Treating self-care like my JOB

 Earlier today I was on a walk and delighted myself with the thought that “it is my professional duty, my job, to take care of myself!” How many other people can say that? Of course, it is everybody’s job to take care of themselves, and we should all treat our self-care with the same necessity that we do our paid work, but many of us do not see if that way. In recent months, I have been greatly expanding my capacity to serve more people, produce more creative work, and connect with more people in my community in a meaningful way. Through this period of stretching myself, I have significantly ramped up my self-care practices, incorporating new things and revisiting old habits that keep me feeling like me.  

Self-care practices are absolutely essential and nonnegotiable for me as I do the work I am here to do. I am the leader of myself first. If I do not show up for myself with honor and discipline, then who will? How am I to show up with others if I am not doing all that is in my power to care for myself? Even if I do not feel my best, knowing that I took even one baby step towards showing up for myself is often enough to make me feel so much better. It is foundational. It is me walking my talk, a way that I practice integrity and coherence. It is how I inspire and empower others with my presence and being, which is part of what makes being in a therapeutic or coaching relationship with me so powerful.  

I have listed many of my self-care habits in the map I made above. What I want to expand on here is how I create the structure for myself to actually make these habits part of my everyday life, so that I do not have to even think about it, I just do it. One of the ways I ensure self-care is seeped into my life is by scheduling it into my calendar. Tuesdays are my extended self-care days. Every Tuesday morning for the past two semesters (in the summer I stopped doing this because my time was less structured), I wake up and go to the gym. I work out, which I LOVE to do and then I go to the locker room which I pretend is a resort spa, and I go in the sauna and cold shower after.  I make sure to keep another day during the week, usually Friday open for more self-care and whatever I want to do.

Boundaries are part of self-care. I take care of myself by saying no to things I do not want to do. Anything that is not a full bodied “hell yeah!!” is a no. It has taken me a while to accept that that means less socializing, but honestly it feels so much better to be actively choosing everything on my schedule instead of agonizing over whether I should cancel this plan because I ignored my initial feeling to say no. I am a very social person and I also love being alone. Knowing when to spend time with just me is key to taking care of myself. Just earlier today on my walk, I felt the impulse to call someone, but then I gave it a second thought and actually the only person I felt like being with in that moment was me and I just needed to accept that and take that walk with myself.

Another magical way I ensure self-care is easy for me to apply to my everyday life is by adjusting the practices I lean on according to my hormone cycle. When I am in follicular and ovulation, I dance and move and run and belt my favorite songs every chance I get. That is what my body craves during those phases. When I am in luteal, I take naps in my self-care time and do yoga Nidra and walk and sky gaze. When I am in the first days of my period, I really focus on resting, heat, and exerting the minimum possible effort while still showing up and being present.  It is such a drastic difference from running every day to napping every day that I am laughing about it as I write, but it feels so natural to treat myself this way. I simply honor the phase I am in and adjust my approach to self-care accordingly.

How my relationship to luteal changed

When I began my menstrual cycle exploration, I was in high school. I was one of the few teenagers fortunate to have adequate health class experience in school, thanks to Mrs. Brown at NYC iSchool! I learned about the four phases of the female hormone cycle, what each hormone does and the journey the egg takes from ovary to uterus via fallopian tube highway.  

At the time, I was on hormonal birth control. I had a Mirena IUD placed at age 14 when I started having sex with my boyfriend at the time. Since I had an artificial cycle, the information I learned wouldn’t quite feel tangible to me until years later when I came off hormonal birth control and began tracking my cycle.  

I love tracking my cycle and living in connection to my natural rhythm. I have learned so much through connecting with my body in this way and I want to share what I have learned, what has worked for me, and how I transformed my relationship with my cycle from one of annoyance, irritation, and discomfort to joy, flow, friendship.  

The hardest part of my cycle is by far the luteal phase, when PMS happens. PMS is just the 5-7 days before menstruating when physical and emotional symptoms increase. Honestly, the PMS is not even the worst part of my cycle, it’s more like the whole two weeks of luteal. For years I struggled with how to relate to this phase, because it was just so challenging. I would wake up annoyed, irritated, with this awful feeling in my heart of anger and anxiety. I would feel overwhelmed easily, moods swinging around like crazy, and struggled to connect with my partner during this time. All I wanted was to be showered with affection one moment, and then *poison dart red devil eyes* “don’t you dare look at me” the next. I felt crazy and guilty for acting like a b at times.  

