I’m unwell, so here is something from a book I’m occasionally writing/thinking about.

Self care is about connection, both to yourself and to your community. After looking after yourself physically (eating, bathing, taking any medications, etc), next comes taking care of your emotional health. This can happen in myriad ways, so figuring out what works for you can be difficult. Building a relationship with yourself, reflecting on your wants and needs can help you figure out what self care means to you.

It also requires nurturing behaviour towards yourself, which is something we don’t really do. I remember when I told my therapist I meal prep a batch of a bean stew for my lunch at work, and he told me he loved the idea of me packing a little lunch for myself, how nurturing that was. That was the first time I really thought about self care being the act of nurturing yourself.

It’s strange that we think of nurturing as only something children need, and you stop needing it as you grow. I don’t think we ever grow out of being nurtured. Feeling cared for can always be a comfort (I say can because if you’re unused to being cared for, and are more often the carer, then it can be uncomfortable to be cared for).

Suddenly I was nurturing, providing care for myself. Sometimes that feeling of nurturing future me helps me do self care better. I can reframe it as something I’m doing to help look after future me, rather than something I have to do for my mortal body to survive. It transforms into something I’m choosing to do in a nurturing way.

For me, figuring out self care meant spending time figuring out who I was. I spent so much of my time dissociating or busy, that I hadn’t spent a lot of time with myself, certainly not alone. The idea of being alone with my thoughts was terrifying. It was a huge task, because my thoughts were constantly loud and scary and unpredictable.

I took small steps, and started building a relationship with myself, and doing some healing. This led to building safety in my brain, almost like psychological safety but in myself. Holding myself accountable without berating myself. Not self-sabotaging. Being able to put myself out there and experiment. Slowly validating my feelings, talking myself down from anxiety, and allowing myself space for fun and experimentation without having to fight a constant background noise of how terrible I am and how I was going to absolutely fail and no one likes me.

It took some getting used to. There were times where I was so exhausted of listening to my anxiety and responding in a measured way, allowing myself to feel and move through them. It felt never-ending. But there were times where it wasn’t like that, where I was able to be kind to myself easily. Redirecting my thoughts became easier, less of a noticeable effort. I made the effort to notice these and be grateful to myself for this work. This meant I was noticing the small improvements, and how they were manifesting.

This led to a snowball effect in a way. I kept gathering experiences to help negate my anxiety, I knew that I could be kind and nurturing without dropping the ball, or losing myself. In fact, I became more of myself, the self I wanted to be, as I did this work.

The themes that you’ll see repeated in this book are about going at your own pace, working with what works, and reflecting on what does or doesn’t work. This is because pushing yourself isn’t going to work, this work is tiring, and you need to not burn yourself out on trying to rewrite your brain.

As a friend told me when I was talking about how Christmas was still difficult for me: ‘5 years of freedom [from my family] doesn’t negate 30 years worth of trauma’.

At first I found this statement a bit daunting. Thirty years of history is a lot to rewrite, and maybe I’ll never get to rewrite it all fully. Maybe I should work even harder at ‘fixing myself’. Then my conscious, kinder brain kicked it. The statement was a reminder to be kind to myself, to realise how far I’ve come, but be gentle as I continue to move forward. This work is for me, not for anyone else, and there isn’t a deadline.

I’ve really enjoyed getting to know who this version of me is, what I’m like, what I want from my life. I’m hoping you’ll enjoy getting to know yourself as well.