Self-care & Rituals
Hi.
At my favorite cafe, Creators Space
I don’t want to write this blog. But I’m gonna anyway because I’m trying to practice writing. It’s been hard for me to “create” for the last few years (and still hard before that, too). I get into my head. I come up with ideas of what I want to talk about but then these voices in my head start criticizing the ideas and they just kind of fall apart. I’ve been meaning to write all day but just couldn’t get myself to pick something. So I have just decided to write about that. I guess it may be obvious, but these writings are meant for me, not to “reach an audience”.
The last two days I’ve been experimenting with adding structure and ritual back into my day. That’s been something I’ve attempted countless times in the past but I never stick to the structure for more than a month or two before crashing into a shame pile. So I would teeter-totter between absolute chaos and absolute hyper structure.
However, something is changing. I am developing a better relationship with my internal parts and I’m being more kind and attentive to myself. So yes, I do want to do all these self-care routines on a daily basis. However, historically, I’ve tried to do them all whilst hating myself. I can see why I didn’t stick with them. But now I see that it isn’t these routines or behaviors that are inherently frustrating me but it’s how I am treating myself within these routines.
When I have routine in my life, when I’m doing Task A (for example), during the entire time I’m doing Task A, I’m ruminating on how I’m getting Task A done, how I’m “doing good" today, or I’m thinking “dear god, when is this going to be over?” or other thoughts that have nothing to do with actually being present and benefitting from the care I’m trying to give myself.
I’m at a place where I’m able to begin experimenting with certain behaviors or interactions that would have been unbearable in the past. OK, so let’s review my present self-care rituals:
clean calendar & send print-screen to Adam if necessary (1 min)
set alarms for the day (1 min)
guzzle water (1 min)
eat breakfast and watch a TedTalk (20 min)
cardio (30 min)
weights (30 min)
yoga (20 min)
read tarot (10 min)
Headspace (meditation; 20 min)
tidy house (10 min)
plan for supper (10 min)
write a blog & share on social media (30 min)
I like this list. I look through it and I see nothing gratuitous. I know why I want to do each of these things. In the past, I would add things to my care/ritual list because I internalized external messages that I should be doing this in my life, like cardio or weight lifting. However, as I get more familiar with my body and my energies, I have come to my own conclusion and conviction that I want things like cardio and weight-lifting in my life because of how they help me process my emotions, internal chemistry, clear my mind, build self-confidence, etc. I probably read something somewhere about how those are natural consequences of those behaviors; however, now I personally hold those values instead of doing what others are telling me is right.
So in the last two days that I’ve been experimenting with care rituals again, I have noticed things coming up for me that are very familiar. Black & white expectations. Judgment. Dissociation. Shame spirals. In the past I would disengage from something if it did that to me. That made the world a very scary place since most things could trigger me.
So the last two days I’ve noticed those old voices and feelings. And without a lot of effort to do so, I’ve been able to … like I said,… just notice. Huh. I’m really laying into myself about getting these tasks done in order perfectly in order to achieve a relief of “being enough” for the day. It’s rough. But instead of fully disengaging, I’m being more curious. If I’m running into enough resistance, I’m not pushing myself to do the thing then. I let go of the intention to do XYZ self-care and instead try to figure out what I’m feeling now and what do I need now. So that meant that today, despite having the “plan” to do cardio, yoga, and whatnot, I didn’t. Because I was feeling a lot of resistance and my head was swimming in shame. When I meditated, the data confirmed it plus showed me that I was really tired. I didn’t sleep well last night.
So I kind of decided not to overanalyze my resistance and just decided that it’s probably a lot to do with how tired I am. So I laid in bed around 12pm and let myself go in and out of sleep for 2 hours. I woke up at 2pm and my body and mind felt much more calm. I made myself lunch, hydrated, watched some Avenue 5, and found the energy inside to get myself to sit down and write. As you can see at the top of the blog, I faced a bit of thematic resistance but I also see that I SAW that and allowed myself to begin without being wholly committed and focused on a topic. Writing this post is evidence of my change. It’s pretty exciting… and scary… it’s an experience I find to be ineffably terrifying yet thrilling to wake up 40 years into yourself and realize that there was a whole back room of data coming into your brain about how you’re doing. So much more context. So much more flexibility. So much more creativity. So much more color. I didn’t really believe that our realities could change this much, but mine seems to be.