I knew that if I was going to teach this work to people, I ought to get curious about the most challenging part of my phase for myself. I did more exploring through an amazing menstrual educator named Angelina Hernandez (you should all take one of her workshops, they are fantastic and well worth it). Using the power of metaphor, symbolism, nature, and my creative mind I found subtle ways to relate to my luteal phase that ended up being just the tweaks that I needed to find more ease.  

Luteal is the season of Inner Autumn. When I think about applying this season metaphor to fit how I actually feel during this time, I think of how the leaves make those wind tornados on the ground sometimes. I think of the smell that autumn has, very distinct. I think of the vibrancy of the colors of the leaves; what was once green, a color of calm has changed into bold reds, oranges, yellows, and dull browns. The leaves change color before they fall. Some leaves do not ever fall; they stay hanging on. When the leaves fall, they pile, and bugs and little creatures start to lay their eggs in them. The leaves cover the ground, keeping the soil warm before they decompose. I remember what it was like to play in the leaves as a child, raking them into a big pile in my Savta’s front yard, then running and jumping into them.  

What does the season fall mean to you?  

It is the time of the last harvest, of the darkness approaching. The days are getting shorter and the nights are getting longer. Our rhythm turns more inwards as we spend more time inside and more time asleep, in dream state.

This transition can be challenging as we reminisce about the sweet fleet of summer (ovulation), longing for those golden days when we were outside for hours with no chill.  

When I think about my luteal phase now, I think about honoring the massive shifts; like being equipped with the perfect fall outfits- enough layers that when the sun comes out I can enjoy it without sweating and when the chill comes back, I have my favorite warm sweater to put on.  

It doesn’t mean I don’t feel all the feels, but that I know what to give myself in times of need and I prioritize that.  

When boundaries made me close my heart and the one thing that helped me open it back up

I used to think that having boundaries meant closing myself off. When I first read about highly sensitive people or empaths, I began to treat myself like something that needed protecting. I began to fear my own sensitivities and what would happen if I picked up someone’s energy. So, I started closing my heart and almost obsessively fixating on boundaries, protection, and clearing my energy.   

Then one day, my dance/movement therapy teacher, Dr. Danielle Fraenkel, said something that completely shifted my perspective. She said, “If you pick up energy from someone that you don’t like, just let it go.” So simple! I was mind blown. I had been trying, unsuccessfully, to protect myself with boundaries but what I had really done was close my heart. I wanted to live heart-open and trust myself that I could handle it if I felt out of wack due to picking up someone’s energy.    

I learned that I do not need to set boundaries out of fear. I learned that when I set boundaries out of fear of others, I am reinforcing the message that my sensitive nature makes me weak. When I set boundaries out of fear, I closed myself off to being impacted by others in positive ways too! When my heart was closed, I wasn’t even protecting myself either, I was just living in fear of being flooded, instead of trusting myself that I can handle it.   

When I set boundaries out of self-love, I reinforce the message that I am worthy of my own protection. Protection is not something I give myself because I “need” it. I can handle picking up other’s energies because I know that I can simply let it go. When I stopped fixating on trying to avoid what is frankly impossible to avoid, I started showing myself that I can rise to the challenge. This strengthened my discernment and self-trust. My inner sense of security strengthened too, knowing that I got this. My sensitivities do not mean I need to treat myself like a baby, a fragile little girl. Sometimes I do show myself extra care, but I want to live in a world where I can live without fear of what might happen if I don’t protect myself and close my heart.  

I used to wear scarves around myself like a hood, which is a beautiful practice for protection, at the airport because I felt too exposed and sensitive if I did not. I used to wear my noise cancelling headphones to cope with loud spaces. I get it, these things are helpful when you feel overwhelmed. But I want to live in the world! Fully in it! I want to be able to handle the world at full volume because I know I can! That makes me feel capable, strong, and good about myself. So, I trained my nervous system to feel safe and allowed myself to settle into the discomfort of intaking a lot of stimuli. (It’s called being present.) This does not mean that I push past my internal compass and stay in places that I do not want to be. But at the airport, I walk around with my ears out, head up, present, making eye contact, and it feels GOOD to be fully in this world. Identifying as a highly sensitive person gave me an excuse to treat myself like a fragile thing and to live in fear instead of fully owning the power that I have to feel safe and secure in any environment.  

Now, my boundaries are because I love myself, not because I am scared of what might happen if I don’t set them. In other words, fear is not the main force I move from, love is. I know I can handle what might happen if I don’t protect myself in these particular ways because I challenged myself and saw that I was fine when I did.