Self Care Thoughts

You all know that self care is one of my favorite topics and mostly because I think most people (aka therapists/self help gurus) get it wrong. I can't wait to hear your thoughts on this!

I will talk ad nauseum about what I see as the three components of self care: self parenting, self care and self soothing (or numbing). Most of my colleagues in the psychotherapy field attach judgement to one or all of these aspects of self care, but I see them on a continuum and not necessarily as "bad" or "good". 

Here are some ideas about different aspects (note that I have yet to find someone who puts them all together, so they're parsed out a bit):

Self soothing:

https://resiliencyonline.com/2019/01/23/numbing-is-not-self-care/
https://www.verywellmind.com/emotional-numbing-symptoms-2797372

Self care: (soooo many bath ideas!) Try googling this yourself and notice that many of these lists include a variety of things that other experts will call "numbing" or "self parenting" as well as a link to the thing to buy to help you self care.

A nice exception to this trend-
https://www.womansday.com/health-fitness/wellness/g32619113/self-care-ideas/?slide=1

And self parenting:
A lot of the writing/research on self parenting is focused on "healing the child wound" rather than just something we all need to do. While important, that's not exactly what I'm getting at in this context (or is just part of it?) This is my favorite short piece on self parenting as it applies to *everyone*-

https://repeller.com/self-parenting-self-care/

And of course, boundaries  are inextricably tied to the self care continuum, so next let's review those!

That's it! Feel free to share resources or ideas that you come up with and check out my instagram post on self care!

#radicalselfcare, #socialjusticeisselfcare, #selfparenting