Today I wanted to talk about something that we all know is necessary, but most of us forget to prioritize, and that something is self care. We can get by for a while without taking good care of ourselves, but inevitably, it catches up with us. When we demand a lot of ourselves without also prioritizing our own wellbeing we can start to feel run down, anxious, depressed, angry, and resentful. This all tends to lead to burnout. I think the term burnout tends to be most-associated with work, which makes sense because we’ve all had times where we’ve felt burnt out at work. However, we can also be burnt out at home or with family. No matter the environment that we experience burnout, once we’re at this point we feel we have nothing left to give.

There are a lot of metaphors that those of us in the mental health field use about self care. The first one that I’m going to mention is the window of tolerance. Imagine, for a moment, a literal window. We don’t get to decide how much wind is trying to come in through that window, just like how we don’t always have control over how much stress is coming at us at any given point. When we aren’t taking good care of ourselves, the opening of our window of tolerance gets smaller and smaller. This, however, doesn’t change the amount of stress that we’re experiencing; it just further decreases our ability to deal with the large amount of stress coming through a smaller opening. This leads to overwhelm and ensures that we are too dysregulated to be able to handle the stress in our lives. When we practice good self care, we expand the opening of our window of tolerance, making the stress manageable…notice that I didn’t say easy. Manageable is tolerable even when it is uncomfortable. It also gives us the ability to step back and notice if there are stressors that we can control. For instance, maybe you never say no to requests that are made of you. Starting to set some limits and saying no to the things that will make your life more difficult can decrease the amount of stress that is coming through your window.

Metaphor two is that you can’t pour from an empty vessel. Those that give of themselves to others can find this to be particularly true. It is really a shame when those who are passionate about service to others find themselves burnt out because they start to lose the joy that they feel from helping others. Sometimes burnout can come from dealing with difficult people in authority or needlessly complicated bureaucratic rules, but it can also come from those givers not giving care to themselves. Prioritizing self care means refilling your own vessel so that you can still find joy when you pour into others.

The last metaphor comes from being on an airplane. If you are one of the people who actually pays attention when the flight attendants go through their safety procedures, you know that they tell you that if the cabin loses pressure, oxygen masks will come down from the ceiling. They tell the passengers to make sure to put on their own mask before helping someone else with theirs, and they do this with good reason. As a parent, I want to place the safety of my children above my own, and it would be tempting (in this scenario) to place my child’s mask on their face before I do this for myself. However, what if I was unable to ensure their safety before losing consciousness? We would both be out cold and it is possible that no one would have the presence of mind to help either of us. I would be much better off making sure that I am in a position to actually help my child. Self care isn’t about putting ourselves first. It is about making sure that we are equipped to help those that are depending on us.

As a rule, self care is anything that you do specifically and intentionally because it is good for you. Some good tips from a Psychology Today article* are as follow:

Take care to get good sleep. Adults need 7-8 consistent hours of uninterrupted sleep every night.
Keep your gut health in mind. There is a lot of good information out there right now about eating foods that maintain a good balance of the micro-organisms necessary for good digestion and processing of foods.
Exercise daily, keeping in mind what I’ve said before about exercise: it is really about getting a healthy amount of movement.
Eat healthy foods that fuel your body properly, and consider cooking at home to reduce processed ingredients.
Say no when you are asked to do something that you don’t want to do or don’t really have time to do.
Get away for a self-care trip.
Get outdoors and find refreshment in nature.
Cuddle with your furry friends, as pets can help improve our moods.
Get yourself better organized to aid in your ability to deal with stressors that aren’t going away.
Read books on self care and self improvement.
Schedule your self care times and guard it as if it was sacred.

