Self care

I am the absolute QUEEN of superficial self care. I don’t drink alcohol or smoke. I exercise regularly. I eat mostly fresh, unprocessed food. I reach out to my friends. I get early nights.

What is not so good? The underneath stuff. The “getting brave about why you need so much self care” stuff. Sure, I know what the problems are AND what has caused them, but I keep letting them happen. There goes my inner critic again. Treading the line between dealing with stuff and berating myself for not doing it better, sooner.

I feel like I have uncovered a disease. For years I have been playing whack-a-mole with the symptoms and not realising that it won’t get any better until I treat the actual disease gnawing away at me.

Self care can help with symptoms but treatment is needed for the cause.

However, the self care stuff is still important. I still need to, more than ever, be very gentle with myself. Eat well, get some air, connect with reliable people who I know love me, do some work, sleep. I am adding in a regular sports massage (I am a ball of tension, as you may be able to imagine) and I have enquired about therapy. £££ but I’ve thrown everything except money at this and nothing has worked quite well enough yet.

My medications of choice so far for the searing pain have been love, sex, a marriage, exercise, crochet, climbing, being a workaholic, eating too much, eating too little. The list goes on. Let me tell you – none of them have worked.