Tag: advice

restorative things

theunitofcaring:

There are a bunch of people for whom bubble baths, scented candles, and chocolate is self-care. 

There are a bunch of people for whom early-morning yoga, vegetable smoothies, and aggressively minimalist redecorating is self-care.

There are a bunch of people for whom playing with kids is self-care, and a bunch of people for whom dressing up and going to a fancy restaurant where no kids are allowed is self-care, and a bunch of people for whom sleeping in late is self-care and a bunch of people for whom getting up early is self-care. 

Lately I’ve been moving from ‘yeah, humans are vast and varied’ to a sense that there’s a similar underlying thing in all of these cases.

I think something tends to be more restorative – to be an activity that leaves you more energized than you started it, more okay than when you started it – the more of these criteria it meets:

– restorative things are often things you associate with being prioritized, valued and valuable. This is why some people find chores restorative – it hits ‘valued and valuable’f or them – while other people find them draining – their association with doing chores is being incapable or not-good-enough or ordered-around,

– restorative things are usually things that don’t draw on the resources you feel constrained on – if you’re tired from being on your feet all day, running sure won’t do it, and if you’re lonely and isolated then bubble baths probably won’t help. Dong stuff that causes you anxiety won’t often be restorative.

– restorative things tend to fit into your understanding of what a good life for you looks like. early-morning yoga works for people who find it empowering to think of themselves as someone who does early-morning yoga. prayer and attending religious services tends to work for people who are like ‘my best self attends religious services’ and not so well for people ho are like ‘ugh I’m supposed to do that’ or ‘doing that just reminds me how much I disagree with my community about what my best self looks like’

– restorative things are pleasant in their own right. It’s astonishing how often this one gets passed-over. If you do not enjoy something – if the experience of doing it isn’t a good experience – then it’s really unlikely to be restorative. Making yourself do yoga when you find every minute awful will not be restorative. It might sometimes be valuable but it won’t be restorative. (Things that are unpleasant to start, but pleasant and rewarding once you’re doing them, can be restorative).

I think there are a couple takeaways from this framework. One is hopefully to make it easier to identify things that’ll be restorative for you. The second is that people attach a lot of moral valence to which activities other people find restorative – accusing people of being consumerist or selfish or lazy or privileged – and I’m hoping that there might be less of it if people are aware that the things that work for them won’t work for everyone. (Related to that,of course privilege plays a role in which things you experience as making you valued and valuable, and which things you conceive of as being part of your good life. So it’s a terrible idea to try to impose one version of ‘self-care’, like employers signing employees up for exercise programs in the name of self-care; people of a different class background get particularly screwed by this.)

flowerais:

Little things that help moods:

– getting enough sunshine
– opening the curtains
– eating regular meals
– short walks with your favourite music
– don’t stay up until 3am
– don’t try to relate to tumblr text posts
– get off tumblr/social media if it’s unhealthy
– shower
– don’t stay in bed the whole day
– plan out your day
– listen to music
– change your clothes
– set yourself small goals
– say yes to fun events
– drink water, it takes 5 seconds
– talk to a close friend
– remind yourself: a bad mood can lie to you
– you’re not unwanted or hopeless
– you deserve love so be nice to yourself

inkskinned:

something that has usually worked for me in the Bad Times is just. Giving myself an hour. no i don’t want to wake up. but i tell myself. get up. and if in an hour we feel worse, we’ll go back to bed. i say to myself: you don’t have to like it. you just have to do it. sometimes i get to the end of the hour and go back to bed. but a lot of times after a shower and water and maybe doing some jumping jacks or stretching i feel better. there’s a lot to do in an hour that makes it a little less oppressive to breathe. picking out good clothes, putting on good music, doing your makeup so tight it forms a blade, texting a friend, making tea, trying a new hairstyle, making an omelette. it’s gotta be up though, nothing in bed, nothing still, nothing just sitting and staring into the void. it’s got to be moving. creating things helps. journalling helps. but not in bed. 

i think we who are mentally ill kind of got. a double dose of inertia. and sometimes the push it takes to overcome that inertia keeps us in bed. but i have found a lot that just. starting to move. helps. even a little. because if you’re up you might as well make the bed. and you might as well go to one class – you can skip the second if the tired gets worse. and once you’re at that one class, you make it to the second because why not. 

it doesn’t always work. but give yourself an hour. sixty minutes. say: okay. it’s gonna suck and that first push might take all of our effort and we might sit on the floor for an hour and if that happens, fine, we’ll go back to bed. but then you tried. you got up and tried. and something about that makes the guilt a little less harsh and makes you feel a little bit more powerful and the next time you wake up and your body wants to sit on the floor, you say: no, thanks, we did that yesterday and my hips still hurt. let’s see if i can shower. and maybe you sit in the shower instead but you did take a shower so it probably counts. there’s a lot of power in baby steps. i believe in you. and i think you can do a lot with those sixty minutes.

floozys:

there’s a lot of unspoken pressure to keep liking the things you used to like and to keep dressing the way you’ve always dressed and to never question what you believe in and basically “be yourself” has slowly morphed into “be what everyone knows you as” but trust me when i say if you just give it up and simply make decisions and take actions based purely on what would make you happy, you’ll gain a very comforting sense of self peace