Wednesday, February 01, 2006

February 2006 Christine's Corner

Whether we are sick, whether we are well, or somewhere on the sliding scale between illness and health, self-care is vitally important to not only our emotional health but to our spiritual and physical health as well. There are people in the world who practice excellent self-care, who are able to always put their own needs, physical, emotional and spiritual above all else that occurs in their lives. There are others who find self-care more difficult than caring for others, and who put their energies toward ensuring that others are taken care of first.

I have historically been in the latter category, and as a result I know just how difficult the self-care pieces can be in life. Whether it is recognizing that my skin is dry and would benefit from some lotion or whether I become cognizant of the fact that I need to play more and work less, the journey toward full self-care has been a difficult one for me. Throughout my life, the thoughts and actions that rise to the top are more often of what needs to be done or of ensuring that the needs of others are provided. Lower on the food chain of my own particular thoughts have been those that include ensuring I have eaten enough that day or have gotten enough rest or exercise.

I liken my own particular process to individuals who have hearing challenges. People who are accustomed to great self-care practices are to me like individuals who have superb hearing. They hear clearly and almost without conscious thought the needs of their own bodies and psyche and respond accordingly. Something within them registers the need for more dairy, for more Vitamin C, for more rest, and they respond. Other individuals, such as myself, have a more difficult time registering those needs. We are more focused on outward events and experiences and not as focused on the messages that our bodies send us each day. While one person might receive the message loud and clear that they need more protein, for individuals such as myself, that message isn't easily deciphered and may just be interpreted as a reminder that we're hungry, if it gets interpreted at all.

I tell a funny story to my friends periodically about a time in my life when I was first becoming aware of my challenges with being attuned to the self-care pieces in my life. As usual in my life, at this particular time, I had a lot of things going on. From time to time over a period of about six weeks, I noticed that my hands were dry. In my usual 'go' mode, I would take notice that my hands were dry, and in the next second be off to something else. This went on for some time - every few days or so I would have a moment of realization that my hands were dry and then poof, onto other things! Finally, after about six weeks that message finally relayed itself into the thought 'I should put lotion on my hands', which I did.

It took me six weeks to recognize the message that my body was trying to tell me, and once I got it I took care of it. I have no doubt that other individuals who are more attuned to the messages their body sends wouldn't even need to see the dry skin in order to receive the message that their skin needed moisture. Obviously, that's an extreme story, and one that I have laughed about often since that time, but it does highlight just how easy it is for us, even those of us who are good at self-care, to not put our own needs in the forefront.

Particularly for those of us who live in the United States, we have become accustomed to a fast pace of life. We swiftly move from event to event, from taking the kids to school to work days that are often 10 or 12 hours to all of the activities that follow. There just doesn't seem to be enough time in the day to find ourselves, let alone to carve out the time to be still or bring attention to what the body may be telling us it needs.

In my younger years I had the opportunity to live in Europe for a while. As an American, my eyes were truly opened by the way the Europeans lived their lives. When I lived in Europe, life seemed to move more slowly. Meals were an experience of sharing and senses rather than a necessity. The workforce is expected to take four-six weeks off a year for leisure and holiday. More attention is paid to the simple joys of living and sharing life with the community, the family and others. For me, it seemed that the culture there focused more on the joys and celebrations of living fully in each moment. That's not to say that we Americans don't appreciate the joys in life, but rather, that our culture doesn't as frequently enable us to relish the delights of stopping to smell the roses, so to speak.

What does it really mean to practice good self-care? Does it mean that you spend all of your time just indulging in pampering or massage or good food? Absolutely not. Good self-care is based on becoming attuned to what your body and your psyche need and being willing to put those needs first. Self-care is an individual process, and a daily process, if done well. We all know at some level, what our life challenges are. Many self-care pieces will represent themselves along the lines of those life challenges. For instance, people who tend to work themselves non-stop would likely have self-care issues involving rest and relaxation. For those people, becoming aware of when the body feels stress or tired and going to bed early instead of getting that last report done at night. Other people may have a life challenge of finding their own voice. They might want to include practicing what it feels like to share their opinions or to take small steps to get their feelings expressed.

There are common things that are good for all of us, such as a good diet, regular exercise, plenty of rest, love and laughter. Becoming aware of ourselves in the moment, taking stock of how we feel inside, meditation and deep-breathing are all great ways to practice self-care. Self-care really is just about learning to recognize what you need and being willing to make those needs a priority in your life.

Particularly for those who are care providers, self-care can become an enormous issue. You struggle with the guilt of not being able to be more, to do more, and to give more. You struggle with feeling tired and on edge from lack of sleep, and feel guilty because your loved one or patient is suffering far more gravely and would give anything just to feel that well. Self-care is an important practice for us all in order to live happy and healthy lives, but for care providers and for those who have health challenges, self-care is without question of primary importance.

One of the concepts that I've just recently begun to really integrate in my own life is that as you give more to yourself and place your own needs in the forefront, you become more as a person and as a result, you have more to give. That concept was a difficult one for me to comprehend at first, simply because my own mode of "being" was to give all I had no matter what and worry about what I needed later. It didn't dawn on me that if I took care of myself first, there would actually be more of me to give, and I could do much better at accomplishing the things I wanted and/or needed to do. In many ways self-care is like the practice of saving money. We have all heard how important it is to pay yourself first, to set aside a certain amount of money for savings and then pay bills and do what we need to financially once we have done that. It's the same with the self-care pieces. We must give first to ourselves, to fill our own selves before we give to others or at some point we will find ourselves physically or spiritually bankrupt or in crisis.

I've written previously about how life just seems to melt away all that's not truly important or critical during times of stress and health crisis. We've all had those moments in life when we are in crisis, whether they are a result of a health crisis or death, or from the opportunity to learn a very difficult life lesson. What I believe and know to be true in my own life is that we all receive little messages to encourage us to awaken to ourselves before those crises arise. By increasing our awareness and turning our attention inside of ourselves, we become more able to hear those messages when they are whispers instead of the loud shout of a true crisis. Those whispers as well as those shouts are invitations for us to turn our attention to our own self-care.

We all know how easy it is to take one another for granted over time in our lives, to not fully appreciate in each moment the impact and importance we play in one another's lives. I'm not as certain that we are as attuned with how easy it is to take ourselves for granted. We each, individually, spend more time with ourselves than any other living being in the world throughout our lifetime. We listen to our thoughts, we move through our bodies throughout the world, and traverse the canvas of our own mind and spirit as we go through our days and years. It is so easy to just take for granted that our bodies will do what we want them to do, that they will somehow forgive our transgressions and lack of care over time. By becoming more focused on our self-care practices, we can begin to appreciate our body for the spectacular creation it is rather than having to solely turn our attention to it when it begins to break down or reacts in a way we don't expect.

People with health challenges or disabilities are often much more aware of the simple joys of appreciating the abilities of our bodies. Those among us who have lost their ability to walk as they once did, appreciate more deeply the gift of healthy legs. Those of us who are still able to walk and run as we always have are not called to become aware each day of our gratitude toward our legs. The same is true with any of the brilliant gifts we receive as humans - the ability to see, to hear, to move, to play… all of these wondrous abilities are given to us through our bodies.

Wherever you reside on the spectrum of wellness or disease, there are innumerable ways that we can give ourselves the gifts of self-care. What I've come to discover for my own self is that self-care is truly a celebration of self. I hope, not only for myself, but for us all, that we can embrace that celebration and enrich our lives so that we are more able to enrich the lives of one another.

~posted by Christine, 5:11 PM