Compassionate Self-Care – a sustainable approach to healthy communities
“Self-care is an active process of development that can challenge a person to face the stickiest parts of themselves. It is prioritising yourself for the benefit of you but also for your community.”
_ Shannon Green “On Self – and Community Care”
Self-Care has become a buzz word with the growth of the wellbeing industry. If you are an Instagram user you might instantly think of #self-care with its display of images of gorgeous looking salads, scented candles, face-masks, or luxury items designed to make you feel valued and spend money. Please don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with scented candles or healthy salads but this is an extremely limited and often not very useful way of viewing self-care.
My preferred version of describing self-care is the process of listening and tending to the needs of mind and body with compassion and kindness.
How do I know what my needs are?
It is not always easy to recognise one’s needs. Often, our minds are full of conditioned ideas of how we should feel and what is and isn’t acceptable to ask for. We so easily compare ourselves with others and in the process make ourselves wrong for feeling the way we do.
Some needs are easy to recognise, such as the need to hydrate, to pee, to eat or to sleep. However, even in these areas of our life we often ignore our body’s messages and keep pushing ahead. So, the first step we can take in our self-care journey is to tend to our physiological needs.
Other needs, however, are trickier. How do we know, for example, if our tiredness and sluggishness means our body requires exercise to get back into gear or if it is in dire need of deep rest? How do we know, if we should say “yes” to helping a friend or put our own needs first? How do we know if the kindest thing we can do for ourselves is to cancel the new project or face the challenge we have set ourselves so we can grow and be inspired?
No one-size-fits-all
We all have different needs at different times. An act of self-care for me might be setting healthy boundaries and learning to say “no” to social visits while for you, it might mean making the effort to invite and connect with friends so you feel less isolated. For me, it might mean to eat less - for you, to eat more. I might benefit from treating myself to a massage and taking time out, while you thrive when putting on your walking shoes and climb that mountain.
As you can see, practicing self-care is not as straight forward and simple as it first appears. It requires self-awareness and the ability to lean into “tricky” feelings and sensations without grasping for judgement.
Why COMPASSIONATE Self-Care?
Just like we have different needs and hence need to action different self-care practices, we might also have different reasons for why we practice self-care to begin with. Maybe we are motivated by guilt about having let ourselves become overworked, unhealthy, and cranky. Maybe we are forced to because we cannot cope any longer with the pressures of work or home-life. Maybe we recognise it as essential for our mental health but underneath feel apprehensive and disappointed in ourselves.
The definition of compassion, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is the "sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it."
In compassionate self-care we become conscious of our own distress coupled with a commitment to alleviate it – for our own good and those around us. We do this by learning to hold a safe space for ourselves, or for each other, so we can be courageous and face our “tricky” feelings. We support ourselves (each other) to lean into our vulnerabilities, doubts and fears while resisting the temptation to place judgement on what we feel. Compassionate self-care invites us to deeply care for our own wellbeing and tend to our needs kindly. It reminds us of our shared humanity and that we are not alone in our struggles. We are committed to unconditionally love ourselves despite being humanly imperfect.
Compassionate self-care teaches us to say “YES” to ourselves and stand firmly on this earth, with curiosity, openness, acceptance, and love. It is the perfect foundation from which to grow loving and sustainable relationships with others and the world around us.
Photo by Shane Rounce on Unsplash