Four Signs of Self-Care Struggles: Avoiding
During a recent session with a client, I had an eye opening awareness of how we struggle with self-care in our lives. I quick jotted some notes and took time to sit with these thoughts over the past few months. I also took time to see if they were showing up in my own life as Ive found the insights I see during therapy often apply to my own life or blind spots that I work through within my own therapy process. In the interest of transparency, I found these signs showing up in my own life when I am going through rough seasons or periods of my life when I fail to take care of myself in consistent and comprehensive manner.
Avoiding is a sign of a self-care struggle
Avoiding is the first sign of a self-care struggle but not in a sequential order. Unfortunately we live in a society that has so many options and strategies for avoiding reality, avoiding emotions and avoiding tough situations/conversations, and lastly avoiding caring for ourself in a supportive and comprehensive way. We often use social media, work, substances (food, alcohol, marijuana, or other illegal substances), relationships, gambling, staying super busy all the time or even other ways I have failed to list.
Because we live in a society where being busy is rewarded through income, social media likes, increase in status, material goods and positive feedback from others including those closest to us, it is hard to slow down or even pull back from these rewards. They are quick dopamine hits in our brain and man does our brain love it! We also don't get a break due to the imbedded nature of the systems impacting these beliefs within every part of our culture (systems like capitalism, white supremacy, sexism and ableism). Because it is so accessible, it has become a part of everything and it is easy to get caught up on the avoiding. This happens in order to meet the unclear and messy standards of the above systems that keep us busy, distracted and avoiding some really tough work and painful thoughts.
Because we are avoiding taking care of ourselves, many of use are tired and want to rest. We want to sleep more, have more down time and slow time. Our bodies are often telling us we stop and listen but due to our relentless need for achievement, meeting standards and expectations we don't hear the soft whispers. These soft whispers will grow in volume and show up in ways that seem disconnected to our needs. Some examples can be health issues, irritability, sadness, problems with focus/concentration and overall decreased feelings of wellness and happiness.
Self-care can be about specific practices that we nurture and cultivate in our lives to take care of the many parts of ourself. It should also happen to address and confront the messages we receive on a daily basis influenced by systems of oppression. This might be a part of the root of avoiding that many of us experience. Confronting these systems, having hard conversations and sitting with the painful feelings of loss, pain, and our contribution to the pain of others is hard to grasp. Like many biological reactions in humans, avoidance of pain and suffering a very natural and common response. We also have a prefrontal cortex that allows for us to have these deeper conversations, work through the complexities and have tough conversations. People can be both; we can have both our experiences and emotions as well as have the tough conversations in order to grow and evolve into our higher wiser selves. Avoiding is not getting us where we want to be, it is keeping us trapped and it is undercutting much of the self-care we need to do to create systemic change within our communities.
