Honoring Agitation

I woke up agitated today. I was not sure exactly why I felt so irritated or what I could do to lessen the feeling. What did become increasingly clear as the day went on was that pushing myself to do tasks I found unpleasant was making me feel worse.

I enjoyed a productive day of home organizing on Friday followed by two fun days with friends and family over the holiday weekend. I had plans to be productive again today and tackle some projects I felt were long overdue. However, my body, mind, and spirit had another agenda.  The more I pushed, the more restless and distracted I felt. It was like an internal game of tug of war.

Finally, I surrendered. Taking some time to sit, breathe, move, tone, and notice what I was feeling – to dive into my experience more fully rather than trying to distract myself from it or avoid it – I found a way through the agitation. Listening, I found that my voice wanted an outlet for this tension – and I toned and screamed and enjoyed the release. My body was also begging for more water in this heat – and rest.  My soul craved some spiritual reading and quiet. While I had ambitious plans today for more home organization and cleaning as well as doing some work on my business, my body overrode my mind’s desires and screamed, “NO!” The agitation was a call to listen.

When I slow down to honor that internal “static” when it appears – in agitation or distraction or sluggishness – I always learn something and feel better. It reminds me of that funny one-liner I have heard many times: “When you’re going through hell, remember to keep going.” You don’t want to get stuck in it, do you? While sometimes pushing through seems like the best strategy to “keep going,” often slowing down and really listening to ourselves and how we feel and what we need is more effective.

Self-Care is Not Self-Pampering: Republished from Social Work PRN

Self-Care is Not Self-Pampering

Posted: 22 Jul 2011 03:00 AM PDT

Ask anyone what they do for “self-care” and their answers are more likely to sound like “self-pampering” or “self-indulgence,” such as:
“I take a hot bubble-bath. I treat myself to a meal in a nice restaurant or some new shoes. I get a pedicure or a manicure. I get a massage. I have a pizza or drinks with friends when I’m stressed. I do something nice for myself as often as I can afford it.”
Pampering and self-indulgence are fine if you can afford them, but they’re not the things you do to ensure self-care that meets your needs for physical, emotional, spiritual and mental health.
Self-care is personal health maintenance – in other words, it’s anything that restores, improves, maintains, treats or prevents disease. It’s what we do to balance the stressors and demands of our life in a way that benefits our emotional, physical and mental health.
Self-care includes meeting our needs for:

• Physical fitness and exercise and overall health
• Nutrition and medical care, adequate supplements, medicine and treatments
• Hygiene – including a healthy home and work environment and surroundings
• Sleep and relaxation
• Spiritual needs, emotional and mental health needs
• Life Skills such as communication, relationships, assertiveness, boundary setting.

If you’ve felt frustrated after pampering and indulging yourself and still not feeling complete or healthy – chances are that misunderstanding the role of self-care and why we need it is part of the problem.
If you have a client who is unable to find or hold down a job, sustain a healthy and safe relationship, eat healthy foods, give up alcohol, drugs and compulsive behaviors, take responsibility for themselves or their lives, money, health or personal safety, you’re not likely to tell them to “take a bubble bath,” or “buy yourself something nice,” until their most basic self-care needs have been met first.
Self-care for yourself is no different. Social workers who don’t have life skills such as critical decision making, communication, boundary setting, financial literacy, cognitive restructuring, self-soothing, anger management and even parenting skills aren’t going to improve their lives with a manicure, a weekend at the beach or a bubble bath. Those things might distract us from the lack of life skills, or fitness, or spiritual needs – but they won’t meet those needs.
Self-care includes all the health decisions you need to make for yourself in order to get and stay physically and mentally fit. If you’re feeling stressed, burned out, fatigued, exhausted, angry, depressed or anxious some self-pampering might help, but it won’t heal. Self-care is giving yourself the gift of wellness.  Putting yourself first is not selfish. It’s smart. Nurturing yourself and making sure you are 100% fit ensures you’ll be around for a long time to take care of all the people in your life you love and are responsible for. If you can’t evaluate yourself, then find a medical or mental health professional that can.