This will be different for everyone, and often different at different times for you. It can be helpful to take some time to bring your awareness to what it is that you need to stay well. Self-care is about physical and mental wellbeing. It can be a simple thing like taking 5 minutes to have a cuppa or a breath of fresh air outside your door and looking up to the sky, or it could be that you need a half day, a day or even a weekend doing something for you. Some people need space and alone time to ‘fill up their cup’ others get their top up from being around other people. Ideally, we find ways to regularly support ourselves, for some this works as part of a routine – a regular time to go for a walk or to an exercise class, have time on your own or meet up with a friend – even that precious uninterrupted cup of tea or 5 minutes to sit down before going from one thing to the next.
Taking just 5 minutes to pause can really help. Don’t underestimate how little it can take sometimes to just help you get through the day, or the moment. Breathe. Pause. Slow down.
Alongside the regular stuff sometimes we also need a bigger hit of self-care – a focus on ourselves. ‘Self-care’ seems to be a fairly new phrase and it’s often a re-frame for ‘selfish’. Self-care is never selfish, it’s essential to good health. If we look after ourselves mentally and physically, we are more available, more present and better able to be there for others, so it really isn’t selfish. It helps us and those in our lives.
It can also be surprisingly difficult to know what it is that we need or what can help us, thinking this through in therapy can help. Often, we can get caught up in what people, or the media, tell us we should be doing but it doesn’t work and we can’t get clear on what we need. Just a few sessions processing this can help identify what you need and get you on the right path for your own self-care routine.