For more than four years now, my emails have been signed off with this single phrase; ‘take care of yourself’. Initially it replaced ‘yours faithfully’ and ‘kind regards’ as a way to be more personable, more friendly, less ‘professional’ (or I suppose, emotionally distant). It was a phrase that made me smile because, at the heart of it, every email I send is about helping people to take greater care of themselves, so why not leave it at the end of those messages?
‘Take care of yourself’ has somewhat gone out the window the past few weeks and has been replaced with a superficially more kind sounding but altogether more distant. I’ve made my feelings known on this one for a while but today I figured it out. ‘Stay safe’ isn’t just a plea or a command. It’s a directive without engagement. In a time of social distancing, stay kind is a dog snarling or a pointed finger. I want the best for you, but at a safe, removed distance with as little interaction as possible. You stay safe, and if not, it’s nothing to do with me.
Anyway, that isn’t my point.
My point is, how do we remember to take care of ourselves in a time of crisis, any crisis really, but especially right now. How do we do that when everything we’re doing seems so counter-intuitive; pulling away from people physically, washing our hands until they bleed (my knuckle literally split as I was typing this, hello eczema my old friend).
Why is taking care of yourself important? It’s not just about not getting sick.
I am concerned at the sheer number of hours I’m seeing people around me work; the concept that if we aren’t commuting or losing time in pointless meetings that it now turns out could absolutely have been an email, that we should work longer hours to ‘make up’ for it, like social distancing is something we owe others for.
I’m heartbroken at the sheer number of people overwhelmed by the collective fear and grief that we are experiencing right now; grief for loved ones lost or at risk, but also the grief of our old way of life that has been so suddenly ripped away from us, at the facade of security that we have now realised was never really there.
Is it any wonder that people panic buy eggs and hoard toilet paper when they realise that their entire castle is built of sand and the tide is coming in?
So how do we take care of ourselves, whether we are in the at risk group, whether we are in a perpetual state of fight or flight, whether we are a key worker or working from home or laid off or furloughed.
How do we have peace of mind in amongst the chaos?
This is something I know a thing or two about.
I’ve joked previously that lockdown is really just a throwback to my childhood, that my childhood was one long prep run for this. I’m not really joking. I grew up with food and income instability and living in real and present fear for a very long time. I’m still researching what effect this has on a person long-term and implementing lots of tools and support along the way.
This situation feels so familiar to me and as a result, I’m having to work extra hard to bring myself back down to earth, to refocus, rather than sitting in the fear and worry and pain.
Here are some of the things I’m bringing out of the toolbox right now that might just help you weather this out without burning out.
Sleep and energy
I’m a life-long insomniac and in times of stress, this flares up. I have no problem falling asleep, it’s staying asleep that’s the issue. Having deep and refreshing sleep instead of teetering on the border between awake and asleep with my poor exhausted brain trying to create solutions to problems, all the problems, all the time. During the period leading up to my burnout 5 or 6 years ago I rarely, if ever, managed a full eight hours of sleep and more often would snatch 4-5 hours in between bouts of waking and worrying.
You don’t need me to tell you that a lack of sleep significantly hampers your ability to get shit done, but are you giving another credit to how it affects your cognition and mood? Pay a little more attention to how you feel, what your ‘base level’ is. I notice that when I’ve had a bad night’s sleep my mood nosedives, problems that would ordinarily be resolved quite quickly become full meltdowns thanks to my lowered cognitive function and my body’s heightened fight or flight response.
Now is a great time to pick up that sleep hygiene toolkit that you forgot you knew; warm bath before bed, not staying up until you’re about to drop but going through that getting ready for bed ritual and even settling in with a book. My favourite tools to add to the kit include'; epsom salts in my bath and my magnesium oil spray as magnesium helps with muscle relaxation, depth and quality of sleep thanks to helping to produce melatonin, and also helps us more generally deal with stress; chamomile tea or other sleepy teas, rituals around going to sleep (hot cloth cleanser preps me for sleep every time); cracking the window to allow cool air in and to keep the temperature just right.
Diet and food
How are you getting on with that all pasta all day diet? Bet you don’t need the toilet rolls you hoarded…
For many of us, our eating habits have changed beyond recognition. No more dinners out, no venti skimmed milk hazelnut lattes to go, no grabbing a quick sandwich or olives and wine with friends. Just because we have temporarily lost the spontaneity of our food choices shouldn’t mean we fall off all the wagons.
I’m not even all that concerned with the healthy eating side of things (although a single glance at the supermarket shelves on Friday told me everything I need to know about people’s priorities in the apocalypse. Processed food, milk and meat over a single fucking vegetable. Eat a pea, people, it might make all the difference!).
