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Newtown, PA 18940
How often do you put yourself last? We think of self care as “nice to have,” selfish, and expensive. Life today is really stressful. That’s why self care is essential to staying happy and healthy. Here’s what you need to know in order to make self care a regular part of your life.
Self care is an umbrella term for anything that helps us get physically and emotionally healthy and helps us stay healthy.
What we consider self care changes as we get older. For example, when we’re younger, we have more time and money to devote to ourselves and our hobbies. Self care may have included weekly massages or frequent trips.
As we get older, we have more responsibilities and less money to spend on ourselves.
As a result, taking care of our health and sanity now may involve hiding in the bathroom for five minutes at the end of the day.
There are things people use in order to make bad feelings less intense or go away entirely. Some examples include drugs, alcohol, food, sex, shopping, and the internet.
These things make us feel better because they shut down feelings that we don’t want to deal with.
However, they don’t help us be physically and emotionally healthy. In fact, they tend to do the opposite.
My grandmother started every day by reading the newspaper, even when she worked full time. She got her hair done every Friday and ate healthy, homecooked meals every day.
These things were part of her life because they mattered to her. She didn’t view them as something she had to make time for.
Self care is something we have to talk about now because modern life is overwhelming.
We work more hours than ever and are exposed to more information than our brains can handle.
Our evenings, weekends, and vacations aren’t clearly defined anymore.
Self care is what gives us the energy to handle everything on our plate. The more we have to take care of, the quicker we go through your energy reserves.
Most of us don’t do enough self care to refill our energy supply every day. As a result, we get sick or injured more often and have trouble sleeping, losing weight, and having satisfying sex lives.
If we want to be happy and present in every area of our lives, we have to take care of ourselves every day.
Most of us know that we need to practice self care. We’ve read the blog posts and heard the podcasts. Here are three reasons that make self care hard to do:
For example, about 35% of people think that you can only practice self care if you’re wealthy. Approximately 44% of people think that you can only practice self care if you have a lot of free time.
We’re the easiest person to cancel on. So what if we skip a nap or a workout? We’re sure we’ll be fine without them.
It’s harder to let someone else down because we worry more about what others think of us.
First, many of us learned that our needs don’t matter. Second, many of us learned that putting ourselves first means we’re bad people because good people put others first.
As a result of these beliefs and messages about how much we matter, we can justify putting our needs last. This is especially true for women and moms.
Self care doesn’t have to be expensive. It doesn’t have to involve yoga retreats, meditation, or big vacations.
The best way to take care of your mind, emotions, and body is to do a core set of activities as often as possible. The closer you can get to doing these every day, the better.
Here are some self care activities to work into your schedule:
You being ok is not negotiable.
Everything in your life falls apart if you crumble.
Start by focusing on one or two changes that will have the greatest impact quickly. For most people, this involves getting more sleep.
Don’t let your automatic response of canceling on yourself get in the way of your health.
When you have the thought to cancel on yourself, say no.
If you miss a day, just start up again the next day.
If you would like to learn more about managing stress, you can check out these helpful ideas.
When you’re ready to take care of your mind and body, contact us to schedule an appointment. We specialize in giving people the tools they need to be successful and protect their health.
Please contact us to set up an appointment.
We can help give you information, a map for next steps, and hope that you can have the life you want.
Wishing you the best,
Dr. Levy
Director
Dr. Ronit Levy is a clinical psychologist and director of Bucks County Anxiety Center in Newtown, PA. She specializes in treating teens and adults struggling with anxiety due to Anxiety Disorders, OCD, chronic illness, and life events. Dr. Levy trains and supervises other therapists and presents on mental health in the community.
About Us
The therapists who practice at Bucks County Anxiety Center work with teens (ages 14 and up) and adults struggling with anxiety and OCD.
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