self-care 🤗
✨ self-care tips for myself which might help you as well. be aware of that every person’s needs are different. even if you have similar struggles as I do, the things which work for us are very plausible to differ. ✨
make your self-care list when you’re okay. ✍🏽
when you’re in a low mood and you only have a few spoons, it is hard to decide on which activities you want to use them up for. it can help you if you make a list beforehand of some necessary things which are worth some spoons spending for.
to have a useful list, which is really useful to you, might take a while. it can mean days with hit and miss. if you’re feeling well enough to reconsider things, then do so. cross out the things which are not working for you. be concise with your list. mine is certainly not as long as this post. you shouldn’t be spending spoons on reading your self-care list alone when you’re in need for your self-care list.
contracts with yourself 📜
your self-care list can include not only things which might help in your bad days, but contracts with yourself: consisting of you, who are writing this in the present, and you, who is having a rough time. when we’re at our lowest, our judgement is not the best. it can be great to have help in the form of other people, such as friends, family and stay-in hospitals to take care of us, but in less severe cases or when help is not available, it can be a good thing to just listen to ourselves, the version of ourselves in the past.
habits 📆
routines are sequences of the things we do, and habits are things which we do now unconsciously. it is important to create good habits through going over some routines when we’re stable even if they feel difficult. if we manage to make them a habit, they will be easier for us to do, and, on our bad days, they can mean incredible help.
some good habits that might be good for the rest of us that I can think of: sleeping every night, drinking enough water, making your bed and don’t clutter it during the day, eating something every day.
nutrition 🥦
drink water. if you drink water regularly, you can avoid the headaches caused by dehydration. usually there’s a bottle of 2 liters of mineral water beside my bed, and I’m trying to drink it within 1-2 days. it is harder to do when I’m doing active semesters at uni with a lot of credits, as buying a little bottle of something every weekday is a choice I cannot afford. I pour tea in my used smaller bottles and bring them with me. it would be beneficial to invest in a drinking bottle, though. one you can pour hot liquid in it.
I buy a lot of frozen vegetables. they are healthier than just grabbing some chips and can be made without too much effort. oatmeals are even better when I’m on low energy. you just put it in a bowl, and add hot water. that’s it. I’m wary of salads, because when I’m fortunate enough to feel in advance a depressive episode coming, I’m trying not to buy food which are doomed to get spoiled quickly.
obesity
obese people can be malnurished, too, and it can weaken them more. don't starve yourself, be careful with extreme diets.
watch out for your skin. being obese will make your skin fold and irritate itself more. use some body lotion in those areas (armpits, under breasts, under stomach, thighs, wherever you need) after showering or changing clothes.
be careful with exercise. the key is to do it regularly, not to overdo it for quick weight loss. you should rest every other day when you wake up in the morning full of muscle strains. depending on your level of obesity and the extremity of some exercises you may do, you will be more vulnerable to injuries.
oh my. sleep. 💤
if you’re in a position that you can sleep at night, then take your opportunity. all-nighters were helpful for me in the stages of my life when I felt hypomanic, because it helped me to catch up with studying as I couldn’t bare myself to sleep anyway. but still, in the majority of times, it backfired me a lot. even when I slept during the day. if you only can sleep during the day, try to find a dark place to do so. blackout curtains can be gamechangers.
my go to way to have a good night’s sleep is to take 2 milligrams of Xanax or Frontin before sleep, but please, consult with your doctor and/or mental health professional about prescription drugs. it is certainly not the best way to handle nightmares and night terrors, but I am really yet to find a better solution than this.
try to fall asleep get cozy at the same time every day, for making those neuron paths in your brain. turn off the big lights, use smaller ones. I once bought a pack of string lightbulbs at Flying Tiger (Hungary). they were cheap and now they’re thrown over my bookshelf and turned on in the evenings.
herbal teas help me to an extent. I’m avoiding St. John’s wort, because it can cause problems with my antidepressant; please check for compatibilities with this herb—and any other herb, for that matter—if you’re taking medicines regularly. I mostly opt for lemon balm, lavender and valerian. sometimes I also buy over-the-counter valerian pills—I believe those are a European thing. it is recommended to take breaks with them, for e.q. taking them for three weeks, then not taking them for one.
if I have the energy, I take a hot bath in the evenings, especially if I’m done with uni after a long day. I don’t do it if I’m at a certain point of “exhausted”, if that makes sense. I need energy to get out of the bath tub. I mean “exhausted” both in the physical and in the mental way. if I’m not sure, then I don’t go.
get into your bed, put your blankets on yourself, close your eyes, and try to calm your mind with kind thoughts toward yourself. try it for a while. for a while. for a bit more. if it doesn’t work, don’t panic. get up, move a little, do some of your things, then try again.
if I’m more physically active throughout the day, the easier I can fall asleep.
