IT’S TIME TO PUT YOUR SELF FIRST

The art of porperly looking aeftr number one

If there was a route to making your life a more manageable, joyful and generally fulfilling experience – not just for you but also those around you – would you take it? The first time I heard about the wellness world’s new buzzword, ‘self- care’, I scoffed. Wasn’t that just keeping clean and pampering oneself: visits to the dentist and luxury spa days?

The answer, as I’ve discovered, is a resounding no. While ‘traditional self-care’ does cover the basics of physical health – taking necessary medicines, minimising toxins (alcohol, drugs, etc), showering and brushing teeth – the new-wave ‘art of self-care’ now being taught by psychologists and psychotherapists is far more life-enhancing. It involves understanding our individual needs and trying to keep in step with them, so as to be the most healthy, balanced version of ourselves. And before you say the words ‘self-indulgent’, consider this: taking more self-care is a responsible way of boosting resilience and providing a buffer against the stresses of life, not to mention making us kinder, happier and calmer to be around.

So what exactly does it entail? A year ago, after lots of illness, injury and anxiety to boot, I started the process of finding out. I knew I wanted to rebalance, to ‘busy’ less and enjoy more, so I began to shift the focus to what made me feel good rather than what made me feel worthwhile (an important distinction for me because, like lots of other perfectionists I know, I used productivity as a barometer for self-worth). I began to allow myself to sometimes do what I wanted rather than always doing what I felt I should – to say no as often as yes to social engagements or extra work even when it felt uncomfortable to do so. I learned that some meetings were nourishing, like going for a stomp on Hampstead Heath with a close friend, and other ones less so, such as parties and networking events I attended out of obligation and a fear of missing out.

‘We all have an energy bank,’ says psychologist Suzy Reading (suzyreading.co.uk), who runs monthly self-care workshops. Her clients include new mums and people suffering from grief, anxiety and depression. ‘Self-care is doing activities that make a deposit in your energy bank so that you can cope better when life forces you to make those inevitable withdrawals. It’s anything that inspires, restores, sustains or improves your health; things that are uplifting rather than self-defeating.’

Psychotherapist Emmy Gilmour runs specialist eating-disorder clinics in London and Brighton (therecoverclinic. co.uk) where self-care education is an integral part of the treatment process. She says: ‘Many of people’s usual self-care behaviours are in response to an event or crisis – for example, a physical injury or depression – and few of us consider mental self-care to be an integral part of how we live.’

But what if you’re not suffering from a mental health issue, and your life feels good enough? Self-care isn’t something reserved only for those who are in pain, stressed or sleep deprived. In fact, like functional medicine and lifestyle medicine, this holistic idea of self-care is as much prevention as it is cure.

Broadly speaking, says Reading, self-care

Self-care is anything that inspires, restores, sustains or improves your health