I’ve spent the last few weeks trying to fold the fitted sheet that is my life. If you’ve ever tried to fold a fitted sheet, you know exactly what I mean.
I’ve been thinking about identity and self care.
Self care is such an overused phrase right now. Everywhere you look women are talking about self care. Everything being sold to us is advertised as self care.
Why is it so difficult to prioritise our own needs?
It’s a complex question, with a very complex answer. There are all sorts of historical reasons why women put themselves last on the list, but looking at this through the lense of trauma, it is apparent to me that fundamentally self-care requires us to have good, strong boundaries.
Self care is a natural outcome of developing good boundaries.
Self care is about making choices. Choosing one thing over another, choosing what to say yes to and what to say no to. Without good boundaries, we are not able to make good choices.
Digging a little deeper, we can only develop good boundaries if we have a good understanding of who we are, if we are grounded in our own identity.
Trauma shatters our identity. Whatever the source of our trauma, it affects us on an identity level. If the trauma occurs in childhood, we build our identities on top of the trauma, making whatever that experience was, the foundation of who we are. We develop a fractured sense of self, with no understanding or awareness of boundaries.
Trauma violates our boundaries. This can happen all at once or incrementally, depending on the trauma event or events. Again, in the case of childhood trauma, these boundaries may not have had an opportunity to develop at all.
Our personal boundaries provide a container for processing what is acceptable and what is not. When that container has been violated or destroyed, we can lose our sense of self to the point of not knowing where we begin and the other ends. (The other being partners, friends, family, community etc.) There is no sense of self.
How then, are we able to practice self care? We can go through the motions of ticking the boxes on superficial acts of self care – bubble bath, manicure etc. But these are like putting a band aid on an amputation.
I’m not saying don’t do the self care suggestions, I’m saying that self care goes deeper than this and you shouldn’t beat yourself up if some days you feel that even the basic advice on self care is just too much.
Acknowledging this is an act of self care in itself. Sometimes just doing what you can to survive the day is self care!
Stop trying to fold the fitted sheet.
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