The Self-Care Five
Montage by Victor Bloomberg, March 24, 2023
A client asked me, “What can I do to feel better?” Over the years I have wondered, is there a simple outline to help a person take care of themselves throughout the ups-and-downs, be they mild or intense? A psychotherapist shared their approach with me:
I give them an opportunity for reflection on their own journey, to sit with that realization and see how it settles in their body. I want them to have a little more body awareness of how they process things. Our lives, emotional and psychological, are not all in our head, it’s in our bodies as well. That is also a clue about where we’re at during various points in our lives, how our body is reacting. It’s all connected, mind, body, and I use the term spirit as that other awareness that isn’t as tangible.
Okay, a short list has begun. It’s mind, body and spirit. But it’s incomplete. Another psychotherapist’s story added dimensions:
A lady patient is having postpartum depression. I met her in person. And I listen to her story of the gestation of her baby, and the birth of her baby, 2 to 3 weeks of good health, and then she is socked with a pretty severe postpartum depression.
We have got to problem-solve. How is she going to manage the baby enough to care for the other child? We end up working together with her husband who is now out of work and at home trying to help her with the children, but pretty depressed himself because he can’t work and bring home an income. They’re in a lot of distress. We’re doing problem-solving for organizing every kind of resource we can think of. We’re just resourcing. What would be helpful, where can she get it? I’m working very hard to create a bond with her.
During the course of our Telehealth work, daddy comes into the room with the baby. The new baby was crying and he said, “I cannot handle her,” and so she said to me, “Do you mind if I nurse her?” I said, “Heavens no, go ahead.” We’re doing direct supportive psychotherapy, coping skills and she’s nursing the baby. And I’m enjoying this beautiful, beautiful child and getting reinforcement from her about how beautiful the baby really is.
She is nursing her baby and I am providing support to her kind of like grandma. We are admiring the baby and thinking about various resources for her so that she has a little more time for herself to do some very basic things like go walking, go to the grocery store, go to the doctor, this sort of thing. Now that is just problem solving.
She has a great deal of insight and so it doesn’t take very long for us once we create a bond to begin to talk about her internal world. And how she’s coping with this much depression, a new baby, and a 3- or 4-year-old, all at the same time. And her husband is so upset about work. And you meld the two together. The problem solving is the scaffolding of the work, for the insight, especially being able to help her with her sense of herself and her depressive orientation. The insight, she has the capability for that, so we can go there.
Let’s add enjoying life with others to the list. As I listened to the story about a mother and a father, I remembered the time of my life when I was Dad and my kids were wee ones. I remembered how important rest was (and still is.) I’m adding that to the list:
The Self-Care Five
Eat Well
Rest Well
Exercise Well
Fun with Others
Spiritual Time
The idea is to set up routines of self-care for each of the five. That’ll be different for you and me. And it changes. I need to eat differently now that I’m older than when I was a kid. I need less sleep than when I was a teen. Exercise has changed now that arthritis has formed. My friends are more sensible than, well, you can imagine. My view is that spiritual self-care doesn’t require religion and doesn’t exclude it. Next are a few ways to check-in with yourself for each.
Eat Well
I asked my wife who is a registered dietician. Where does someone start? She gave me two websites:
Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics
Rest Well
I saw a documentary that taught me that people are biological batteries. We store and expend energy. When we are well, we use aerobic energy using oxygen in our blood. I had heard of aerobic exercise so that made sense to me. The film said if we can’t replenish our aerobic energy the body will use anaerobic energy by devouring tissue. That can cause a lot of bad things. Scary. The takeaway for me was not to get so worn down that I can’t recharge my battery. Here’s the website: Unrest - The Film
I had heard of sleep hygiene. I looked it up. I like government and educational websites, because they aren’t trying to sell me anything and they are not promoting fads or weirdness. Here’s one for sleep hygiene: CDC - Tips for Better Sleep
Exercise Well
Giving general tips is a challenge, because exercise is a big business and there are medical risks as well as benefits. Articles from Harvard and the CDC are a good a safe place to start:
Harvard Medical School - 10 Tips for Exercising Safely
CDC - Benefits of Physical Activity
Fun With Others
Most think that this means fun with people. It can, assuming that the fun is safe for everyone. When a person is playing with a dog or riding a horse, they are having fun with another. I think nature is full of ‘others’ whom we can have fun just by being part of it, in it. With all of that said, fun with a friend is a special form of self-care.
UC-Berkeley Greater Good Science Center – Why Your Friends Are More Important than You Think
Scientific American – The Evolutionary Origins of Friendship
Spiritual Time
A lot of people all over the world connect spiritual time with religious practices and belonging to a religious community. There are as many who express and connect with their spirituality independently, they are free spirits so to speak. It took me years to find a way to describe spiritual time so that any person can feel respected and included.
We do stuff that needs to be done whether or not we want to. It’s a chore. It needs to be done and we step up to do it. We do other things because it’s meaningful and/or pleasurable. Sitting on the porch watching the clouds float by is an example. I am sure you can think of things you do for no other reason than it is meaningful and/or pleasurable.
Here’s the thing, it is not the activity that makes it a chore or spiritual. A person who belongs to a congregation might go to community prayers because it is a duty – it is expected, being a role model requires it whether or not you feel like it. It’s a chore. But all of a sudden there is a shift and you feel connected to the divine – now it’s spiritual time. You have to walk the dog because it has to go, it’s a chore. Along the way the mutt is wagging its tail and giving you the love look. All of a sudden it is meaningful and pleasurable, because you love that dog and being outside is pleasurable.
