Proactive self-care: A brief how-to

Identifying our self-care needs can be a bit like figuring out what to have for dinner on a Friday night after a busy week: you're tired, hungry, and the mental capacity for decision-making and plan execution just isn't at its best. The meal itself, as well as your physical energy needs have become a bit of an afterthought, and you are left scrambling to come up with a plan at the last minute.

All too often, this is how we approach self-care as well - as a bit of an afterthought. Something that only receives our direct attention when we are scrambling to respond to some acute disruption or deficit within our physical, emotional, cognitive, social, or spiritual needs. I call this reactive self-care. This is common, and is a part of our innate survival systems. However, is reactive self-care a sustainable, balanced approach to tending to our needs and overall well-being? The likely answer here is no - or at least not always - so, let's talk about shifting towards a more proactive approach to self-care.

Tuning in to our self-care needs often involves digging a little deeper in terms of how we are feeling, and building awareness surrounding which areas might require our attention on a day-to-day, or even moment-to-moment basis. My previous blog post "Types of energy (and how to tend to them!)" outlines five areas of energy connected to our self-care needs: emotional, physical, cognitive, social, and spiritual.

Checking in with our energy needs involves intention, mindful self-awareness, and having access to the appropriate language to describe what we are feeling. However, tuning in does not have to be time consuming! My personal check-in this morning took less than a minute - I'll share it here:

Emotionally - feeling grateful

Spiritually - feeling connected

Physically - feeling sore

Cognitively - feeling inspired

Socially - feeling loved

As you can see, I'm feeling quite different within each of these energy areas! Bringing in this awareness, I am able to then ask myself: "what do I need in this moment / today / this week?" This awareness helps me to better understand where I am at, and therefore what I might need in order to tend to these different areas. For instance, today my physical energy status is inviting me to tend to my physical body through some gentle movement, heat therapy, and wearing comfortable clothing.

Conversely, my cognitive energy today invites me to find an outlet for intellectual engagement and creativity, which I am currently doing as I write this blog post!

By bringing more intentional awareness to our energy needs, we have greater opportunity to establish self-care structures, practices, and actions that are not only proactive, but actually help us meet our needs. Connecting with a psychotherapist or other licensed mental health professional can also be a useful and supportive resource, especially when anxiety, depression, grief, loss, relationship issues, or other difficulties are preventing you from establishing or maintaining balanced self-care practices.