Your mind says Yes but does the rest of you? What are the underlying assumptions that make us passive-aggressive towards ourselves when it comes to self-care?
Take this quiz – Are you worthy of self-care? Answer yes/no:
- I sometimes diddle around all evening then get to bed too late to get a full night’s sleep.
- I spend money on material objects instead of healthy food or supplements.
- I throw time out the window when I am supporting a friend, then later I am crunched to get my own basic chores covered.
- I am constantly active, I rarely have time for rejuvenation.
Results: Any Yes on the quiz gives you an example of how you may be passive-aggressive towards yourself, how you choose to thwart your ability to stay full and strong. If you are not staying full and strong, you will become exhausted from helping others.
If you are not giving yourself permission to get enough self-care, what
are your underlying beliefs about being worthy of it? Are other people more important than you? Are certain types of self-care, such as paying bills or maintaining friendships more important than deeper forms of self-nurturing such as journaling, meditation or a hot bath? Where did those beliefs come from and how can they be healed?
Soul-searching to uncover hidden beliefs requires a type of self-care I call self-intimacy.
Just to get started, you may need to give yourself permission to look for those tender parts of yourself who feel unworthy. Then you can make discoveries about yourself from free-writing, meditation, daydreaming, going into body sensations that relate to the belief. Bring this information to a skilled healer who can find and heal the root causes of your beliefs, usually a trauma, and help you reclaim your power to make better choices for yourself.
While you are cleaning up internal beliefs about self-care, you can make better choices sooner by tying your self-care into a higher purpose. Here are some truths about your importance you may not hear often enough:
You are golden, your service role in the world is essential! Without what you do, our society degrades into a world without dignity or pride, let alone grace or peace. Your service has an even higher purpose than that…from a spiritual perspective, everyone in our world evolves together. This means that the lower-energy vibrations of our society (ie, fear, addiction, need, anger, greed, etc) must be elevated through self-awareness and healing so that our collective society can reach our next higher stage of evolution (insert your concept of utopia here).
So please keep doing what you do, to the absolute best of your ability, to the fullest extent of your capacity. Keep your capacity for doing good in the world at its peak with healthy self-care.