3 Things That Feel Like Self-Care (But Might Be Avoidance)
You’ve probably heard people mention the phrase “self care” before, but what does it mean? If we want to be technical, the definition from google says “the practice of taking action to preserve or improve one's own health.” How do we do that though? Well, to answer that we have to take into account what “good mental health” means because the two go hand-in-hand and are connected by mindfulness. Mindfulness as a practice is remaining present in the current moment even when it doesn’t feel good to learn to tolerate it. Meaning, just because you hate (and I mean reallllyyyy hate) the taste of green vegetables but your doctor has told you that you need to start integrating it into your diet you shouldn’t just shove it down your throat and curse him every time you do so. That also won’t encourage you to continue doing it, won’t feel very good in the moment and eventually you’ll stop, future consequences be damned!
But why should you want to stay present while eating those slimly green vegetables? Simply because we love torture ourselves! Just kidding…even though it sometimes truly feels that way! But we want to learn to tolerate these uncomfortable moments because it gives us the opportunity to decrease our suffering by helping us to experience it from a different perspective (maybe different cooking techniques or seasonings could make it more tolerable!) but we get in the way from figuring that out when we try to rush through the discomfort to get it over with ASAP. So here are a few things that we might do that “feel” like self care, and in many ways could be! But in others may be masquerading as avoidance:
Playing video games
Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE VIDEO GAMES. Arguably, probably too much at times. Video games have this ability to help us forget the world around us and submerge ourselves in a totally new world where the possibilities are endless with what we can accomplish (outside of what the Dev.’s have coded ofc). This escape can be exactly what we need when we are in a situation when we’re trying to kill time BUT if it’s our vice that we use 24/7 to avoid feeling discomfort, alone, thinking etc. all the time before attempting to tolerate that not good feeling first then it might become more maladaptive than adaptive. So, maybe put down those headphones and open up those curtains!
Checking off everything on your to-do list
Hello my fellow productivity warriors! Listen, accomplishing tasks can definitely feel good and give you that self of confidence with having completed something HOWEVER if you are accomplishing tasks in spite of your health (i.e. staying late everyday after work to send one last email, not sleeping every night until you’ve checked off everything from your list) then you create this recipe for burnout and if you’re anything like me, resentment towards yourself or others who are able to walk away with an incomplete to-do list. You need rest, and relaxation which you may not know how to do. We can talk about it and game play skills to engage in to help with this! 🙂
Eating extra cheesy pizza
I KNOW I KNOW. I hate thinking about this. I love pizza. I mean, I’m from Brooklyn, ofc I love pizza!!!! The idea of eating it to wash away my sorrows with cheesy goodness sounds like heaven however does not solve my sadness long term! Only short term, and the problem with solving our emotions short term is it doesn’t teach us how to tolerate them or live with them and it creates this habit of increased urges to eat because now my body has learned when I’m sad I should eat a pizza and that’s really hard to say no to 🙁I wish pizza solved everything but alas, it is just a delicious short term bandaid to a long term problem.
