we beat ourselves into the ground for not being “strong enough” to ignore our trauma or our pain instead of realizing that most of us have never had the time, opportunity or ability to heal from it?
Viewed through the lens of capitalism, our worth is only so much as the money we make. And according to that doctrine, healing “makes” no money, so it is therefore extra, worthless, something only for downtime.
But what if we thought about it differently? What if we considered what healing gives us that is not monetary? What if worth could be more than just money or production?
When I was exhausted and burnt out, I had no words for tragedy or large emotional states. I had no capacity to feel joy. This is fairly unusual for me, as I’m usually a person known for being sensitive and having a large emotional range.
So self care is basically any set of practices that makes you feel nourished, whether that’s physically, emotionally, spiritually, all of the above. Self care is putting aside time to recharge in a way that’s meaningful to you, and that can mean different things to different people.
to practicing self care is letting yourself know that you deserve it.
Figuring out what works for you though can be one of the biggest hurdles to self care because it’s not something that we sit down and reflect about a lot.
Who are the people that you can surround yourself with who will make you feel supported? What are some activities that you can do that bring you a sense of calm, and where are the places that you can go to feel safe and comfortable?
I reflect on the relationships in my life and actually hand pick the ones that I want to nourish. I actually sit down and choose a group of people who I want to be my support system, and I reevaluate as necessary. I make sure that toxic people are no longer in my life, and I prioritize the relationships that help me grow.
list of 5 things that you can do sitting at your desk or wherever you are that will calm you down when you’re feeling particularly stressed. My list is breath, tea, walk, crafts, talk. Five really simple things that start with the easiest and work up to the most involved that can help calm down when I’m in a state of anxiety.
Self care really isn’t something that takes a lot of time, which is what I think most people think. It can be as easy as consciously choosing who you spend your lunch hour with. It can be remembering to take a 10-minute break in the middle of the day to go for a walk or to do some breathing exercises. It can be as simple as promising yourself that you won’t do homework on the weekends. It can be starting every morning with a cup of tea or a journaling exercise. It can be just reading a poem before bed every night. It can be whatever works for you.
But it’s psychologically necessary.
Practice the basics – Eat, sleep, bathe and go outside. These actions may be simple for many, but for those of us who live with mental illness, they can be a struggle.
Take a break from the world – Some days, I need to zone out and tap into solitary self-care.
Find a supportive community – Surrounding myself with friends who understand and support me in my struggles is how I keep going.
Tap into your creativity – When I write, I fulfill my purpose. Sing, dance, act, make art and collaborate. Do whatever you feel expresses who you are to the world. The feeling of creating something that comes from your heart is priceless.
Seek peace and calm – In seeking everyday wellness, I call on my spiritual practice to find quiet. I meditate, pray, read, listen to music, and take walks. I conjure up the moments that help me find quiet to hear my inner voice and listen.
Rest – Let's be real, wellness is tiring. Take naps, sleep well, and slow down
Self-Care Check-Ins
- Have you eaten?
- Have you eaten a proper meal?
- How is your body feeling?
- What are your conversation boundaries?
- What’s upsetting you right now?
- Your daily mental-health routine is even more important during the holidays.
- What can you let go of today? You have more to do and more on your mind than usual, so what can you let go of? Does Christmas dinner really need to be that fancy? Can you wear sweatpants today?
Jan 01, 2018
Before you start reading a book, you will have a basic idea of what the book is about. This allows you to ask yourself 3 simple questions before you start to read. They are:
– What do I already know?
– What more do I want to know?
– I wonder if…
The answers to these questions will give you a foundation to build on and something which you’re looking to get out of the book. This means you’re not just reading without an objective, but instead you’re actively looking to learn something from the book.
As you’re reading, you need to take small and intermittent pauses to ensure that what you’re reading is sticking. Ask yourself the following questions as you’re reading.
– Does this make sense?
– How does this information connect to what I already know?
– What does the writer say about…?
– What does the writer mean about…?
– I still need to know more about…?
By asking yourself these questions as you read, you are constantly evaluating whats being said.
TAKE A LONGER PAUSE AFTER A DIFFICULT SECTION
Pause and think about what was discussed
Build yourself a short summary of what you read
Discuss what you read with someone
The best way to take notes during reading is:
– Look for the main ideas and focus on those
– Use words you understand
– Make the notes as brief as possible
– Use simple headings and sub headings to organize your notes
– Constantly review, add and revise as necessary while you continue to read
Now that the book is done, you need to think about the important ideas in the book.
– What was the most important thing you remember about the book?
– What was the main message of the book?
– What do the ideas in this book relate to?
– What could be the biases of this book?
– What did this book leave out?
The last question will give you the opportunity to do some research and find another book to continue your learning, make connections, and continue to read more effectively.
Reread the book. Your perspective will be different because every moment is different from the last. We (our politics, personality, pleasures, etc) change constantly. Some people love a book one minute and hate it when rereading years later. Rereading is almost like having a conversation with your old self.
Read with others.
Read commentaries on the book if they are available. Commentaries of the text or biographies of the author can help you gain context and greater understanding of the implications of the book. Reading autobiographies and other essays by the author is a great choice too.
Read other books by the same author. This can help to get a perspective of the whole person and the many of the shortcomings and triumphs that authors typically reveal about themselves (and their world) through their literature.
Think about why you want to internalize this book. All books are not meant to be internalized. Some books are transitory, some are meant for pure laughter, and some are meant to be scoffed at and perhaps burned. Why do you want to get to the core of this book? Will you like what you find? Does liking what you find matter
If you really want to see the author in full force, don't expect anything from the author. If you are reading something humorous, expect it not to be. If it is legal jargon, expect it to be mellifluous.
Don't rush. This is the one I can't stand. Everyone wants to read faster because there is so much to read. More information, I wish my brain could process faster, etc, etc. Be patient or else you may lose central themes of the author.
How do you keep the inner drive that a good speech or good training gives you? The simple answer is this. You don’t.
People expect immediate change after a learning event, be it a book, a movie or a personal skills training.
WRONG!
The path between the learning event and the direct results passes – if ever! – through something called INTERNALIZING.
During the training/reading/watching, pass the knowledge through your own filter. Ask yourself “Is this good for me? Is this applicable to my situation?”
Do an exercise with it. Write something down. Trainings usually have this kind of exercise embedded in them. Write down your conclusions in the form “I can start doing X different and have better results.”
The writing down part should be the translation to action of the value you take out of the learning event.
Start doing what you wrote down. Do it every day after the learning event. Don’t cut slack here.
This is where most learning fails.
And the secret to preventing it is PERSISTENCE.