253- A-Z self care

Self-care is a big thing in the mental health community. There are loads of videos, blog entries and challenges for it. This is understandable for several reasons, and I'll give the ones that correspond to my own case.

• When I do self-care, I practice self-love, in the sense that I deem myself as worthy of these acts, big and small, to improve something about me (moods, appearence...), which is very important due to my lack of self-esteem. 

These issues stem from childhood trauma, abuse ; experiencing conditioning and depersonalization in my father's cult. 

Regaining self-esteem has been a life-long struggle, because leaving the cult and coming back to my home country didn't solve my issues - as recovery isn't magic, but efforts, setbacks and more efforts, until you can find yourself again after trudging in all this mud. 

Thus, self-care routines are acts to help regain this self-esteem, a bit by forcing the issue. Indeed, at first it's a challenge, a task set to practice self-care, even before I believed that I was worth making the efforts for.

I didn't used to care about my general appearence and didn't think practicing self-care had any impact on anything, so I'd do the bare minimum (showers, shaving, you know, those basic things so I wouldn't look like the total shit that I was feeling, but nothing more).

The past few years, however, I shifted my viewpoint - thanks, as for many other things, to my wife's persistent and patient coaxing to take better care of myself.

The idea for this post is directly inspired from Meg's post but I'll assign different words than hers to fit my own self-care routines, as follows:

I dabble in the arts (drawing, sketching, painting and sculpture) but due to the same lack of self-esteem and a patience to work through the ugly phases of learning to improve my art, I don’t do it as often as I should…

Balancing my time between each activity and interest

Creative outlets: apart for art, I also write (notebooks for therapy, blogs for self-expression, reviews, mental health and lifestyle), digital photography and more rarely, editing photos to artistic forms.

Drinking plenty water, teas (mostly herbal but occasionally black, green, variants thereof), coffee but not too frequently as it exacerbates my anxiety if I have too often

Entertainment: watching movies, tv shows (usually dvds we own or borrow), more rarely documentaries. I watch some of these alone or with friends, but the majority with my wife.

Friendships are vital for me, despite social phobia, I need to socialize and meet friends for support, exchanging viewpoints and enriching one another’s world.  

Games – offline video games on pc, console, and back in the day at the arcades, have been some of my favorite pass-times, alongside board games to play in person with family and friends alike

Home is my refuge, that one place where I can stay in to avoid either bad weather, or from going out when I don’t like it. Home is also that place to receive friends for some of my other self-care routines.

Very wide Intellectual pursuits and interests

I joined a community of wonderful mental health bloggers to spread awareness in unity and strength

Kitchen-work: washing dishes can be a chore and triggering my emeto, but it’s also a relaxing activity to do while listening to music on the boom-box and taking a break from other activities. Baking, cooking and sprouting are very cool self-rewarding activities.

Laughing is a sporadic thing for me. I don’t watch many comedies but I usually don’t understand, or dislike, most jokes. But, occasionally laughing with friends or my wife can alleviate my depression just enough to continue with my day.

Music is life! 

Nature helps recharge me with fresh air; I love hiking in the mountains, and the woods around us, for physical exercise and practicing digital photography (macro’s my favorite) 

Ordering items online: as my city doesn’t fulfil many of my needs, and I hate most stores, I like to expand and order things online. A lot of second hand cultural products (cds, books…),; occasionally other types of products to improve our apartment.

Personal grooming - through shaving (though infrequent), showers, clay masks that I wish I could keep to a monthly frequency, moisturizing and applying lip-balm and other creams...

Quiet moments through meditation or nature’s quiet and peaceful smaller noises than those of the city can alleviate and recharge me greatly. I just don’t get to practice this quiet as often as anyone should.  

Reading Books - for distraction or expanding knowledge alike, books are a vital part of my life. I also love reading articles from websites, blogs, scientific magazines.  

Support: I found most of it through the online mental health community, where I offer and receive support in equal measures, which started some new friendships  

Therapies: I’m currently followed by 2 therapists – one for cbt and another for psychotherapy, which complete one another

Unfriending, unfollowing: to keep only those who interact and keep in touch with me and enjoy my company as much as I enjoy theirs, thus cutting out any toxic or 1-sided friendships. The same way, unsubscribing from newsletters I no long care to read, to cut down on all my email sorting.

Vegan lifestyle, including eating according to my ethics and philosophy

Walking – when not hiking in nature, I walk plenty in the city, to run errands or just for the sake of walking around the block after I’ve been cooped for a while at home.

eXercises: I periodically do these pilates to alleviate my scoliosis – a couple years ago, did others to tone my body and should get back to them to help my posture + general shape.

Youtube is a website I visit all the time. I listen and discover many new musical bands that I grow to like and then buy official discs of ; I listen to vlogs on mental health/illness, psychology, photography, atheism, veganism, recipes, documentaries, funny animals to laugh about after a difficult day… the list of possible videos is endless!

Zoological : caring for other living beings, animals, donating to an animal shelter, or just watching cute animal photos and videos online - it makes me happy, and also expresses my compassion as my aforementioned Vegan lifestyle, and oneness with Nature - which society tries to suppress, especially because I'm a man, and nurturing/ care-giving are seen as feminine traits.