Surviving to Thriving: A Different Way to Do Self-Care
Let’s get one thing straight about self-care, it is non-negotiable. Self-care is not something that you do once a month or once a quarter and call it good. It is a constant practice that helps to keep you balanced. Often times we forget about ourselves and instead focus on work, the kids, family, etc. Even though those things are important, putting them first can be detrimental to your physical and emotional health. There are lots of ways to think about self-care. One way I describe it to clients is the oxygen mask on the plane: if the oxygen masks deploy on a flight you are supposed to put yours on first and then help others with theirs. You’d be hard-pressed to try to help someone else with their oxygen mask when you’re already passed out. It’s the same idea with self-care. We can’t help someone else (job, kids, family) if we don’t even have enough energy for ourselves. You might have also heard, “You can’t pour from an empty cup” too. These are great sayings to help think about the meaning of self-care but my favorite way to describe it is … the bank account.
The Self-Care Bank Account
Imagine that there is a new bank in town. It’s special and different because it measures energy. (Yes, it sounds a little hippie-dippie but just stay with me). You’re excited. It’s new and different so you open an account. The way you “deposit” into your account is by doing things you love that make you feel calm, balanced, and happy. Now, when I say things you “love”, they must be healthy as well. The size of the self-care activity and how balanced and calm it makes you feel is equivalent to how much you are depositing into the bank account. For instance, sipping coffee on your porch might be less than a massage. But the daily morning coffee also adds up as you’re doing it more often than getting a massage. When you engage in self-care activities that help you feel balanced and centered, you are actively growing that bank account. When there is money in the account, we feel happy, calm, centered, can problem solve easier, and have more patience.
We also have withdrawals. A withdrawal is anything that takes “energy” out. This might be getting into an argument with your significant other, waking up late for work, your kid taking their sweet time putting their shoes on before school, etc. It can be anything that you feel drains you. It takes energy to deal with those things therefore, it is a withdrawal. In this way, just as with a normal bank account, we want to make sure we don’t overspend and go into the negative. When we do, we tend to lose our patience faster, become snippy, unhappy, and take longer to recover from the things that stress us out.
Managing Deposits
Self-care has been overly popularized in social media. It doesn’t mean spending hundreds on a weekend away chock-full of massages and fancy things. That would be amazing however, it is not sustainable. There are also times when we only have so much time/energy to spend on self-care activities. I like to break down self-care activities into “energy levels/time commitments”. Even if we’re doing something small, we are still depositing into the bank. The more energy we put in, the more energy we get - just like a bank account.
Let’s talk about a system to determine your energy level and what size self-care activity to do in each instance:
Think about all the activities you like doing no matter how big or small. This could be weekend getaways, hiking, fishing, sipping coffee in the morning, a quick walk outside, video games, cooking, working out, yoga, reading, painting your nails, etc. Some of these are big things and some are small. Write down anything that helps you feel happy, calm, and collected.
Create three sections on a piece of paper and label them “Low Energy, Medium Energy, High Energy”. This can also be used for the activity’s time commitment as well if you’d like to use that in addition to/ or instead of energy commitment.
Take your master list of self-care activities and section them out into each of the three sections. This will be unique to you meaning I might think it takes high energy to play video games whereas someone else might only need a low level of energy to play video games. Its important that you place each activity in the appropriate slot based on how much energy it takes to DO the activity not how much you will get back. We can see this as an “investment”. How much of an investment does it take to engage in each activity?
You now have a personalized chart of self-care activities along with the energy commitment that you need to engage in each activity. I love doing this with clients because it is so easy to say “I didn’t have time” or “I was too tired”. No more excuses! Self-care can be done with even a small time commitment or a low energy level. What matters the most is actively engaging in activities that help you to feel that calm, happy, collected feeling. Even if you can only fit in a 5-minute meditation or deep breaths in the school pick-up line or between work meetings, that still counts! It’s still a deposit into your bank account.
Life is hard. It can be challenging, especially in a society that doesn’t have an “off” button. Putting that time and energy back into us helps to give us the “rainy day fund” to be able to deal with life’s challenges easier, and from a place of calm instead of anxiety. We can’t control life or what happens to us but you always have control over yourself and what you choose to do. The bank account is a tool on how to manage that control and what you give back to yourself.
Katie Bonanno, LMFTA
Katie is a couples and relational therapist in Charleston, SC. Katie enjoys guiding her clients through discovering their self at their core. She believes that we always have a choice in how we view things and in that, we always have the power to change things for the better. Katie delights in helping others discover their unique strengths and working through heavy emotions.
Katie has openings for clients both virtual and in-person!
