How to say ‘yes’ to yourself – and why self care isn’t selfish
A guide for recovering people-pleasers and anyone who thinks they don’t have time for self-care 🙂
This week, in my client work and my own life, the challenges of making time for ourselves has come up a lot. As we head into the summer holidays I thought it’d be a good opportunity to think about how we look after ourselves when we have so many plates spinning.
Why is it so hard?
- Those old (often inherited) narratives that it’s selfish to put yourself first. Just think back to all of the times you can remember where you’ve been praised for doing something for someone else, and punished for putting yourself first. We can get the message that it’s selfish or rude to put our needs above those of others. Maybe we had parents who found it difficult to say no, or went along with things for a quiet life. Maybe we realised at school that if you put other’s first then they will like you more and be your friend.
Our experiences and what we make of them have a profound effect on our outlook on life. Your own experiences and the meaning you gave these will have shaped your perception of when you can and can’t say ‘yes’ to yourself. We can unwittingly carry these stories with us and find ourselves feeling stuck in people-pleasing habits that are hard to break out of. - The ‘Shoulds, Musts, Ifs, Thens’ – I always think this would be a great name for an 80s pop band :). But aside from that, the SMITs form the basis of the rules and strategies that we develop as a result of our self stories. Here are some common examples of how the SMITS show up around taking time for yourself:
‘I should always put others first’;
I should be able to do this myself’,
I must make sure they are OK before I can take time for myself
I must make sure I’ve done all of the chores before I can take time for me.
If I put other people’s needs above my own then it shows them I love them’
If I put others’ needs above my own then they will like me more
If I put myself first it means I’m selfish - The Guilt – Well is it any wonder we feel guilty when we take time for ourselves when we look at all of the ‘rules’ we are breaking in order to do so?!
- Procrastination – This shows up in the form of ‘doing what’s easiest’. Avoiding potential conflict or friction by postponing our plans and deprioritising our needs. Falling into old habits and patterns of behaving. Because doing something different feels scary and uncomfortable – It can take real courage to change a behaviour, at least for the first few times.
- Not knowing where to begin in doing something for yourself because you can’t even remember what you like!
Often when we’ve spent much of our lives putting others’ first we lose touch with our own needs, wants, likes, and desires. One of my clients gave the example of panicking when a friend asked her what she’s like to see at the cinema for her birthday. It had been so long since she thought about what she liked that she didn’t know how to answer. The temptation was to defer and say, ‘oh I don’t mind, what do you prefer?’. (But luckily she’d been doing the work in therapy sessions and managed to overcome the initial discomfort of being put on the spot and give her preferred film choice.)
What you can do about it.
- What are your own self-stories about this? Do you have the ‘it’s selfish’ story? Or the ‘it’s rude and arrogant story? Or the ‘you’re not deserving of this’ story? (These are just a few examples by the way!).
Ask yourself who benefits if you’re running on a full tank. Is it just you? Or do the people you love and the things you care about also benefit? - Ask these three questions before you make a start on that HUGE to do list:
Do I need to do this NOW? Do I need to do this now? Do I need to do THIS now?
I heard this phrase earlier in the week and it stuck. I like that the same sentence can have different meanings and actions if emphasis is placed on different words. - Bring your values into focus – what kind of parent/partner/friend/colleague etc do you want to be? What kind of example are you setting for the people you love if you never take time for you? Would you want that for your loved ones?
Lean in to the guilt feeling – where does it live in your body? What does it feel/look/sound like? Can you breathe around it and create some space for it? - Oh how easy it is to procrastinate when we feel guilty and like we should be doing something else! I have lost count of the number of times I have intended to do something for me, only to find myself ‘just quickly mopping the floor’ or something before I get to the me-time. Or the other alternative that shows up a lot is mobile phone scrolling. Again, really easy to do, much easier to spend 5 minutes here and there on Instagram than taking photos, reading, doing a jigsaw puzzle, etc. And if time on your phone is nourishing for you then great! If it’s not then maybe experiment with other ways of spending those few minutes so that they are recharging you and not depleting.
To help break that cycle, - Get back in touch with yourself – what does this version of you enjoy doing? How do they like to recharge? What are they lacking? What have you enjoyed in the past? What do you miss in your life?
Check out my YouTube channel to see a video about this too.