Operation Self Care

Regular readers may remember Operation Fight Back  – my action plan of early 2014 to help me to cope following the breakdown of my marriage and subsequent illness – here’s a sample. I needed to be as well as I could be in order to cope with the impending search for, and move to, a new home, in addition to my continuing efforts to rebuild my life – studying, plans for self employment etc. As it turned out, there was much more with which I was going to have to cope.

My health, which is already an issue, has suffered greatly because of all of that and particularly the ‘straw and camel event’ of Spring 2015. You can read more about that here and here.

I’ve written about self care on several occasions – you can find those posts, should you wish, by clicking on ‘self care’ in the tag cloud on my homepage. Self care was once anathema to me. My experiences of abuse led me to believe that self care was self-indulgent and that to indulge oneself was very wrong – certainly, at least, it was very wrong to indulge MYself in any way. I learned that I should … must, flog myself, metaphorically speaking, until I bled.

I’ve undergone several periods of counselling in the years since my abuse was disclosed and I cut myself off from what remained of my family. In the early days of counselling I learned to do away with the word should, replacing it instead with could. I also learned to have compassion for myself and that self care is an essential part of life. I learned that I am worthy of care. I also learned, after years of giving from an ’empty place’, that you cannot take care of others if you do not take care of yourself. I do have a tendency to forget the latter, and need to be reminded of it!

I know that self care is key to my being able to keep going … and ultimately to fulfil that dream of truly living. (I also know that I can’t do this alone and will need the help of others, but that is for another post.) There is much to say about self care and I know I will return to it. For now here are the basic tenets of Operation Self Care:

• I will take care of myself physically – that includes showering regularly and brushing my teeth (depression can make you smelly!)
• I will not withdraw but will connect with others as far as possible – using Twitter and my blog to supplement RL contact
• I will write, write and WRITE some more – you can read here why writing is so important to me. I realise now that I have been continuing to let it fall off the bottom of my to do lists and how unhappy that has made me. I can still struggle to prioritise my needs, but I am determined from now on to always prioritise my writing. For starters, that means blogging daily, as far as is humanly possible.
• I will do all I can to nourish myself with home-cooked food, despite my lack of money. You can read more about my new found connection with food and cooking – after abuse disconnected me from it – here.
• I will always PACE MYSELF, I will acknowledge that I am a #spoonie, and that I am facing really challenging circumstances that would challenge anyone.
• I will try not to fear judgement and will remember to tell myself that if someone thinks they could do better, that I’d like to see them try 😉
• In addition to writing, I will consider other ways to incorporate things that make me happy into my life.
• Exercise will form part of Operation Self Care, as it did Operation Fight Back, more about that in a future post.

As I have been writing. a veggie chilli has been simmering nicely in the kitchen and a second load of laundry is doing its thing. I have twenty more minutes on the clock* before I know I must stop, take time to eat and make every effort to unwind (it doesn’t come easy), before an early night. My housing support officer, newly appointed in light of the ‘straw and camel event’ and my subsequent decline, is visiting me tomorrow morning and I need to be in reasonable shape to best cope with that. She will be bringing me my first food parcel, after referring me to a local food bank; I’m still trying to process that.

*I can feel my #spoonie symptoms starting to make more of a nuisance of themselves. I hope to publish this post, send a tweet or two and rustle up a quick email reply to a pal, before the sands run out…

TTFN x