Those of us who have been through therapy are usually emotional self-care ninjas. We journal, we let ourselves cry (or rage), we call friends for support or use a creative outlet that lets us process any intense emotions.
We’ve got feelings covered by the time we’re transitioning out of therapy; I feel like I earned a doctorate in understanding and processing my own emotions.
As I was transitioning out of therapy, I noticed that while my emotional processing was top-notch, my life still wasn’t quite working.
I wasn’t having that much fun.
I loathed going to the grocery store and never had any food in the fridge.
I was rapidly accumulating credit card debt.
It was a bit frustrating, honestly. I knew I was as emotionally ‘healed’ as I was going to get from a solid decade of therapy – and I had dreamed that when I was ‘done’ my life would be perfect.
And that’s not how it was (or is!) at all. Life was still messy. I still had growth to do, things to learn, changes to make. I just now had the emotional strength to dig in and begin.
Today I’m inviting you to take a look at your life and notice where your self-care is shining, and where it’s missing. There are numerous categories and ways of looking at this – I like to look at six types of self-care:
Physical: care for your body (everything from sleep to sex to seeing the dentist)
Emotional: care for your feelings (acknowledging & processing feelings, changing distressing situations)
Mental: care for your mind (the interesting new book, meditation, games, challenges, flow)
Spiritual: care for your spirit (a worship community, a cause greater than you, nature)
Social: care for your relationships (friends who get you, family time, lunch with your coworkers)
Practical: maintenance care that supports your life (financial, housekeeping, car registration)
In the coming weeks we’ll be talking more about stepping up self-care, but today, I invite you to just take ten minutes and evaluate how you are doing with self-care in each of these areas. To make this more fun, I’ve made a printable with more detail on each of the categories and a graph you can color. You can download it here.
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