Let’s get real about self-care for a minute. The truth is we don’t value self-care in our culture. In fact, we’re often called “selfish” or “lazy” when we do things to take care of ourselves. Maybe we even call ourselves those names. During a divorce or other especially stressful time, taking care of yourself is likely not even on your radar. It might be something you’ve never actually done.
Why self-care matters
You might be sitting there wondering, “What is she even talking about?” or “Why should I care?” These are fair questions, so let me address these two points. When done well and often, self-care acts kind of like a buffer against stress. Self-care means different things to different people but in a nutshell, it means proactively taking care of our health so that we can take care of others whom we care about and meet our daily responsibilities.
Think of yourself like a well. When your well is full, you have plenty of water to pour out onto your loved ones and causes that are important to you. If you don’t put some water back in there, your water level gets too low and pretty soon, your bucket comes up dry, leaving you nothing to give. This is a very hopeless, dark, painful place to be and coming back from that place is really difficult and sometimes impossible. When our well runs chronically dry, we are at high risk of developing depression. Taking care of ourselves is how we fill our well.
Lack of self-care contributes to depression and anxiety
There are lots of tell-tale signs that your well is getting dry. You might notice that you can’t sleep at night or can’t relax during the day. You might find yourself flying off the handle at little things or feeling resentment toward others. Other signs that your well is dry or getting there are unexplained aches and pains, frequent headaches, and digestive problems. This is your body talking to you. It’s telling you that it needs care and no one can do it but you.
By now, I hope that you agree with me that making sure your well gets filled up is critical. In order to make sure it does, it’s important to approach it from different angles like the spokes on a wheel. Olga Phoenix created a wonderful self-care wheel that illustrates what I’m talking about here. When all the spokes of the wheel are all in balance, it turns smoothly and properly. When any one of them is out of balance, the wheel doesn’t work well and may not turn at all. These spokes include physical, emotional, professional, personal, and spiritual. They represent different aspects of health.
The Self-Care Wheel
Let’s break each of them down briefly so you get where I’m coming from. Physical self-care includes getting enough sleep, eating healthfully, and moving during the day. Emotional self-care includes having fun, saying “no” to something we don’t want or need to do, and allowing ourselves to cry when we need to. Self-care in a professional sense can mean taking lunch breaks and leaving work at work, for example. Personal self-care can mean learning a new skill, starting a new hobby, or taking a nap. Finally, spiritual self-care could include going to your place of worship, meditating, or praying. I hope that you can see that filling up your well doesn’t have to cost money and doesn’t have to take a lot of time. It is time well-spent and the benefits of it add up. It’s also really important to model self-care for our kids from an early age.
Self-compassion is also part of self-care
It's important to not allow self-care to be one more tedious thing on your endless “to-do” list that you somehow never seem to get to. Also, don’t think you have to be perfect at balancing all those spokes all the time. Like any new or rusty skill, it will take time to be able to do it well. What we’re going for here is to get to a place where you do it more than you used to and it feels better when you do.
Full disclosure here-if you’re not used to taking care of yourself, you will feel selfish, lazy, and weird and you may get pushback from others at first. Please know that this entirely “normal” and will pass. Give yourself and others some time to get used to your new normal.
For more information about depression or depression treatment, please visit my depression treatment page.