Right now I’m slowing the pace down by cooking more than I have done in years. Whereas last month I was slinging things in the oven whilst I emptied the dishwasher and put the washing on, now I’m cooking a touch more mindfully. Paying attention to what is in the cupboards and what I can make and, critically, how that food will make me feel. Can’t lie, there’s been a few nostalgic choices in there and my body is about 12% mashed potato at this point. Comfort food isn’t necessarily a bad thing if it’s calming your sympathetic nervous system. Junk food that you shove in your face without thought? We’re trying to support and soothe, not numb out all feelings with donuts.
Distraction and delight
I’m all for confronting your feelings and the fears we keep hidden with the monster under the bed. I’m not sure that that’s all that necessary right now. If you’re feeling it, it’s right there, on the surface. Sure, it might have a nice fishing hook attached to something that happened years ago, but you can see it there.
One of my biggest concerns is how we’re all cycling through the same shit right now. Let’s talk about it, let’s theorise it, let’s dissect it, let’s listen to others, let’s fight about it, let’s say we’re going to focus on anything but it whilst we all know we’re thinking of nothing but.
That. Is. Fucking. Exhausting.
For those of you who have experienced burnout, you know how this works. That the sheer focus on fixing problems, worrying about solutions and never feeling quite prepared/ready/good enough is sufficient to drive any of us half-way insane.
Sitting in the same cycle of blame, shame and worry without action is paranoia inducing and for those of us who are problem fixers, it’s a slap in the face to everything we have ever known; that no matter what, we can make it better, that we’ll work until it’s all ship shape and Bristol-fashion again. Then we are presented with a problem that we cannot fix and we either work ourselves into a frenzy, trying to do everything we can whether or not it really has any impact (hello TP-hoarders, those clearing the shelves of masks that don’t do a single thing or who are talking talking talking and not stopping for a second) or freeze in overwhelm (if you’re finding yourself exhausted and somewhat at a loss, welcome to the team).
So instead, distraction. Just in the same way that the burned-out professional gets told at some point by someone who loves them to shut the fuck up about work and either do something about it or stop complaining, so to in any crisis do you need to shake yourself out of the cycle.
For some of us this means zoning out to old boxsets or endlessly scrolling the ‘Gram for new celebrity stories (the push up challenge anyone?). For others that means making lists of things to do and finally doing those things we always said we would if we weren’t so busy, For me, this has meant investing the equivalent of two meals out into buying a potting bench, compost, seeds and watching gardening vlogs in order to get a fucking clue about what I’m doing. Earlier today I ate a cucumber and courgette salad with peashoots, mustard and cress; and the leaves were all grown by me from seed.
The world may be going to crap outside but I’m growing all the good crap inside. And let’s be honest, it’s about time I learned something useful. When the apocalypse comes, there’s not going to be much use for a mentor/trainer/jewellery designer/ex lawyer. At least this way, I’ll be worth keeping alive to feed and cheerlead people…
Considering your thoughts
After every bust there is a boom.
No matter what, at some stage we’re just going to be looking back talking about this as part of our story.
I learn and grow from everything I experience.
I’m always open to new opportunities.
I take the grit in the shell and make a pearl.
There are just some of the thoughts I have about myself and the world in general.
Yes, in the middle of a crisis life is all kinds of shit, grieving what was and what we thought would be and adjusting our expectations and intentions.
Preaching to the goddamn choir.
I’m the woman who nearly collapsed into her career and created an entire new career, business, movement even, out of the literal ashes of grief, bereavement and the loss of what could have been.
In the middle of a crisis it can be difficult to see your way forward; the good news is that you don’t have to. You just need to keep taking one step after another until you see your way clear. Then you can look back and determine what you’ve learned on the journey that will help you moving forward.
There is always something.
It isn’t about responsibility or being unfathomly positive in the face of evidence to the contrary. It isn’t even going to be fun or enjoyable. But you will come out the other side of it older, wiser, better able to learn from what went badly and keep hold of what went well.
At least, that’s my mindset about life, and really, I think it’s pretty resilient. Because what’s the alternative right now?
PS This week is the second workshop in my 12 week series, the Grit and Resilience Bundle. Each week I deliver a brand new live training on the topics you need most to be your most resilient, most gritty self.
This week’s topic is Practical Tools for Managing Anxiety and boy have I been getting a masterclass in this one lately!
In this workshop I will be sharing the daily tools I use to manage anxiety. In the past I have experienced anxiety attacks, been medicated for anxiety and lived on the edge of my nerves day to day. These days I can’t claim to be a zen guru, but I do have a toolkit to help manage my anxiety when it starts to spiral out of control or threatens to derail me. I’m not a doctor or medically trained, I’m just someone who grew up in a world of living on the edge of panic and who has taken practical and emotional steps to change that.
If this sounds like something you could do with, then you can join us for the full series of 12 workshops, plus a whole heap of extra bonuses, for less than £35 a month over the next 3 months. Click here to find out more and join us I want this to be as flexible and accessible as possible for all so it’s a low cost series with a payment plan to boot.
Alternatively, if you would just like the one workshop, you can of course purchase them individually - just drop me an email by clicking here and I’ll send you the link to join as soon as it’s ready tomorrow.