I can’t afford “weighted blankets” as they are marketed but I pile up a bunch of blankets on my bed when I have the energy so later I can just go under them, and feel their pressure as someone would be hugging me.
when I’m active and doing studying, drawing or any other activity in my room which makes me move things and search for things a lot, I’m trying consciously not to pile up clutter on my bed. there’s a sad chair for this or even the floor, but the bed must be protected. I spent nights too many times on the floor being on my lows, because of this.
thinking. 💭
it’s a hard one. racing thoughts, intrusive thoughts, negative thoughts, self-blaming thoughts, memories from the past and the like. I’ve been struggling with them for quite some time, yet I have a lot, a lot to learn.
as a writer, my best solution yet came from my skills. when I’m bombarded with bad thoughts about my life, I try to find a quiet place if possible, even I lay onto my bed when I’m at home, and take my time to rewrite them in my head. even if they’re memories, especially if they’re memories, it can help. I can’t change the plot elements, as they are givens, but I can play with the focus and various narrative techniques to make the stories of my life to be about something else rather than the bad things.
journaling can help you with managing your thoughts, but I think it’s not for everyone, and, I believe that everyone should journal as it works for them instead of sticking to just one method. try them out, then decide for yourself.
Expressive Writing: Words that Heal by James W. Pennebaker and John Frank Evans, is a nice book I received a copy of as a gift from a psychology student at my university who weekly did hour-long talk therapy sessions with me through six weeks for her studies under the psychology faculty’s program. the book focuses on writing the bad things out, even making yourself cry, but helping you in the long run. it offers the reader various techniques to analyze them in time shifts and rewrite them from different perspectives and different verb tenses. I advise you to be cautious with this if your traumas are far too recent. it is highly dangerous to tear open the wounds when you don’t have the help, ability and tools to soothe yourself afterwards.
fear of the blank page is real. unhealthy perfectionism also often goes hand in hand with anxiety disorders and other mental health issues. back then it was more beneficial for me to journal in OneNote and the like rather than a nice notebook I might “ruin”. I’m at a point in my life where I’m actually using notebooks, but it really isn’t worth the terror if you are indeed afraid.
contrary to Pennebaker et al, I found it to be more useful to record the good and the abstract rather than the bad and the specific. sometimes, when my thoughts are just piling up for months and I’m in a stable state and in a safe environment, I write the bad things out in OneNote and revisit them strictly when I’m once again in a stable state and in a safe environment. but, routinely, I like filling my traditional journals with the things I found actually healing to just write down. throughout the weekdays, I jot down a few things which were good—having mineral water is almost always one of them. I just like it, ok—and at the end of the week I write a one-page long summary. I’m just being abstract. I had a period when I was just writing about my nails growing as an allegory to various things, e.q. there aren’t truly new starts, I can’t just rip off an entire fingernail and expect a new one to just magically appear. the act and the expectation both are wrong. you shouldn’t throw away things in your life at once, but you should slowly, carefully let them go. and, the new start will come, as it always does: as you trim your fingernails, eventually they will be entirely different then what they were five months ago. you just didn’t notice it because of its graduality. you should look for these hidden progresses in your life, too.
out of spoons 🥄
try not to feel guilt. please. you are not doing less than the others, as the others are having different lives, struggles and experiences in this existence from you. you’re struggling. when you manage to get up and change your clothing, it is very possible that you had put as much work in it as someone else had to accumulate for going on for an entire workday. people’s backgrounds, energy levels and health are very much different.
I put my clutter away from my bed. I’m trying not to worry about the mess around elsewhere, as I’m making myself conscious about my condition to shun the guilt away. it is tempting to clear my desk instead, where I can work, study and create, but you can’t pour from an empty cup, so I’m making sure that I leave my options open for whenever I really do need a nap, sleep, or just to put myself into a horizontal position.
do the minimum effort. if you are able to, meet your responsibilities, and don’t do the extra stuff. use your free time to rest. sometimes things which are considered to be relaxing are just too much sometimes, such as reading, playing video games, drawing, watching a series and talking/going out with your friends. these can be extremely exhausting for me when I’m in a low mood. instead, I recommend spending spoons on work to make ends meet and studying not to create too much student debt. then, when you’re home: just rest. and by, rest, I mean, rest. take your time to think. take a nap. have enough sleep.
I hope I could help a bit with these. ☔️🌈
