Wampum Wisdom

Today, #sachat was an unthemed, relatively unmoderated chat.  The moderator simply asked us what was on our minds.  With tomorrow being our 26th day straight with some level of work (and usually more-than-full days) for opening here at Northeastern, the idea of self-care loomed in my mind.  So I asked people how their campus encouraged self-care.

What followed was a mix of people talking about how to best execute self-care.  Whose responsibility was it?  Did we talk about it too much?  Even before the last question came up, I already felt like I was tired of hearing about self-care.  And it was my question!  I found myself redirecting my question to ask people what actions they were currently taking for self-care instead.

Ironically, I realized that I was eating better and being more realistic about my limits in the true throes of that time.  Now that move-in has finished and we are nearing the end of our first occupied week, I notice myself reacting to residual stress.  Telling myself that I’ve “earned” that cookie, that I can go one night without brushing my teeth, and so on.  While I’ve given in to the cookies, my teeth remain straight – having braces a second time, as an adult, will make you brush your teeth & put that retainer in.

My point being that I find that my self-care often doesn’t actually equal self-care.  It involves giving in to things that I know are actually counterproductive to feeling well, energetic, and so on.  How does that happen?  That question had been rolling around in my head since #sachat ended.

Becca Obergefell, in characteristic reflective fashion, tweeted later this evening about saying “self-love” instead of “self-care”.  Would that changed the way we cared for and protected ourselves?  I asked what she had read that prompted her tweet.  She sent it to me.  The site’s banner alone made me stop and think.  ”Your permission slip to be self-centered”?  It was incredibly attractive, but at the same time I could feel myself resisting.  Was that my own tendency?  Or was that student affairs enculturation?

The author is discussing her personal practice of morning notes.  That alone didn’t necessarily interest me – it’s hard enough to put pants on within an hour of waking, nevermind write.   What caught me was her description of why she continued to do it.

It’s one of the very few things that I do solely for me, and to start your day by doing something which is only for you and for the blossoming of your creative self, is a very powerful statement to make. In fact, even if you believe yourself not to be interested in nurturing your creativity, morning pages are a simple act of self-love. A missive to your heart, your mind, that you matter, that you are worth spending the time on.

Self-love is attractive to me as a person and as a professional.  After all, my personal values led me to my profession.

Self-love is at the core of what we want for our students.  Searching.  Discernment.  Identity.  Acceptance.  Repeat.

Self-love is integral to self-mercy.  It lets me say that meeting reasonable expectations is okay, regardless of the high expectations put on me by myself or others.

Self-love is vital to psychological & emotional health.  In an important job like ours, we forget ourselves.  Add in the personal stressors we all deal with and you’ve got a pretty strained mental state.  If you have to do it for the job, it won’t stick.  Do it for you.  Doing great things at the job will follow.

Self-love leads to treating yourself well.  Someone who loves themselves wants holistic wellness and acts on it without the tyrrany of the should coming into play.  (Thanks, Karen Horney!)

Self-love is a better reason to do something for myself than “self-care” – it’s a phrase that, for many of us, is an instant or near-instant turn-off or tune-out.  We have resistance to it at a basic level because of it’s overuse, especially in helping fields like student affairs.  It’s a “should” – and we don’t respond well to “shoulds”.

Next time you want to ask someone what they’re doing for self-care, consider asking they what they’re doing for self-love instead.  If nothing else, they’ll ask you what you mean, and so starts the conversation…

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