Self-Care: Becoming Your Own Best Friend

Need someone to work extra days? Ask me. Someone who’ll clean up the place because we’ve scheduled an open house? Sure. I’ll even bring the cleaning supplies. Need someone to baby-sit your kids while you go away for a weekend? I’ll do it. Stay late? Cook extra? Loan money? Run an errand? Give up my bed, my book, my best outfit?

You bet.

“This was my life,” said Sharon, 42. “I thought I had to do anything and everything people asked. Even if they didn’t ask, I’d find ways to accommodate them. And if I couldn’t, I felt guilty.”

Sharon was an expert, no-holds-barred, genuine “accommodater.” Somewhere along the line she learned that her needs weren’t important. In fact, she had been accommodating others for so long and doing it so well, she didn’t even know what her needs were. 

What she did know was that she was unhappy, that she sometimes felt angry and almost always felt guilty. She realized she allowed people to use her, but she didn’t know how to say no.

“To me, self-care had something to do with giving myself breast exams,” she said. “If someone mentioned boundaries, I thought they meant property lines.”

“Self-care is an attitude toward ourselves and our lives that says, I am responsible for myself,” wrote Melody Beattie, author of Codependent No More. It doesn’t mean you become selfish, cold, and dispassionate.

But you first become compassionate with yourself.

To practice self-care you must continually ask the question, “What do I need to do to take care of myself?”

To be sure, self-care can take the form of gifts to yourself and pleasurable activities, but it can also mean work. For example, you may need to change some behavior or take care of some responsibility. Sometimes just saying “no” is the hardest thing you have to do. Especially early on when new behaviors are as foreign as clothes are to cats.

Self-care also means asking others for what you need and want, everything from returning an iron that doesn’t work to requesting for the alone time that you need.

Practicing self-care means you become your own best friend, confidante, personal counselor and spiritual advisor. One thing is true: practicing self-care will always improve any situation you are in.

 Following are some self-care qualities:

• Being financially responsible. This
  means being aware of your financial situation and taking responsibility for living within it.
• Taking care of yourself physically. Eating healthfully and exercising; practicing preventive health care. Being in touch with your body.
• Having fun, playing, and laughing. You’ll feel better physically if you include laughter and fun in your life.
• Setting and maintaining boundaries. This is what I will or won’t do. This is how far I will or won’t go. This is what I will or won’t tolerate.
• Maintaining nurturing relationships. Spending your time with people who are kind, loving, honest and appreciative. Giving and accepting compliments, hugs, love.
• Affirming and nurturing yourself. 
• Seeking professional help when you need it. Remember, you don’t have to do it alone.  

Rayna Neises understands the joys and challenges that come from a season of caring. She helped care for both of her parents during their separate battles with Alzheimer’s over a thirty-year span. She is able to look back on those days now with no regrets – and she wishes the same for every woman caring for aging parents.

To help others through this challenging season of life, Rayna has written No Regrets: Hope for Your Caregiving Season, a book filled with her own heart-warming stories and practical suggestions for journeying through a caregiving season. She is also the editor of Content Magazine– Finding God in Your Caregiving Season. Rayna is an ICF Associate Certified Coach with certifications in both Life and Leadership Coaching from the Professional Christian Coaching Institute.

She is prepared to help you through your own season of caring. Learn more at ASeasonOfCaring.com and connect with Rayna on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

Read other articles by Rayna