Four Signs of Self-Care Struggles: Self-Care; Storytelling

3rd Sign of Struggling with Self-Care: Storytelling:

The second to last part in this series of struggling with self-care as a social worker is a common one many of us use to get through hard experiences: storytelling.  We tell stories about ourselves, our loved ones, strangers and even groups of people.  We do this for a variety of reasons including creating meaning, help manage difficult emotions and to make ourselves feel better. This impacts our self-care when it leads to other things like avoiding emotions, making everything seem “positive” and creating interpretations of people or events to justify personal beliefs. 

Why Stories?

Why do we tell stories?  For one our brain does not like confusion, uncertainty or ambiguity. Our brains like things to be clear, simple and easily understood.  This is juxtaposed with our brain having the ability for complex thinking and reasoning.  We create stories as a way to make sense of the world, others and ourselves.  Sometimes these stories can be positive and supportive and they come from a root of judgment or fear of the unknown. We can find ourselves replaying stories given to use by others, our family systems or the larger society.  

Every day we are inundated with stories we choose to believe and read. We are given stories and information through interactions with others and subtle messaging and language for our media.  These can be based on race, gender, socioeconomic status, immigration and other intersections. These stories inform our interactions with others and ourselves.  Often we are not always choosing the information we are receiving so we need to be mindful of the way those stories are informing our world views.  

What Do Stories Do for Us?

Stories are one way we help our brain to make sense of the world around us.  Our brain is always searching for meaning and context which is rooted in basic mechanisms of survival.  While our brain has evolved over time to create a prefrontal cortex, there are some basic evolutionary parts that want his to survive and thrive.  These parts are operating in the background, scanning and searching for meaning.  These part of our brains are also assigning this meaning in unconscious ways.  Sometimes they make it to our conscious brain but often it is percolating in the background. 

Besides operating a survival mechanism, stories can offer comfort to use when times are hard or when things are going really well. We can tell ourselves how things are not fair, how it was the fault of someone else or how we have failed when things are hard.  On the other side, we can affirm how we deserved something positive, how hard we worked on a project and how amazing we are as a person.  These stories can also interplay with our ego or that negative voice in our mind. 

How is it a Sign of Struggling Self-Care?

The stories we tell ourselves can inform the ways in which we care for ourselves.  When we have hear stories from families that self-care is wasteful, selfish or useless, it impacts how we care for ourselves whether we are aware or not.  When the idea of self care is not discussed within our families for circle of friends, our brain will fill in the blank based on prior experiences or observation.  

When we hear these stories multiple times, we can start to see them as a truth in the world even though it might not be accurate.  Conversely, when we hear that self care is important, necessary, and critical to our health, we see that as a truth too.  While it might be hard to see which of these is the truth, research on self-care is starting to indicate that self care leads to better relationships, better health outcomes and work experiences as well as a higher quality of life and happiness.   

Check out this source: https://www.selfcareresearch.org/415-2/

When we get stuck in the negative stories and believe them as the truth, we limit ourselves.  We limit the ability to ourselves as need the same level of kindness and love we show those closest to us. We also lose our connection to the shared humanity that is everyone; our messiness, our own fears and successes and our infinite possibilities.  We can better see this shared humanity and love when we care for ourselves and make it an important part of our lives like eating, working, volunteering and loving.

As social workers, we need to keep these stories in check as they can inform the ways we show up with our clients and how our bias can impact them.  We also need to be mindful as many of us in social worker come to the field with our own trauma, mental health needs and substance use issues that can be further impacted when we leave out self care.  Plus, we are often role modeling for our clients during with both our verbal and nonverbal actions. 

What next?

It is not selfish, self-centered or wasteful.  It doesn’t indicate that something is wrong with us when we take time for ourselves.  Self-care is a necessary practice in life to be able to meet the needs of others as well as ourselves.  As cliche as it sounds, we cannot given from an empty cup.  When we want to show up for our children, friends, partners and family we need the capacity and energy to show up.  We don’t need to be exhausted, burned out or struggling.  There are things we can let go and still be okay. 

Let go of old stories that done serve us or help us.  Let go of stories that box ourselves into narrow roles and scripts.  Let go of stories that tell us that caring for ourselves is not okay or healthy.  Let go of the expectations set on us by others and know that who you are is okay and valuable and worth every second of self-care.