Centering Thought: Today, I can choose to take one solid, healthy action that shows I love myself. I will choose to do this now.
Sometimes taking care of ourselves can feel like the heaviest chore on earth. Even the basics like brushing our teeth or combing our hair can be overwhelming, depending on where we are emotionally. Other times, we are so busy indulging in fanciful ideas (particularly if we’re manic or hypomanic) or we’re too locked into the rigid routines of obsession-compulsion to even focus on the tasks we need to do to take care of ourselves. But to maintain any semblance of health, we can practice some basic hygiene to show our love for ourselves.
Learning our personal cues for our moods — the signs and symptoms like oversleeping, missing appointments, isolating from friends for depression; overspending, reorganizing home items, calling our friends at all hours of the night to talk about our latest projects for manic moods; even avoiding our commitments, loved ones and problems during high anxiety — can help us to see when we need to refocus our efforts on the basic tasks of living. Refocusing in this way can help us to move into the solution, instead of letting the problem overtake us. And even if we recognize that the problem of moodiness has already overtaken us, we can still make strides to practice basic self-care to move out of the thick of our funk.
By simply asking, What have I done to care for myself today? we can come to realize how minimal our self-care has been (if so) and we can take steps to remedy it. If we feel overwhelmed at the prospect of caring for ourselves, we can simply take one step toward practicing basic self-care.
It’s important to acknowledge that we often use the guise of “self-care” to indulge behaviors and actions that hurt us. For instance, eating two extra bowls of ice cream or chain-smoking cigarettes may make us feel a little better for the moment. After all, they both trigger the pleasure center of our brains. But in the long run (and sometimes pretty quickly), these actions are not truly aimed at taking care of ourselves. They are really aimed at making the hurt we feel go away.
Taking authentic, positive steps toward self-care can make the hurt go away more permanently, even if it takes just a little longer to accomplish. The more healthy steps we can take — without going overboard to become obsessive-compulsive — the closer we can move toward healthy balance in our lives.