Discover Top Posts Tagged with #personal self care

Self Care Hours (A.K.A: Me, sitting on my bed, my ducky blanket wrapped around me, with my gay light on, a cup of what used to be iced soda but is now water because I drank all the soda but the ice has melted on the table next to me, and I'm working on my Undertale infodump.)

#personal self care

Personal self-care is more about self fulfillment needs, and may differ for everyone because of that. The first step is identify your own personal goals, and so from that I will indicate some of mine, and some major ones I know about.

Body Image

Masturbation

Hobbies

Trying New Things

Volunteering

Education

I’ve left these intentionally vague in the list, but I’ll discuss more about these personal things a bit.

Body Image has been touched on a bit in physical self-care, but when considered under personal, it’s more figuring out what you want to look like, and setting goals to accomplish that. This could mean developing your skills in make-up, saving up for plastic surgery, exercising more, getting your hair dyed, buying colored contacts, creating a new wardrobe – it’s about cultivating the look for who you want to be, not necessarily for health reasons. It’s a personal thing. Like, for me, I’m currently on a kick with pink hair and sun dresses.

Masturbation – yes, that’s on personal. Masturbation is a healthy act that can help some people sleep, or in my case, wake you up more. It usually releases a bunch of feel-good chemicals, and certainly for women it can also help to “clean things up” a bit in your system. I’m not sure if that’s also true of men, but I think the benefit of it just making you feel good afterwards is enough. I’m not putting it on emotional, because I don’t find I use it for emotional regulation, but that may be something for some of you readers.

Hobbies – this is all about what you enjoy, that you need to make time for. My list includes reading, writing, cosplay, video games, cooking, engaging in my fandom communities, and usually looking for new things in those areas (new foods to try, new fandoms to join, new ideas of things to write). For myself, I know I need to make more time for my personal novels, rather than my collaborative writing ventures (or roleplaying, as some of you may know it as). I have yet to make this time, but I have recognized this as a personal self-care thing I need to begin making more time for.

Trying New Things – it can be something close to things you already like, or something entirely new. By that I mean, if you’re a dedicated fan of a TV Series, you could look into other TV series that are similar. Or, you can look into hobbies from the TV Series itself. If there’s a lot of cooking in the show, perhaps see if you can improve your own cooking skills. Or, perhaps it’s about a sport – you could look into that sport on a hobby or amateur level. You can take inspiration for new things, from those things you like, it doesn’t have to be a great change. I tried Kopi coffee all because of a movie I watched, after all.

Volunteering is another way to reach personal fulfilment. There is an upcoming blog on Terror Management Theory that discusses a bit of how contributing to our communities can help with our personal mortality saliency, and so I’ll mention volunteering here as a way to reach personal fulfilment as it is giving back to the community in a way that is meaningful to you.

Then, there is education – I don’t necessarily mean formal education, like school, but just researching and studying things of interest. This also doesn’t have to be just a fully sedentary event, like reading a bunch of books. Maybe you want to learn archery? There’s no better way than going to ranges, getting a bow and arrow, and starting to practice it! Martial arts, dance, or fixing cars are also usually hands-on activities. There are more research based, like learning about ancient Egyptian religion, of course. It’s all about what calls to you, what you want to do within this life.

Personal is just that – personal.

Yet, it’s so important. The personal is so much of what makes you, you, so it’s hard to narrow it down. It absolutely ties into your self-care. If you aren’t doing what you feel you want to do in this life, you’re not going to be leading a very happy life. This will feed into so many of your other needs, and perhaps even help to organize them.

After all, how you want to look influences your physical needs.

Your ability to pursue your interests, influences your emotional situation.

Your interests can influence your social circles.

While I consider the physical needs to be the absolute necessary ones – you can expand on them more once you know who it is you want to be, what your personal desires are, then it all can shape around that.