In a world driven by noise, we are constantly struggling to hear. We actively listen like pros and we wear hearing aids like it’s our job. We rely on nonverbal cues and we shift our heads from side to side to home in on voices or environmental noise that’ll help us hear voices more clearly or filter out more of the background noise . As easy as it is for us to descend quickly into silence by removing our hearing aids, we can’t drop into a peaceful place as readily. This week, we share our self-care tips that we use to help ourselves return to a sense of inner calm.
Julie’s Tips
I am currently overstimulated, overworked and overextended. I am in need of the thing I abhor almost as much as the University of Notre Dame football program – “self-care”. Those empty words that are bandied about too casually for my taste and emblazoned on stickers, tote bags, magnets, candles, and t-shirts. An empty concept that everyone seems to know what it means yet no one can define it succinctly.
I hate the term “self-care”.
But I do it anyway.
Here is the list of the things I do to practice that loathsome “self-care” thing in an effort to lessen the stress and strain of living life with a disability – all but one do not rely on my having to hear a thing:
- Naps. I don’t know how people get through life without them. I take a near daily nap every afternoon ranging in duration from roughly 15 minutes to an hour depending on my energy levels. This restorative practice is critical for me to let my brain rest so I can carry on with some coherence through the remainder of the afternoon and evening. It rarely impacts my sleeping through the night, which affirms why I needed a nap in the first place.
- Journaling. I write almost daily and when I have gone a few too many days without spending time writing in a journal, working on a personal writing project, or pecking out a blog post, I can physically feel the words backing up in my brain and becoming a jumbled bowl of alphabet soup. I spend most of my day talking – either socially or as part of my job as an educator – but “getting my words out” through writing is a relief that is necessary to clear the clutter from my brain in a way that conversation cannot satisfy.
- Music. I start my work day mornings – and most of the others – with a dance party. ABBA is a mainstay on the play list, and other songs pop in and out depending on my mood. This morning, for example, I started with “Does Your Mother Know?” by ABBA, shifted over to some “Che Gelida Manina” from the opera, La Boheme; and belted out some “R E S P E C T” with Aretha as I assembled my lunch prior to sliding out the door to the aptly named, “Slide” by the Goo Goo Dolls.
- Energy Work. The peace I gain from honoring my Southern Italian Strega ancestry envelopes me in a veil of calm. I meditate almost daily prior to retiring for the evening. I find that it helps ground me and enhances a deeper sleep, especially when I am struggling to bring my racing thoughts under control. I frequently align my chakras and add in a cord cutting practice to release any problematic energetic attachments that have formed throughout the day. I end my evening ritual with a tarot or oracle card reading – either for myself or as a practice exercise in preparation for upcoming clients seeking insight through my work as a spiritual medium and card reader.
- Reading. I have a perfect reading streak on my Kindle that I am pretty sure spans at least 300+ weeks at this point. I love traditional, physical books – and do read them as well – but the ease of use with an e-reader has made it much easier to weave in joyful and stolen moments of reading in the midst of increasingly chaotic days.
And in conclusion, I restate my disdain for the term, “self-care”. There is something fundamentally wrong in a society where we are all overstimulated, overworked, and overextended – and the offered solution is the overused, trite, and empty advice called “self-care”. Interesting that rather than address what is causing the overstimulation, overworking, and overextension as a systemic problem, the onus is put right back on the individual to find ways to manage an existing, chaotic, and unhealthy climate through employing “self-care”. I have a lot to say about this, but will save it for another blog entry in the future.
In the meantime, maybe I will dial up an unsuspecting Brad on FaceTime…and I will launch into one of my impassioned, patented, and epic rants…I always feel better after a good rant…I get my energy out and am simultaneously humored by the horror on his face…oh damn it, my rants are (gasp!) “self-care”!
Brad’s Tips
(Julie spared her partner-in-crime a pop-Facetime call! Whew…)
For me, self-care comes down to three things: meditating, lifting, and reading.
I’ve already written about meditation elsewhere, so I’ll spill only a little cyber-ink on that subject here. To quote a great 80s sage “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while you could miss it.” And while I meditate with my eyes shut, I feel that is what meditation does for me. If I’m honest, life moves a little too quickly for my poor introverted self. Meditation gives me a chance to slow down, calm down, and reset myself so that I have a snowball’s chance in Death Valley of being able to make my way through a world not made with my needs in mind. I meditate every morning and it sets the tone for the day. It’s the one thing I do every day.
The next tip is something I don’t do every day. Just five to six days a week. This self-care habit took longer and sometimes feels less like self-care and more like self-torture. I got my first weight bench in middle school. I didn’t use it regularly. It came with me when I moved in with friends in college, though. And survived my half-dozen moves in as many years after I graduated. But it wasn’t until about a decade ago that it became a regular thing.
LIke everyone, I’ve gone through some trying times. And I’m not talking about math class. When I finally was able to set up a regular exercise habit it did wonders for both my mental and physical health. And I was fortunate enough to have that habit firmly established when the pandemic hit. With a new bench, heavier weights, and a regimen given to me by a personal trainer, I was able to take all the frustration, all the fear, all the anger and fuel my workouts. Not all self-care is passive or even calming.
That’s sometimes true for my last tip: reading. You ever scream at a book because some nincompoop of a protagonist is making a dumb-ass decision? You ever throw a book across the room because the ending was…unsatisfactory? I have. I feel seen by this Strange Planet comic. And it really is relaxing even when I’m mad.
Because I don’t have to actively listen.
As I’ve written about in blogs and talked about on shows, listening is hard work for me. Be it friend or foe, human or dog, or just the world around me, having to actively listen all day is exhausting. Sometimes I need a break.
Reading provides that. It also provides an escape, or an informative story, or just flat out magical world that I sometimes wish I could move into even though I know the Trollocs would eat me in two seconds flat. But while the subject matter may at times be fantasy, the benefits are always firmly rooted in reality. It’s been proven that reading increases empathy. And it also gives me perspectives not my own. This is invaluable for my fervor to learn…well, anything. Reading allows me to learn how to be mentally healthy, lifting allows me to learn how to be more physically healthy, and meditation allows me to learn how to be spiritually healthy. Self-care is a healthy habit.
A self-care habit.
Something that helps everyone.
There’s no right answer
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