Here at Villa Kali Ma, we recognize that self care is a practice, something to get up and do every morning of every day. It is part of being in a human body to also care for the body we are. Our souls and spirits need daily care too.
Self care is a practice in two senses. It’s a practice in the sense of being an ongoing, daily ritual, like meditation or exercise. It’s also a practice in the sense that most of us are still learning how to do it. We need to practice self care regularly until it becomes second nature to us to do so.
Why is it so hard for women to care for themselves? There are a lot of answers to that question, but one reason lies deep in our lack of love for ourselves.
Self care reflects basic self love and a sense of deserving. That deserving must be unconditional – whether we have been good girls that day or not, whether or not we’ve perfectly met everyone’s expectations of us.
What is International Self Care Day?
International Self Care Day is celebrated every July, as a way to promote awareness of the many benefits of self care.
Since the 1950s, lack of self care in the populace has been noticed as a negative factor in health outcomes. Many simple actions would help people be healthier, but a willingness to care for the self is still rare.
International Self Care Day helps change perceptions about self care, to help people understand not only that they are allowed to care for themselves lovingly, but also that it’s a necessity.
What is the history of International Self Care Day?
In 2011, the International Self Care Foundation established a day to celebrate Self Care officially. The day is used to promote awareness of self care and change public perception.
What is the timeline of International Self Care Day?
As early as the 1950s, Western medicine began addressing the topic of self care, in recognition of it being a missing ingredient.
Even into the 1960s, self care was still a novel concept, generally considered unnecessary or indulgent. Due to many cultural transformations in the 1960s, the 1970s saw the notion of self care take root in the populace, in part through the rise of humanism in the field of psychology.
In the decades since the 1970s, the belief that self care is important has grown. Since the founding of International Self Care Day in 2011, the concept has continued to gain in prevalence.
What are FAQ’s of International Self Care Day?
Here are some questions that women with addiction, trauma, and mental health struggles often have about self care.
Isn’t self care just being selfish and self indulgent?
Self care isn’t the same thing as selfishness or self indulgence. In fact, self care makes us less selfish.
Selfishness arises when we don’t care for ourselves, so our needs come out sideways and we take energy from others in a draining way.
Self care is about giving to the self, generating positive vibes and goodness in our own personal sphere. The more we care for ourselves, the more we have to share when we choose. If we have a horror of being selfish, as many of us do, then we must understand that we have to take extra good care of ourselves.
What’s the connection between self care and addiction?
Almost always, addiction takes root in an environment of self-neglect, if not self-hatred. Addiction cannot abide in the heart, mind, or body of a woman who loves herself and knows that she is worthy of boundaries, kindness, and self care.
Those of us in recovery have to do more work than others to make sure we practice self care heroically, to counteract our pre-existing conditions of rock bottom self esteem.
We have to remind ourselves that if we don’t love ourselves proactively, we will end up hurting everyone around us again.
What happens when you don’t practice self care?
There are many problems that arise when we don’t care for ourselves, ranging from physical disease to self destructive behavior. When we don’t practice self care, we end up suffering and causing others around us to suffer along with us.
When we don’t practice self care, we create unnecessary problems for ourselves and others. This can be as subtle as unconsciously teaching self-hatred and self-sacrifice to our daughters, or as dramatic as fully relapsing in our disease and kicking off the whole addiction cycle again.
What does self care even mean?
Self care means that you actively, regularly, repeatedly, and forever take care of the life form that you are, in every way that is required for this being to be happy and healthy, cared for, loved, encouraged, etc.
This means physical care, like hygiene, sleep, healthy food, protecting yourself from chemical exposures, etc, and also active care of your emotional, mental, and soul life.
What are International Self Care Day activities?
Spoil Yourself - in a Healthy Way
Every woman I know could confess to a secret longing for something that actually isn’t so hard to arrange. Flowers are a good way to self-spoil without a lot of cost. For example, you could make a force-bloom narcissus for your window.
Since we’re going into summer, you could also make sachets from garden herbs or dried flowers.
Is there something that would be relatively easy and affordable to do, a low hanging fruit, an activity, or symbolic gesture which would mean a lot to you?
Do Something for Your Inner Child
Self Care Day could be dedicated to your inner child. Is there something playful, silly, or whimsical you could do this year, to give a special gift to your inner child?
This VKM therapist once went to the San Diego Zoo, all by myself, because I wanted to see the newborn baby hippo. That worked, and counts as self care!
Love Lists
A very easy exercise that can help with self care is to write a long list (fill a whole page), of sentences that start with “I love…”. Think of small, concrete things, as much as you can.
I love having bare feet in the garden. I love the smell of geraniums. I love the little yellow green finches that come around this time of year.
Once you have filled up the page with small things you love, see if there is anything on there that you could allow yourself to experience, right away.
What are 5 interesting facts about self care?
Here are some aspects of self care which might surprise you.
Self Care makes us more able to give to other people
It’s true. When we practice self care we end up feeling so much better that we naturally give more love, kindness, energy, and attention to others. Self care creates energy in our personal sphere, rather than taking it away.
Self Care takes very little time
Many self care practices can be done super quickly. For example, you can set a timer for 1 minute and gently stroke and massage your own face, head, and body, and long before the timer is up you will feel an increase in self-love as your body responds to the care you are choosing to give yourself.
Expanding the timer to 5 minutes and you already have even more options. 5 minutes of stretching. You can dance to a pop song in less than 5 minutes.
With 15 minutes a day, you can have quite a robust self care practice going, and with an hour a day, you’ll transform your life.
Self Care is a Performance Booster
Top athletes, performing artists, and extraordinary achievers everywhere are very disciplined, primarily about making sure they get the requisite self care that is necessary to be in optimal condition. We can learn from them the simple truth that the better we treat ourselves, the better we are able to perform at our best.
Self Care Improves Self Worth
When we treat ourselves every day like we are worth taking care of, sooner or later we start to feel that we are worth that. Especially when we say out loud to others something that reflects the truth that we are taking care of ourselves, it has a way of building confidence, self respect, and self esteem. A statement as simple as “I’m going to stay home tonight because I want to give myself a chance to catch up on some rest after this week of working hard” can build the internal reality of being worth caring for and treating as precious.
Self Care Makes Us Resilient
The more we care for ourselves, the more relaxed and capable we are in the face of uncertainty and change. We are able to tolerate ambiguity better, and we are less stressed. That means we have more access to our native human intelligence and can radiate vibes into the environment that make everyone else feel better too.
Why do we love International Self Care Day?
Here at Villa Kali Ma, we love International Self Care Day because we know almost all women still need to be told many more times that it’s ok to care for ourselves.
We need to be reassured, reminded and encouraged to realize that we are precious and that we deserve to be treated as such. Human beings need a lot to thrive – and that’s ok. Not only is it ok to put ourselves first, but it’s something to celebrate every time we manage to do that.
Villa Kali Ma can assist women with self care
We may need to change our mindsets, and practice practice practice the simple art of loving ourselves as we have always longed to be loved by someone – unconditionally, abundantly, and for all time.
If you’re facing addiction, trauma, or mental illness, you’re not alone, and you don’t have to be. You can come get better with others (like us here at VKM!) who know exactly what that’s like, as well as how we women can find our way out again.