I’ve seen a few therapists in my time, starting with one visit back in college. Since then I’ve had a few longer term stints with less than stellar outcomes. Actually in once instance, I was getting somewhere but my therapist was a grad student and soon left to go back to finish her degree. I was transferred to someone else in the office who just didn’t seem to have the same connection to me. Other times in therapy, I tried to get what I could out of the session but didn’t seem to have the connection with the therapist I needed or perhaps the therapist just wasn’t able to see what I needed.
About three years ago that changed. I was given a referral to a therapist by a dietician and she was able to slowly start opening me up. She was the one who started to refer to the term self-soothe. This is something I associated with parents allowing a baby to cry a little longer in order to give them the tools needed to calm themselves down, not to an adult. But the reality is the same, I know I certainly needed to find ways to calm myself down. She also used the term self-care. It’s not a new term. It’s been bandied about for a very long time. Typically I see it associated with an overworked mom who is giving everything to everyone else and nothing to herself. It’s hard to relate to a term when our society has so commonly associated it with a lifestyle that is not yours. No wonder it’s taken me 2+ years after I started working with my therapist to finally get a hint at what self-care might actually be.
For years I’ve been absorbing society’s messages like I was a camel in the desert that just stumbled onto an oasis. Our society appears to show everything like it’s a big deal. If I’m going to work out, I need to run as hard as I can for as long as I can, then the next day max out on the weights. If I’m going to cook dinner, it should be a culinary experience that would make Julia Child jealous. So if I were to practice self-care, it meant that I needed to find a life-changing hobby that was just for me. Perhaps spend Sunday mornings going for hikes or exploring a quaint antique store, or anything else equally ridiculous for most people. Those are nice ways to spend time but that’s not what I’ve discovered self-care is.
Self-care for me is spending time on me in a bunch of little ways throughout the day. Perhaps it’s just being more aware of my physical movements and in general slowing down. (Insert Ferris Bueller quote here!) I read Tim Gunn’s A Guide to Quality, Taste & Style when I was a few months into therapy. I’ll write a more in-depth review of the book at a later date, but there’s a particular section where Tim discusses taking some time to appreciate and enjoy something as simple as a shower. He describes using a favorite soap, either something fancy and decadent or as simple as Irish Spring. He suggested soaping up head to toe and relishing in the simplicity of it, being in that moment, then following that with a lotion application in the same manner.
A couple of years later, after spending years not washing my face at night, I made the decision to take off my make up each night as a self-improvement thing (and to use up a bunch of cleanser samples), which is something that has always felt like a chore to me, a requirement for being a woman who wears make-up. But it started to change for me a few months ago. Washing my face wasn’t a chore any more, one day I realized it was taking care of me. Of course it was about taking better care of my skin and fighting the wrinkles, but more importantly it was about taking those 5 minutes to do that for me. No one was making me. I found I started to do the routine a little slower to make it something even more enjoyable.
Don’t get me wrong, I still leave my make-up on plenty of nights. But now I find that when I do just call it a night, there’s a small part of me that misses washing my face as part of my own little self-care. I’m spending more time putting on lipstick in the mornings and paying attention to my accessories when I get dressed. Today I wore a new pair of shoes with buckles on them. I took the time to unbuckle/buckle them as I put them on and took them off rather than forcing my foot to slide into them otherwise. Taking care of my stuff so that it stays nice is also about taking care of me. Respecting myself enough to understand that I’m worth taking care of.
It’s quite possible that’s what those society messages have been saying all these years but I missed it. Now I write for me, put my clothes away for me and, perhaps the biggest of all of these, I’m getting rid of stuff just for me. I’ll spend another post on that subject in the future.
Again, it’s saying that I have the authority to pay attention to myself. As an adult, I have responsibilities, but no one should be angry at me for watching a little tv over doing the dishes now and then. I am in charge of me and that means that I can go for a walk, or a swim or a bike ride if I want to. I don’t need someone’s permission and I don’t need someone to tell me to do it. I’m learning that self-care is self-respect is self-worth. Guess that L’Oreal was on to something with that slogan after all (I’m worth it).