*https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/click-here-happiness/201812/self-care-12-ways-take-better-care-yourself

Have you ever seen the movie, Passengers? It’s a good movie, but this blog isn’t going to be a movie review. I want to mention a brief scene where Chris Pratt’s character is talking to the bartender. Don’t worry, if you haven’t seen it, I’m not going to spoil the movie for you. In the scene, the bartender comments that Pratt’s character is unhappy with where he is, but that even if he could snap his fingers and be exactly where he wants to be, he would still be wishing for something else. The bartender tells him that he should stop focusing on what he can’t control and focus on finding happiness where he is. Hard to do, when you know the plot of the story, but not impossible, and it is an excellent point.

It made me think of a workshop I attended a few years back. The topic was dealing with burnout, and at one point the presenter asked us to all make lists of our top concerns. Then she asked us to stop and look at our lists to ask ourselves how many of our concerns we actually had control of. When our focus is on the concerns that we can’t control, it can lead to anger, resentment, and bitterness. Because we can’t do anything about it, people often do the only thing they can think of: rage against the unfairness of the situation. When we stop and get honest with ourselves, though, that doesn’t actually make our lives any better.

There are many things in this world that we can’t control. We can’t control other people any more than we can control the weather. According to an article by Dr. Jacquelyn Johnson, *All that we can control in some situations is how we react to them. That may not seem like much, but it’s actually a big deal. One recommendation from Johnson* for helping with distressing situations that we can’t control is mindfulness. Mindfulness is something that I recommend frequently in this blog and to my clients. I’ve written a much more thorough blog on this topic previously, but in short, being mindful is being present. There’s nothing mystical about it. Focusing on the movement of your breath or the sensation in your shoes as you walk down the sidewalk is mindfulness, as is searching inward for feelings and sensations. There is a ton of research about the benefits of this practice, and it can help people to learn to handle what they can’t control by grounding themselves in the present. Often connected to mindfulness is the next suggestion of deep breathing. As you practice deep breathing, do so slowly, and Johnson cites the value of specifically breathing with the belly. To do this, attempt to have the movement of the breath occur in the belly instead of expanding the chest or raising the shoulders.

Johnson notes that one of the things that gets in the way are cognitive distortions, which are thinking patterns that negatively impact your view and interpretation of things. Here at RSC we have a favorite handout for clients that list some common cognitive distortions:

All or nothing thinking: Also called black and white thinking, which doesn’t leave room for middle ground or balance.
Mental filter: Only paying attention to evidence that confirms what we already believe.
Jumping to conclusion: either by mind reading or fortune telling (“he thinks I’m…” or “now he’s going to…”).
Emotional reasoning: Allowing ourselves to confuse our feelings with facts.
Labeling: Giving ourselves or others labels.
Overgeneralizing: Telling ourselves a pattern exists with limited data.
Disqualifying the positive: Telling ourselves that the good we do or the good that happens to us doesn’t count.
Magnification or minimisation: Blowing things out of proportion or overly minimizing things.
Shoulds: We second-guess ourselves with what we think we “should do” or “should’ve done.” We also get bogged down with what we think others should be doing.
Personalisation: Blaming ourselves for things that aren’t our fault or blaming others for things that we are responsible for.

Working to gain insight can help with battling cognitive distortions, and things like journaling can definitely help. Sometimes it is necessary to speak with a counselor to really make some progress in working through these common, but unhelpful, thinking patterns.

The next thing Johnson recommends* is searching for what we can control. When we start looking for what we can control, we take our focus off of the problem and start to look for solutions. This is empowering in multiple ways, and sometimes we can even find things that we can influence or control in the areas that we thought were beyond our control.

It isn’t helpful to suggest that people just “get over it” when it comes to a focus on problems that we can’t actually control. I definitely don’t want that to be the takeaway from this blog. What we can do is decide to shift our focus toward what we can control, and this is a process that we often have to do again and again until we finally get it. We can also remind ourselves in distressing and uncontrollable situations that we can only control our reaction. These small shifts in focus take time to master, but they can give us our power back.
*https://psychcentral.com/blog/coping-with-what-you-cant-control