You Do You: How to Figure Out What Fills Your Bucket
I’m on a self-care kick because I’m on a connection kick. We are woefully lacking in deep, abiding connections with other people and it’s coming out sideways – in mental health issues, chronic illnesses, xenophobia and fear for the future. Self-care seems like the opposite of connecting with others, right? How is spending time alone going to make my community stronger? But there is no point in pursuing connection with others until we have at least started the process of connecting with ourselves. Self care, put simply, is doing the things necessary to maintain health – physical, mental, and spiritual. If we’re not healthy, we can’t build strong relationships. Especially since the people we’re building relationships with might not have a strong self care game either.
The last few posts have been about making time and valuing self-care, particularly that of your body. Making space for exercise, prioritizing medical treatment, making good food choices, these are all important. But mental health and spiritual health are essential to parenting yourself too. Practices that encourage mental and spiritual health are so individualized that I feel like we talk past each other.
One time I was out to dinner with a few introverty friends and we were talking about how differently they see the world. They explained how if they spend all day in meetings, they start to lose their sense of self, like, who am I even? The fullness of the other people takes over and they feel like they are fading away.
I, on the other hand, explained how when I was in grad school living alone in Michigan, I would have 3 days of classes and then 4 days off to accommodate an internship. Unfortunately for me, my internship didn’t start until the second semester so I had 4 months of days where I was completely alone more than half them time. A weird thing happened. I started to lose track of reality. In my basement apartment for days on end, time started to shift, my brain got fuzzy, and I watched way too many reruns on TBS. It was funny, until it wasn’t. I needed touchpoints with other people to ground me. After a month or so, I figured it out and started getting out more.
All that to say, what works for me may not work for you. But when exploring mental self-care, ask yourself questions to find out what does work. So many of us don’t even know what we want or need because we haven’t taken the time to ask: What makes me happy? What makes me uncomfortable? What do I like about work? What hobbies leave me feeling satisfied? What helps me feel better when I am down? What doesn’t?
Spiritual self-care gets even trickier because the goal is to transcend – to feel connected not just with yourself or other people but with God, nature, or the larger human experience. What helps you arrive at that place? Unlike physical self-care, which should be a daily part of your experience, or mental self-care, which needs frequent attention, spiritual self-care can be put off for awhile. Church only happens once a week for most people, and the high at the top of a hike can stick with us for a long time. But if we put it off too long, we lose track of our place in the world. We either think we’re too big, and become greedy and selfish, or too small, and feel hopeless and cynical. Don’t put it off forever.
What questions help you figure out your self care?
