Mental Health and Self-Care: the new power couple
One of the first questions I like to ask clients I work with takes some by surprise. It helps me steer our entire therapeutic journey. It’s simple…and very complex.
Tell me about your relationship with you?
Typically, after a long stare back at me like I have eight heads, they respond: “Um…good question. I don’t think about it much.”
Exactly. How we relate to ourselves doesn’t exactly stay top of mind. Others, more likely.
Yet how we relate to ourselves—how we treat, take care of, and talk to ourselves directly impacts everything else in life. Everything. Including our mental health.
Why? Because we can’t live and give out of an empty vessel.
Four years ago, myself and two dear friends founded and hosted the Self-Care Workshop. It was powerful because we realized how desperate our souls, especially as women, are for deep, true self-care.
I’m not talking mani-pedis and facials and wine nights with the girls. Those are all fabulous and can be nurturing, but let’s call a spade a spade. Those are forms of pampering…and pampering is a good thing! Yet we’ve sold self-care short if we deem it expensive beauty treatments and indulgences. We approach it as a luxury—the stuff that ensues out of an abundance of time, energy, and resources.
And yet I firmly believe the less of those three resources we have, the more important it is to fight for self-care. Our mental health depends on it.
Actually, I’d like to rebrand self-care as self-compassion because I feel self-compassion looks more like true, life-giving self-care than spa treatments do.
So what is self-compassion?
Self-compassion is the practice of befriending ourselves. It’s learning to think of, talk to, and treat ourselves with kindness and compassion like we would do a friend we deeply care about.
Yet self-compassion also takes notice of some important things.
It recognizes our hurt and suffering.
It moves towards this pain with a kind and open heart instead of trying to fix it, shame it, or numb it.
It is built on the foundation that the human condition is fragile and this frailty is the connective tissue that binds us all together.
Guess what? Whereas “self-care” in a traditional, indulgent context has been tough for most of us, self-compassion is available and necessary at every turn. (Oh, and free!)
My own mental health journey has been wrought with peaks and (more) valleys. However, by the literal grace of God, I’ve always fought to protect my self-care, namely writing, movement, and meditation practices.
As I’ve learned to befriend myself along the way, I’ve stayed tethered to truth and tenderness. I’ve also had some rockstar therapists who have made all the difference.
Learning to extend compassion to yourself and truly nurture your whole wellbeing takes exercise. But, if you are ready to connect to true self-care and compassion, I hope you’ll join me in the Practice, my enneagram-based self-care membership program. It’s a privilege and joy to support you in your story!