Trauma & Self-Care
Self-Care
A focus on diet, exercise, and sleep that cares for your body and mind.
MEET JULIA
Julia has had a horrible week, filled with lots of work stress, family drama, and challenges with friends. She feels tension, sadness, and anger flooding her body as she tries to sort through and process her difficult week. Thankfully, Julia has an appointment with her counselor today and is ready to dive in and deal with the drama. Julia’s counselor is well-equipped with many counseling tools, such as EMDR, Ego State Therapy/Parts Work, and mindfulness, but she starts off with a wise assessment and asks Julia about her level of self-care over the past week.
CONSEQUENCES OF POOR SELF-CARE
Julia reported a significant lack of sleep and stated that she’s been averaging 4-5 hours per night. Sleep experts recommend an average of 7-9 hours per night, so Julia is most likely suffering from sleep deprivation. A lack of sleep for one night is one thing, but an entire week of poor sleep can sabotage your mental health, makes is difficult to think clearly, and often leads to over-eating because the brain thinks more food will give it more energy. Julia, indeed, reported over-eating and making poor food choices over the past week, such as processed foods with lots of added sugars, omega 6’s, and trans fats. She also reported much higher caffeine and alcohol consumption with no exercise. Julia and her counselor determined that the best course of action is to start with improving self-care and then re-evaluating her mental health needs after she’s stabilized. Julia agreed to start by prioritizing her sleep, shooting for an average of 7.5 hours/night, along with taking morning walks, eating more whole foods, and cutting back on caffeine and alcohol.
“Self-care is not self-indulgence; it is self-preservation.”
~Audre Lourde, feminist and civil rights leader
WHAT IS SELF-CARE?
Self-care in its simplest form is a focus on diet, exercise, and sleep. Self-care is different from coping skills and is not considered selfish, at all. Self-care is vital for good mental and physical health and is tantamount to any kind of success. Coping skills include things like mindfulness, socializing, hobbies, and spiritual practices that help you to cope with the day to day stressors of life. If you could only focus on one area of self-care, sleep is the place to start. Without proper sleep everything else falls apart. Exercise doesn’t necessarily mean you have to join a gym and go 7 days a week, although that could be part of it. Exercise means movement. How often you move your body everyday is important not just to physical health, but movement can help to clear your mind and can increase your mind-body connection. Diet does NOT mean Keto, Mediterranean, vegan, cabbage soup, Slim Fast, or any other fad. Diet simply means you watch what you eat and you focus on whole foods.
3 ELEMENTS OF SELF-CARE IN DETAIL
SLEEP - Sleep begins much earlier than bedtime. Quality sleep starts with the design of your bedroom. Sleep experts recommend a quiet space, without a TV or other screens, blackout curtains, blue-grey walls, low lighting and a sound machine. The quiet space is self-explanatory and the sound machine can aid in tamping down creaks in the house, traffic noise, dogs barking, etc. The blue-grey walls are visually soothing, which helps to calm you down at the end of a long day. The blackout curtains make sure that your sleep is not disrupted by light pollution before you’re ready to get up. Ideally, you shouldn’t be able to see your hand in front of you if you have the correct level of darkness. Quality sleep also depends on how you wind down. You don’t want to eat or exercise right before bed and you want to begin to dim the lights in your home and engage in calming and quiet exercises, like reading, journaling, or listening to calming music an hour or two before you actually go to sleep.
EXERCISE - A previously mentioned, exercise doesn’t mean that you have to be a hardcore gym rat. Depending on your age and ability, you will want to start slow and build your way up to higher impact exercises and weight lifting. One of the best ways to ease in is to start walking. Walking is one the most underrated forms of exercises, but it’s the main way that tribes and people who live in small villages stay healthy. In the blue zones of the world (areas around the world with the highest population of centenarians), people walk to the market, to church, and friends’ houses. They walk everywhere and are amongst the healthiest people on earth. If you want to learn more about them, you can check out the Netflix Documentary, Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones. You can watch the trailer here. Start by walking, particularly in the morning, so you can suppress your melatonin production, which will help you wake up and will help with your circadian rhythm (sleep-wake cycle). As you feel able, begin to add in some light weight-lifting to strengthen your muscles and bone density. You can pick up a few reasonably priced weights at your local athletic store, which will save you on gym fees.
DIET - Diet is all about health eating and is not connected to one particular fad diet. What matters the most is that you’re eating mostly whole foods: organic fresh fruits and vegetables, pasture-raised eggs, organic oats, grass-fed meats, wild-caught fatty fish (salmon, mackerel, trout), avocados, and nuts. It is best to cut down on processed foods like chips, store-bought cookies & cakes, fried foods, and soda. Diet is tough in a world where almost everything is convenient and grab & go, because those foods are generally filled with preservatives, gobs of sugar, and unhealthy fats. Challenge yourself to live counter-culturally and begin to cook more of your meals from scratch. You might consider investing in a crock pot, pressure cooker, and/or an air fryer to aid in batch cooking. Look for recipes online, TikTok, or Pinterest. Ask friends or family members for their favorite, healthy recipes to get you started. See if you can live by the 80/20 rule where you eat healthy, whole foods 80% of the time and you can allow for some treats 20% of the time.
Self-care is always important, but it’s even more essential for folks who are healing from trauma and dealing with mental illness. Self-care is foundational, stabilizing, and the life-blood of all who are seeking good mental and physical health. And it’s a good reminder as you start making those New Year’s resolutions.
DO YOU SEE YOURSELF IN JULIA?
ARE YOU READY TO PRIORITIZE SELF-CARE AND GET HEALTHY?
Begin Adult Trauma Counseling in Columbus, Ohio. You don’t have have to suffer any longer.