Selfish or selfless? Self-care and how to care for yourself this Christmas

Self-care: is it selfish or a necessity?

Last week Sunday as I was getting ready for bed, the phrase ‘ I am exhausted’ filled my mind.  It was not the, ‘I am tired after a long weekend’ statement.  It was recognition that I was so tired, the idea of putting on my pyjamas and crawling into bed even felt too much for me.  24 hours later, I was in fact curled up in a ball on my bed coughing, spluttering and downing cold & flu relief meds like 2-1 for shots on a girls night out.  I fought the dreaded lurgy all week last week, allocating the mornings for some work and then the afternoons for resting and recuperating. 

I don’t think I had the awful ‘superflu’ that has been going around; instead I think I had a viral infection which once it had latched onto my energy depleted body ( & immune system) set up camp right in my nose and my throat.  It has been 7 days now of intermittent hacking coughing, piercing pain in my left ear ( as a result of a swollen gland in my throat) and dozens of snotty tissues being discarded after clearing my nose.  My mum always used to say that a head cold can be so debilitating and rotten.  You want to hide away from the world and let the symptoms work its way out of your body. 

As a mum of two and a new business owner as well as being a week before Christmas, the option to hide away was not forthcoming – hence the scheduling of working and resting.  While my kids were at school and nursery, I needed to use the time to get my work done as well as try rest to get better so that this week ( week of Christmas) I would be raring to go. The language I had in my head was that I could not afford to get sick as it would interrupt my schedule.  How sad that I was so disparaging of myself that I labelled getting sick as a problem to be dealt with and not recognise it as a symptom of something that was lacking- self-care.

On Saturday, 6 days post initial infection, I attended a facial appointment which I had scheduled weeks ago.  IT was my pre-Christmas gift to myself.  I had thought at the time when I made the appointment, that by the time the day of the appointment arrived, I would have completed my work tasks, my Christmas shopping would be completed, cards delivered, and I would be in full Christmas spirits.  This would also my scheduled self-care act for myself.  I planned to work hard and dive head first into festive Season planning that by the time the 20^th of December arrived I would be able to ‘afford’ 45 minutes of time off, time for myself – my self care.  Foolishly ( or naively [?]) I never took into consideration the possibility of falling sick into my estimations.  It never occurred to me that by the time I reached the coveted date of my self-care appointment that I would over-extended my energy resources to such an extent that I would be running on empty.  Is that bitter irony ?– that in order to reach a set date to allow myself some self-care I in fact neglected myself so much that I fell ill and jeopardized my self-care appointment?

I spent an agonising day on Thursday trying to decide whether I should in fact cancel the facial on the Saturday as I really did not want to commit an awful social faux pas of coughing into the facialist face while they worked their magic on my winter- rough skin.  By Thursday evening, I decided that I would be okay and after ‘talking to my atoms’ ( as my Gran used to say) I needed to push on through the discomfort of the snot & coughs and get on with it.  When Saturday arrived, I was in fact much better and lucky me I was able to attend my beauty appointment.

As I lay on the deliciously warm and comfortable beauty salon bed, listening to the relaxing Christmas playlist waft into the room, I thought about the effort and the determination I had put into to make sure I could attend the appointment.  Yes, it was a facial and yes it was 45 minutes of indulgence for me.  But it was also 45 minutes of conscious self care.  When I scheduled the appointment all those weeks prior, I had given myself the goal ( and potential reward) after getting through the challenging weeks of shopping, school events and winter challenges to spend some time on myself and for myself.  It was delightful.  The facialist and I chatted for a few minutes but then she proceeded to eliminate the build up of rough skin and discomfort I was holding in my body.  It was sublime.

I realise that I am incredibly fortunate to have had the option to schedule this beauty appointment for myself, let alone afford it.  Plus, I knew that I would be tagging my husband in for the childcare of my two kids while I was being bathed in soaps & scents. Yet, I knew that I needed this time and space for myself that when I left the space I would be feeling better, stronger and well, cared for by another person and in fact by myself – I cared enough about myself that I let myself have the time for this appointment.  This feeling did not last long.  By the time I reached my car, the waves of guilt of being out of touch on my phone and having spent the time on my own was erased by the consuming waves of guilt and the negative thoughts of how dare I take time away from my family & responsibilities to spend money on myself and have nothing to show for it at the end of it?  The glow I felt in the immediate aftermath of the facial disappeared by the time I got back to the car.

The balance between caring for yourself and pure indulgence of your selfish needs is a very tricky one.  How do you determine what is considered self-care and replenishing yourself against a cop-out activity such as vegging out on the couch with a bag of chips and later calling it, ‘me-time?’  In my opinion, there is no straight forward answer.  To be fair, kicking back on the couch after a long day of hard work does in fact have a place in a larger self-care routine.  I believe that the key to a proper self-care regime is in fact scheduling it for yourself.  By planning the time that you intend to use to address your emotional, spiritual and mental health through whatever activity you choose is time that you fiercely protect. 

I remember  speaking to a colleague years ago  telling me how her daughter would write in her diary every week ‘me-time’ across a block of time and that was her time – her self-care time. The daughter would not let anything, anyone or any excuse encroach on that time.  When I asked what she would do during that period, my colleague explained that it was normally an activity involving exercise but with some fun involved in it.  The activity which I thought sounded the best was that this woman would ride her bicycle down to the beach and have an ice-cream by herself.  What bliss!  When I asked my colleague if her daughter’s kids asked to go along, my colleague replied with a ‘tough s***’.  She said her daughter recognised that in order for her to keep up with all the many demands made on her from her job, to her role as wife & mother meant that she needed to, at least once a week, prioritise herself and her needs.  IN addition, her daughter said that she also always had something to look forward to every week.  She knew that on a particular day every week at certain time, it would be her time. And she truly believed it made her a better wife, mother, employee, friend and daughter.   To me this epitomised self-care.  The woman scheduled time for herself and engaged in activity which was out of the norm for her and spent time for herself on herself. I found this description both incredibly special and inspiring.

