Emotional Health While in College Pt. 1
5:08 PM
Do you know what self care is?
If I asked you, "What do you do for self care?" what would you say?
Most people I ask say they:
- I have a spa day now and again
- I treat myself to a mani/pedi
- I take a bubble bath with aromatherapy salts and/or candle
- I meditate
- I planned a cool vacation (insert random number) of weeks from now
These are great self care activities. But we can't always do them. Depending on how much money we have, how much time we have on our plate, or other factors (such as family, school, a job, etc.), we can't do them all the time. You can't spa day every day. So while these are good "treat yourself" sort of self care ideas, they are extra.
Self care is actually, and literally, the care of oneself every day. It includes:
- getting some exercise
- getting enough sleep
- eating enough
- taking breaks
- staying hydrated
- maintaining boundaries
- honoring your emotions, needs, and limits
I know what you're saying already. "I don't have time for all of this!"
And therein lies the problem. Because there is most likely plenty of time for you to take care of yourself. I usually the "I don't have enough time" excuse from people who are doing one (or more) of several things:
- taking care of other people disproportionately (problematic self sacrificing)
- staying addicted to chaos
- feel they do not deserve self care
- or, feel they have not yet earned self care
Let me break down what these look like:
Problematic Self Sacrificing
You've heard the saying, "You can't pour from an empty cup?" right?
What does this mean? Well, it's a metaphor, of course. The cup is basically you. You are a vessel for a finite amount of energy and resources. This includes physical energy, emotional energy, mental energy, ability, and more. Depending on who you are and your particular life variables, your cup may be huge, or may be small. Have a chronic disease? Smaller cup. Have anxiety or depression? Smaller cup. You're in perfect health and have the metabolism of an athlete, the money of a billionaire, the physique of an Olympian, and the mind of a Renaissance Man? Your cup is probably like a whiskey barrel.
But if you have a cup, no matter what size the cup, you know that if there's nothing in there, you can't give it away. And some people metaphorically keep pouring into other people's cups from their own, literally until they have nothing left to give.
Then what do they get?
Burnout. Exhaustion. Anxiety. Somatic symptoms.
But there are people who will continue to give and give and give and literally squeeze the last drop from themselves to keep others around them afloat.
This is not okay, whether these people be your parents, your friends, your siblings, your spouse, your children, your coworkers, etc. And yes, some of these people really do need your help. But there's a difference between healthy giving and giving that is a detriment to your mental, emotional, and physical health.
Staying addicted to chaos
What does this mean? Some people's schedule is so chaotic that they are constantly doing things but are never getting anything done. And so much time is spent going from one thing to another in a state of anxiety that there is no time left for self care.
Look at your schedule. Are your classes all over the place? Your work hours? Times you do chores? Do you just...get up and start doing some random thing on a whim?
We need to treat every aspect of our lives as a sort of job. There's a time and place for it all, and if it has a beginning, it has to have an ending. You cannot live life where every aspect of your life is like the Golden Gate bridge: where once you get to the end of painting it, its time to start over again at the beginning!
There has to be an end! Otherwise, you are spending days, weeks, months, years of your life in a tailspin wondering where the time went and why nothing has gotten done.
Deserving and earning VS. the right to self care
In this unfortunate society, we come to believe that we need to earn the right for self care. It's how our work is structured! You have to work a certain amount of time, and then you are rewarded with a handful of PTO hours. The more you work, the bigger the break you get! And you can only get that big break after you work, work, work, work, work! And even then, you have to ask for permission to use the hours that you have rightfully earned. Sometimes you get turned down because someone else on your team deserves a break more than you.
How shitty is that?
The truth of the matter is, humans are not designed to work this way. We are not designed to consistently climb a slope of stress, and only when we have reached a certain point, usually when we are ready to break, or even past that point when some huge task is finished, do we deserve a break. This takes advantage of our stress systems and utilizes it for unnatural purposes.
What am I talking about?
In your body, you have several systems in place to handle stress. Back in the day, when you had to worry about things like lions or tigers or bears, these systems helped you determine how to get safe. You get flooded with certain neurotransmitters that help you prepare to get safe. For example, your heart beats faster, your vision changes so you can focus, certain pathways in the brain shut down and others turn on, less energy is given to your gut, and your lungs expand. This prepares you to do one of several things: fight, flee, or freeze.
We've all heard of this before.
But we don't need to worry about random predator animals coming up to take a chomp out of us. We don't usually need the fight-or-flight systems every day. You certainly don't need it while working. You don't need it while watching TV. You don't need it while studying and you don't need it when taking care of your kids (I say all these examples noting that there may be exceptions, but these exceptions are rare in consideration of the totality of your life). That doesn't mean that fight-or-flight goes away. No, we still have these mechanisms in our body. And they will respond to stress, whether it be a lion, a toxic boss, a bully, homework, or a huge workload. In the eyes of your fight-or-flight systems, stress is all the same.
Watch this clip below:
But modern life has us trying to hack our fight-or-flight to squeeze out every bit of productivity out of us. So we go and go and go and go and go, and we don't stop until we reach a goal, and then when the goal is accomplished, we experience leftover anxiety, panic attacks, burnout, lack of motivation, and more.
I'm going to have to make this a 3 parter. Check back for part 3.
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