Self-care…the stories

An all out there share about my own story with self-care, the lack of it and the lessons learnt.

When shit hit the fan in 2014 and my dad came to visit me quite randomly and out of the blue to tell me had cancer, I cried and sat on his knee like a little girl.  At the age of 34.

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

Shortly after, me and the boyfriend who I saw as the love of my life at the time, split up after nearly 7 years together.

During all this (and for a long time afterwards), I had no idea whatsoever that I’d been at the point of burnout for over a year. Though the insane number of hours I was working (always over 50, peaking at 75) and the increasing time sat at a screen (laptop, tv and now a few years into the smart phone) as well as being utterly worn out, wiped out, exhausted, requiring copious amounts of redbull plied into vodka on nights out or extra naps and very long sleeps anytime I spent days out with friends/family and kids might have given a slightly more awakened and conscious person an inkling.

Between Christmas and New Year, I packed up my life as I knew it and moved 40 miles closer to work so I could continue working the insane hours under extreme amounts of pressure and stress, balancing what I knew was required for a team to be motivated and perform well with the hierarchy who had absolutely no clue. Oh, and an industry that was going through significant change and also, its own mounting pressures and stresses.

Back into city life after many years away and living on my own for the first time ever, my outgoings soared.

I was already miserable and depressed in the midst of a cold, wet winter and the bluest month of the year, January.

And so I told myself I could no longer afford the luxury of self-care. Afterall, I needed a few hundred quid a month to fork out for all the cocktails I was drinking on a Saturday with each new friend who excitedly came to visit.

Once I’d moved back into city life, I had no shortage of offers to visit for boozy weekends and a trip to Jamie Oliver’s restaurant. Tied in with a shopping habit I had for most weekends.

Such is the life of a burnt-out person, stressed, heartbroken and with the fate of my Dad’s life hanging on whether or not they’d caught the cancer in time (later turned out they hadn’t). All I was looking for and was interested in at this time was distraction. And, unknowingly, to be as numbed out as possible from it all.

It never occurred to me back then that I might heal my broken heart.  Take time to check in with how I was really feeling.  Heaven forbid, I consider what it was I really wanted and review (at the peak of success…well, in societal terms anyway) my work situation.

Now was the time, if ever, to make some much needed changes. Take a break. Of any kind.  Pull it back, re-evaluate, adjust my sails, and align with a new life, create some new goals, figure out my priorities.  Embrace a whole new world of possibility that was opening to me.

But, nope.  The choice I made at the time only came at a financial cost – or as I saw it. It never occurred to me that there was an abundance and range of self-care available to me that didn’t cost a dime (blog post on “self-care that doesn’t cost a dime” coming soon).

A monthly trip for an array of beauty treatments, a bi-monthly trip to the hairdressers and occasional day out at a spa or overnight weekend away somewhere. If I was lucky, an annual holiday.

It never occurred to me that self-care be more frequent than that, weekly, let alone an essential part of my day. Right at the beginning, in the middle and at the end of the day, like it is now.

At the time I was hell bent on telling myself that I couldn’t afford it. What I later came to realise was that I couldn’t afford not to.

18 months later, I went on to have a breakdown.

You’d think I might wake up then. Get the message. Tune in. Pay attention.

Hell, no.

By this time, all I felt was trapped in my own life. I couldn’t have been more disconnected. Disconnected from myself, disconnected from those around me. No one noticed. I didn’t notice.

18 months after that, there were a small number of changes I’d made. I’d stopped taking drugs (which got replaced with even heavier drinking than ever before…quitting the heavy drinking, which got replaced with glutenous eating) and put myself on a shopping ban.  No more monthly Primark sprees for this little Horrox, “I can’t afford it” the story continued.

I switched food shops from Tesco to Aldi where I found myself saving a whopping 50% of my monthly spend.

By this time, although I still hadn’t got thee message, I received a message. Something big was coming.  I had no idea what. I knew deep down that it meant I would no longer see the high levels of income and free spending that I had become accustomed to.  But I had absolutely no idea what.

Though this came from a place of fear, I started to scrimp and scrape like never before, squirreling away money for that rainy day I’d always heard people talk about but never quite knew what it meant.

In June 2018, 3 months after my dad died of what, in the end, became an aggressive form of cancer at a young age and only several months of me officially being diagnosed with what I kept now being told was “just a case of Classic Migraine”, there I was, disabled by illness, unable to get out of bed never mind get myself into work.

Barely any self-care in place at all, no routines and no practices to help the frightful situation I now found myself in.

Fast forward to now and it feels as if my whole life revolves around self-care, self-care to me is a priority, no longer an after-thought. Self-care, as I see it, means taking care of my physical health and body, being mindful of my mind and thoughts, including spiritual practices and learning to regulate my emotions.

In my time of doing this, I’ve been shocked to discover that self-care is something that is often seen as selfish, or, as in my own case, costly and too expensive. I’m at a loss for words when others tell me they don’t have time to look after themselves when I know all too well the cost and sacrifice of not doing just that.

Photo by Jamie Haughton on Unsplash

It’s such a big subject, with so many angles I could take when it comes to writing about this much needed and undervalued topic. I feel like there will be more blogs to follow in time, but this seems a good place to start.

If I had one wish right now on the back of all I’ve endured and learned, it would be for you to give the following questions some serious contemplation:

What does self-care mean to you?

What stories do you tell yourself about it?

How do you know when you’re running on empty?

What do you see as signs of burnout or approaching burnout?

What feelings does the thought of a daily self-care practice conjure up in you?

What belief system do you hold about putting your needs first?

How does it make you feel to think that you have to feature top of the list (or at least somewhere near) to achieve this?