To start off with, I want to explain what self-care means (at least in my opinion anyway). Self-care is literally caring for one's self. That goes without saying. It means things like showering, brushing your teeth, eating healthy and getting a good amount of exercise. It also means mentally, and that's what I want to focus more on in this post.
The first 'hack' I would say is actually listen to your body. This goes for physical care and mental care. I know that physical is slightly easier to maintain, because you don't always immediately know what will help your mental state. If you start to smell bad and your hair gets greasy, you know it's time for a shower and a hair wash. If your breath smells bad or your mouth tastes a little bad, then you know it's probably time to brush your teeth. It's so much easier to listen to your body with physical self-care that mental self care often isn't thought about because it's more difficult to keep up with.
My tip would be mainly trial and error. There are things that have been proven to help state of mind, and actually, physical self-care can boost your mental state pretty drastically. I've often found that if I'm feeling low having a shower perks me up as well as getting a good night's sleep and exercising. Yes there are things that might work for some people and not for others. For example, a bath may be very relaxing to some people, with some lightly scented candles and a LoFi playlist playing quietly in the corner, maybe even a nice bath bomb or bubble bath to aid in the relaxation. For others, this may be their worst nightmare. It's about knowing the things you enjoy and find relaxing and acting on those, not what you feel should help because you saw it on Pinterest.
Speaking of Pinterest, this site can be an amazing place to find lots of different tips on how to help with mental self care. While I literally just spoke about how you shouldn't look at sites as a bible where things you find HAVE to work, but if you don't know what's good for you, sites like Pinterest are good at collecting lots of different ideas that work for many different people. There are also quite a few science-y posts, that tell you what things have been proven to work, and while, again, they might not work for everyone, it's nice to see things have a bit of evidence backing them up. These kinds of posts include aromatherapy solutions (scented candles that include notes proven to help with negative moods). There are tips on how to get a good night's sleep if that's something you struggle with... literally anything you want to know about, Pinterest will definitely have more than just a couple of things about it.
Another thing I would like to stress is self-care does not always equal spending money. Yes, it may make you feel better for having bought yourself something nice, but it's not going to fix any problems. Unless it's something like a cheap face mask or some new pyjamas or something that's actually going to make you mentally feel better, then I personally don't see the point. It'll feel good for about ten seconds and then you realise you still have the problems, you're just poorer. I can use this example with the laptop incident I talked about in my fixations post. Yeah, it would have made me feel better and excited about receiving something in the post that was expensive and that I've wanted for a long time, but once I'd have finished setting it up and got bored of playing around with it, then I would be back to were I was before. If I spend less than a fraction of that money on a face mask instead, then yeah all my problems will be there but I will feel refreshed and energised enough to face them. I think the point to this 'hack' is basically me trying to say that money doesn't solve problems. It can help, sure, but it should by no means be the thing that you need to make you happy so you can buy materialistic things to try and make things better.
One of the biggest things I want to point out is being safe. Safety is the most important thing to watch when practising self-care. It's really important to notice when things you're doing are self-destructive and work on those (I made a post on that which you can go and read here). When my depression was at it's worst and I wasn't looking after myself as much as I should have been, I wasn't being safe. I wasn't looking before crossing a road, I didn't care that my baths or showers were too hot, and I never made sure that I was being safe when I was using scissors or knives, and when I was self-harming I wasn't caring whether the blades were clean, I wasn't cleaning my cuts afterwards... I just want to stress how important your safety is. Self-care will not mean anything if you're not being safe. If you're working out and your body is telling you to calm down, then calm down. If your shower is too hot, turn the heat down. If you're self harming, firstly, please try and get help, but secondly be safe with it.
The conclusion to this post is that self-care is very important to our well being. We need to look after ourselves both physically and mentally. Even for those who don't suffer with a mental illness should practice in looking after their mental health with a couple of scented candles and a face mask to de-stress every now and then. It's good practice, and something that we should do more. With my depression, self-care became such a low priority. I'd go days without showering, or weeks without changing my bed sheets... When I eventually got the motivation to do these things it boosted my mood so much that it really makes you wonder why your brain doesn't actually make you crave self-care like you crave carbs when you're low on energy.
I hope this post is okay, I'm still a little out of sorts with coming off my antidepressants and I'm really not doing too well. I'm trying though, getting stronger and better by the day. Friday's post I will try and do something either based on my experience with antidepressants, or a 'beat the taboo' kind of post where I want to talk about how many misconceptions people have about those who struggle with mental health illnesses. Let me know if you have any ideas.
Until next time,
-M x
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