I guess I want to write something here about #selfcare for the #HigherEd and #AcademicChatter and #FacultySuccess crews and whoever else is reading.
1- I feel like my #1 priority in my work right now is to encourage people to take care of themselves, and then to take care of each other. If you want to call that self-care, that's cool, but I know that term is hard for many of us.
2- Our culture/system takes concepts like self-care and turns them into profit, and in order to do that, they have to sell us on the fact that we're doing something wrong or missing something that others have, which makes us feel bad, which is not self-care, right?
3- So anyway, first, I am just aware of that word and its connotations.
4- But I mostly want to acknowledge that for some people, taking care of yourself feels like crap. If you weren't taught to do it, if it wasn't modeled for you, and/or you were taught to take care of others, self-care is really hard.
5- But everyone is saying you have to do it! But it feels like crap! And then you can feel worse...many people tell me that they feel guilty when they even talk about taking care of themselves, let alone doing it.
6- I try like hell not to give advice, so I'll just say that for me, these are great things to talk about in therapy and in my journal. Noticing it was a great first step. Reading about it helps. Talking to friends who also struggle with it can be good.
7- And you know, start small. I encourage people to make a list and have it handy. Pick one thing off the list today. Think of it as a practice. New/hard things take practice, right?
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