Saying No: The Ultimate Self Care
This is a kind of overworked topic right? We have all seen those articles and posts about how if you just use a face mask and take a bubble bath once a week your life will be so much better. Relax! Take a load off! Enjoy your life! And we have all seen the pushback pieces on how self-care is more about making sure you are eating right and taking care of your body. Meal prep! Eight hours of sleep! Kale! While all of this is important, some other things need to be taken into account. And that is what this post is all about today.
As you all have heard me talk about many times before, I have some chronic illness issues. This doesn’t mean I am always sick and have a cold, it means that I have illnesses that will never go away. This also means that I have to take care of myself in very specific ways if I want to feel good and have as few flare-ups as possible. Because of this, I do a lot of self-care. Some of it is superficial (like face masks) since my endometriosis makes my skin super red, blotchy, and bumpy. I take a lot of Epsom salt and CBD baths to help combat pain. Yoga is a huge part of this as well. And while all of these things are great and I truly enjoy them, there are some parts of the self-care routine that I kind of hate, but are necessary to me feeling well. I have to avoid certain foods and can’t drink hard liquor very often (or much of it when I do) because it usually will trigger a flare-up immediately. I often take naps and have to stay in as opposed to being a true 23-year-old out at the bars every weekend. Perhaps the biggest kicker of all if that I often have to say no to things like going out with friends (even just for coffee), covering shifts at work, and so many other things because my body starts to shut down when I even think about overworking myself in any capacity. One thing I have been slowly learning, however, is that everyone should be treating their bodies like they have a chronic illness.
That probably sounds super odd, doesn’t it? If you are young able-bodied, why would you want to act like an invalid? The main rule of having a chronic illness is to listen to your body and do what it needs, which every single person reading this right now could probably do more of. And learning to say no is a huge part of self-care. There should be less obligatory yes’s and more “I am just really not feeling up to it tonight.” I have been seeing so many inspirational quotes and things all over the internet lately about making sure you are taking time for yourself and stretching yourself too thin, and it’s been great. In a culture where there is not a high value on work-life balance, we must try and take some of that power back. Listen to your body and make sure you are resting, not eating things that make you feel gross, and exercising in a way that feels good. At the end of the day, true self-care is doing what makes your body and mind feel the best that it can.
Now for the last, and most tricky, part: mental health. Being in chronic pain takes a toll on my mental health. Even more so when I let myself take on too much and my body ends up suffering and being in more than it normally would have. But even if you do not have chronic pain, your mental health affects the rest of your body and can make or break how you feel. So the last step in the self-care process is making sure you are taking care of your mental health. It can be big-picture things like going to therapy, taking your meds when you are supposed to, and avoiding situations that trigger you. They can also be smaller steps like leaving a toxic job, not being friends with people who make you feel bad about yourself, not following people on social media who make you feel bad about yourself, and ultimately choosing to get rid of all things (that you can) that make you feel like shit. It is easier said than done for sure, but making tiny steps every day will enable you to say no and get rid of toxic things on a bigger scale the more you practice.
I firmly believe that by learning to say no without feeling like you have to make up some excuse is one of the best forms of self-care we can all do. Taking care of our minds and bodies is the way to make life a more enjoyable experience. By saying no when you need to, it will make the times when you say yes far more enjoyable. Every single person gets burnt out and run down now and then, and it is very important to recognize when that is happening and take some time for yourself to recharge. Life is so much better when you can enjoy things to their fullest.
Madey