WHAT IS SELF-CARE, REALLY?
By Peggi Cooney | Author This Side of Alcohol | Hola Sober Host + Columnist | TSOA on FB + Instagram |
Self-care is defined as “The practice of taking action to preserve or improve one’s own health.” Author Christy Tending in her article entitled “The Myth of the Bubble Bath ” describes self-care as “the real, sometimes gritty, always heartfelt act of caring for yourself and being your own best advocate.” I love her words. They’re real and true. By the time most of us get sober, our health is in desperate need of a major tune-up. That was certainly true for me. Alcohol is without a doubt toxic to our minds, body, and spirit. My friend and Hola Sober co-host MMK said this in a meeting the other day: “We give up things in the order that they’re killing us. Alcohol was Number One.” A little over three years ago, alcohol was killing me. True self-care could only begin for me when I stopped trying to keep alcohol in my life. I drank wine as self-care for well over a decade. As a child welfare and adult protective services social worker, the exposure to daily trauma from my job gave me the excuse I needed to “self-care” with wine. There’s even a term for it: “Secondary Traumatic Stress”: a form of occupational stress resulting from frequent and/or chronic exposure to often emotional and detailed accounts of children’s traumatic events.
And although the trauma is real, my way of coping was maladaptive and dangerous. Self-care turned into self-loathing. My mind, body and spirit were the antithesis of self-care. I had severe insomnia and digestive issues. My anxiety was through the roof; my marriage was in shambles; I was in jeopardy of losing my relationship with my adult daughter and grandkids; I had blackouts, hangovers and memory loss; I had awful skin and hair; I was overweight. I had terrible eating habits – I often drank my calories. I lied to people, and I consistently broke promises to others and to myself. My fall from integrity was epic. When I put down the glass a little over three years ago, I began to heal. I am not saying that my life became full of rainbows and unicorns. Far from it. I am, however, back in the land of the living. I have my integrity. I know that the key to self-care is to be present and do the best I can. That was not possible with wine poison as a constant in my system. My self-care now looks like writing, a clean desk, making lists, reading, getting up and going to bed early, Kona coffee, walking, yoga, (yes Lisa Bear, yoga is slowly growing on me), writing my gratitude list, driving my own car to events, arriving early, and leaving when I want, staying in a hotel when visiting
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