When spruiking all the benefits of a self care ritual in the marketing world, one thing that is rarely addressed, for myself, from a recent survey I conducted, and through working with hundreds of people over the years, is that putting a self care practice in to place, can be unbelievably confronting and challenging, no matter how big or small a commitment it may be.

There are many a reason as to why taking a bath, massaging our legs, practicing yoga, or meditating, is so damn difficult sometimes.

Some include:

• Having a harsh inner critic – a voice inside that doesn’t allow space for the self compassion we must have when meeting our self, and our body.
• A rebellious defiant part inside – we can really grapple with having to parent our self into doing good things for our self when a rebellious part doesn’t want to be told what to do, even if it’s in our best interest.
• Addiction/compulsions that pull us away – from screens, to substances, over working, right down to mental processing and thought addiction, these things become an unhealthy source of energy and unhooking from them (even for half an hour) can bring on withdrawal, discomfort and confrontation.
• Trauma and disassociation – if we have experienced trauma and don’t live in our body, coming back in to our felt self can be very uncomfortable. If we have spent a large portion of time living outside of ourself, from the mind, then coming back in to our body can feel unsafe and unusual, and we can’t hold it for long.
• Disenchantment or ‘nothing ever helps’ attitude – if we have a history of being let down, if we place value on others approval above our own and we have experienced cycles of ‘I am never enough’ or, ‘it’s never enough!’ This can hold as a strong resisting force to trying again, or doing it just for our self over others, in fact, we may not even know how to if we have lived a life as a people pleaser or in constant pursuit of love and validation from outside of us.
• Not valued/self care is are a waste of time – slowing down, making space for, getting up earlier, putting our self first, or putting it as an equal value to work can all hold priority, despite our being constantly tired and overwhelmed by life.

It boils down to, when we don’t live in relationship to our body, when we don’t value time to meet our self, we consciously or subconsciously avoid us.

So when someone then recommends we take a bath or practice yoga, these are acts of sitting with ones self, with our thoughts, and with our body, and it’s uncomfortable, painful often, and of course, it’s natural to want to move away from discomfort.

I think we very often don’t admit this or recognise it within our self, instead we look at ‘self care’ and tell our self we don’t have time for it, or see it as being selfish or silly, when in reality we really haven’t explored it’s value or looked in to why we find it so hard, and I really get it…

I have had plenty of days where the idea of sitting down to massage my very sore and tired legs has made me feel uncomfortable. I didn’t want to have to look at parts of my body I judge negatively, I didn’t want to sit in the discomfort of spending (even five minutes) with my hands physically in contact with parts of myself I judged as ‘too fat’ or ‘un sexy.’ And I would have told you it was for another reason, and truly believed it.

But the not doing, the moving away from, only exacerbated my self aversion, and when my harsh inner critic kicks off, my default response is to (unconsciously) punish myself, which can look like days of consuming self critiquing, comfort eating, and can send me off into ‘self improvement junkie’ land… can you maybe relate?

So when I see social media goddess like creatures participating in self care routines, of which are both beautiful and effective, my response is not to move towards it, it’s usually to move away from it. And I just want to recognise and acknowledge anyone else who finds spending time with themself hard or challenging, as whacky as that may sound to some, I really get it, and knowing why, helps shift it!

So how do we challenge these parts? we take the smallest little steps we need to, to get to know what part of our self is in resistance.

I check in with the list above to see if any of those parts may holding me hostage, and acknowledge them. This could be through a journaling dialogue, or by taking time to find my inner adult, and parenting my way into the discipline of showing up (*cue inner tantrum), no matter how much disappointment I’ve experienced in the past, no matter how hard it feels mentally, or how appealing something else looks, or how squirmy I feel to be with my body… I practice leaning in to the discomfort, and there is ALWAYS reward for doing so.

May we keep moving towards our self, one baby step at a time. x