This nugget of knowledge has stayed with me for many years.  I have to say that it was in fact the foundation in which I built my own idea and routine of self-care.  I will admit that my own self-care routine is more like a loosely based set of ideas more than a firm laid out routine that I follow religiously.  As I have aged and my circumstances have changed ( becoming a wife, mother and changing career) obviously my approach to self-care has changed.  As I say, I don’t have firm plan which I keep to every week, but in recent months I have included a routine of exercise in the early morning which I have found incredibly invigorating.  IN the beginning of this loose plan, the 5:30am starts really hurt.  I would find myself dragging myself out of my warm bed and down to the cold conservatory where my weights would be waiting for me.  I would put on a routine from the perky Les Mills exercise programme and proceed to engage in numerous exercises to tighten and tone myself.  Of course, after 10 minutes the endorphins would kick in. The dread of the early morning wake-up and the dark outside would no longer be an enemy, but rather an ally in my pursual of ‘me-time’.  The first two weeks were really hard but as a progressed through a workout programme I started to find that I would look forward to these early morning wake-up calls.  I realised that by scheduling this time for myself, as part of my bigger self-care plan, I was prioritising myself and my needs for that period.  On the days I did not workout, I would take our black lab for a walk around the estate and listen to my music or a podcast I wanted to listen to ( not Peppa Pig music or Hey Duggee sound effects). Despite the cold and sometimes unease I felt walking the streets in the early morning, I also found the experience to be such a good release for me.  I was giving myself the space, the time and the attention I needed  to face the day or face the week of challenging moments.  For me, scheduling these periods, whether it was a weight workout or a walk with the dog, the effort I made for myself to help myself started to pay off in emotional dividends.  Overall I felt, replenished and rejuvenated.

The bonus of exercising and classifying it as self-care is that, in my opinion, you get to workout and address your physical health; in addition, while exercising ( especially on your own) you can just disconnect from the world and engage in your own space and thoughts.  I saw a clip of a mum working out in her basement and you hear her voice replying to a distant child’s voice – ‘ I need this time for me’.  Absolutely.  You need the time.  Especially at this time of year when the demands on your time increase ten-fold and you are expected to maintain the same levels of energy and engagement that you have had to maintain the whole year round.  It is fact crucial that at this time of year a person be more vigilant and selfish in establishing and maintaining a self-care routine.  When the demands on you increase, this means that your ability to sustain yourself should also increase – it should be a perfect correlation – demands increase therefore energy top-up should also increase. Yet, this is not always the case, realistic or manageable.

If you like me have reached your capacity for the year and have either physically succumbed to an illness or you are finding yourself emotionally checked out from the year and all the activities around you, might I suggest a few ways to get yourself back on track before the end of the year?

Ten minutes.  Take ten minutes – put a timer on your phone, watch, oven timer, egg timer or alarm clock. Then sit in a room, your car, garden anywhere where you cannot be disturbed and just sit.  Don’t sit on your phone, don’t read, don’t watch TV, don’t do your nails, don’t play a game – just sit.  If need be, put a sign on yourself that says don’t disturb. And for 10 minutes just sit.  You don’t even have to close your eyes or engage in meditation or a breathing exercise but sitting on your own and just being for 10 minutes might actually be the toughest thing you do this whole December.  You might find it incredibly uncomfortable and you might find you mind racing and heart pounding and your hands itching to do ‘something’.  To this I would say, fight the urge to  do the ‘something’ and rather let the stillness, the mindfulness of the moment envelop you.  It gives your body and mind a chance to reset.  You might find this activity incredibly easy to do or you might find it really difficult – either way by giving yourself the 10 minutes, this is the start of  a self-care journey.  It is time where you will be giving yourself to  just be.  You might even find that at the end of the 10 minutes, when the timer goes off that you either sigh a breath of relief or you might find that in fact want to extend the time as you have actually entered a space of true mindfulness and so you are not ready to come out of it. When the timer does beep and whatever state you find yourself, I would also recommend giving yourself a little congratulations in trying the exercise.  The effort you put into caring for yourself and giving yourself the time and space to try care for your needs is a difficult task and with the effort of even giving yourself 10 minutes is a noble effort.

My work schedule and own self-care routine was thrown out of disarray last week with me falling prey to this awful viral infection.  I had such big plans on publishing more blog posts, updating my website, fulfilling work goals by the time I logged off this week that when I realised that none of it would be possible, this too added to my overall weight of guilt.  I also found my language of ‘I should have’ increased that my already fragile sense of self was further pummelled into complete bundle of nervous energy.   However, in hindsight I  reminded myself that in fact taking time for myself and indulging in a magnificent act of being pampered for 45 minutes was a necessity for my health.   I do truly believe that having those 45 minutes for myself last week Saturday  saved my Christmas.

I have mentally planned few moments for myself over the next week when I know that I can take myself off for a few moments and engage in my own self care. I hope you can do something similar too.

I wish the readers all the very best over the Festive Season and look forward to more posts In the New Year.

Xx