A Page From My Book of Life Hacks
Sounds like one of those big “DUH” types of things, but I assure, I have to remind myself of this a whole lot. I find that I’m putting myself last more often then not. Hell, sometimes I’m not even on the list. I literally SUCK at caring about myself.
This is what I do, I buy myself a shirt or some type of food & I think that’s caring about myself. I’m like ahhhh yes, this is nice & then the clothes go in my closet & the food is gone and I still feel empty & unfulfilled. IMAGINE THAT. After my most recent therapy session was over & I was sitting with all the thoughts that had been stirring up throughout the session, I realized that I literally hate myself. I do not take care of myself. I don’t do hardly anything to make me love me more. I just exist to myself. I go through the daily motions as a mom and a wife and I have completely lost myself in that. And I think it all started in my childhood. I grew up feeling “tossed around” so to say. I am grateful to everyone who loved me and tried to make things better for me, but going from place to place when the only place a kid should be is home with their parents, really just gave me a negative outlook towards myself more than anything else. I obviously realized that outlook was wrong now, but that’s what I think started me kind of just making myself smaller. I didn’t want to be a burden. I’ve always been one to try to overachieve & take on as much as I can. A lot of my worth has always been tied to what I get done, how much I can help, just things that it shouldn’t be. So as I’ve been realized that, I’ve also been realizing how much time I spend minimizing my wants and needs because of how little I care about myself.
Back to my last post & the things I touched on from KC Davis, this goes hand in hand with those. As hard as it is to believe, even when someone that was supposed to care, couldn’t care the way they were supposed to, that doesn’t make you less. That doesn’t mean you aren’t worth caring for.
Take a look at the ways you care for yourself & if they are truly helping you love yourself. If you’ve never heard of love languages, I highly suggest looking into that. Here is a little quiz to figure those out! If you know your love languages, PERFECT! This seems like common sense, but we need to care for ourselves in a way that aligns with our love languages. My love language is quality time with a side of acts of service & a sprinkle of physical touch. So one thing I just started recently is taking time for myself, by myself, OUT OF THE HOUSE, & I’m trying to do it once a week. That is my quality time and acts of service. For physical touch I have a night time routine of dry brushing, lotion, my face routine, and brushing my hair. One thing I learned through my night time routine is how much doing those physical things for myself really helped me to connect my mind with my body. 10/10 suggest starting there, even if your love language isn’t physical touch. I slowly built up my nighttime routine so it wasn’t as overwhelming. For someone with ADHD, care tasks that are specifically for yourself can seem very overwhelming so starting with one thing & working toward doing that consistently is a GREAT! Then you can add things on as you see best for yourself!
The biggest thing also is just being honest with yourself. I didn’t even realize how much I was lying TO MYSELF about so many things. Literally to the point that I was totally fine with just neglecting my own needs. I truly believe that a lot of us do that, especially moms. It’s just in our nature to put our kids before ourselves, but I think we take that to the extreme and we go “all or nothing” on ourselves. The kids get all of us and we get none. And trust me that isn’t benefitting anyone… EVER. So finding harmony in that area, filling your cup so that you can fill others, that whole schpeel I’m sure you’ve heard a billion times.
So let’s be honest with ourselves, let’s love ourselves the way we like to be loved, & let’s just have a freaking GOOD YEAR! Kay? Kay!