Thoughts by a First-Gen on Self-Care During Pandemonium
When I went into quarantine a month and a half ago, I was irrationally excited about the swaths of time now available to focus on creating the ideal at-home lifestyle. Maybe pick up a few healthier habits, maybe concentrate my creative energies, and miraculously come out of the pandemic with a writing career in the making. Maybe learn how to cook stuff using the wok without fear. Since I’m currently in my last year of undergrad (social work; also, shoutout to the class of 2020! What a mess!), my primary responsibilities included finishing up coursework online and doing some light job-hunting. Mainly I planned to take it easy for a while, which would have been the case whether or not the world was thrown into the COVID-19 pandemic.
To preface, this isn’t my first rodeo of trying to take better care of myself. Self-care has been an active subject in my life since enrolling in a helping profession four years ago, and especially significant since I started tackling personal issues around two years ago. Helping professions take this stuff seriously; you hear about burnout and compassion fatigue all the time because they’re very real possibilities when your career means stretching your emotional limits. Add that to the slew of other issues one tends to grapple with while coming-of-age, like issues of self-esteem and self-worth, realizing how that thing happened was actually, to put it politely, quite messed up (and sometimes, that’s on trauma). You get a riveting contrast of knowledge on the subject and a sudden realization that you are no exception.
The point is, what they say is true. Every part of the past is vital to this present moment and is key to what happens next. So, that’s where I’m at. Definitely not an expert as much as a familiar intermediate, with the aim to share what I’ve learned thus far on my own journey.
Okay, back to the matter at hand. For me, the relationship between self-care and self-harm is strong, most likely because when I realized it was time to take better care of myself, it meant swapping/ adding kinder habits to the ones that currently hurt. Self-harm isn’t always blatantly clear and conscious. Sometimes it’s as mundane as choosing not to get enough sleep. There are so many passive ways to hurt ourselves, usually to cope with something else going on, which is valid! But bad habits just keep on taking their toll. Meanwhile, when possible, self-care is more sustainable. It fosters energy and keeps us going, and half the battle is deciding we believe it’s deserved.
Part of self-compassion is radical self-acceptance. Radical because emotionally, we may not feel like it’s what we deserve. Yet we move forward anyway because the times we feel we least deserve self-love and respect are likely when we need it the most. Having yourself in your own corner, as the only one who truly understands your own motivations and reasons, is so much more constructive than its opposite.
I’ve noticed a lot more about my own Chinese cultural background in the past year than I have in a while, mainly due to my academic placement in a Chinese program within a community center for seniors. This experience pushed me to take note of little things that I’d simply taken for granted before. For example, being raised with a general sense of collectiveness, taking care of yourself by taking care of others, and letting them take care of you in return (yet not in a selfish way, either. The value of balance is strong here). While the results aren’t always ideal (see: traditions like filial piety, or that one Hasan Minhaj joke about how as kids of immigrants, we are the retirement plan), the underlying goal of togetherness and empathy is there.
A truth I’ve stumbled upon in recent years is that it’s easier to care for others than yourself. There is a myriad of branches to this idea. To an individualist, it might sound like a trick to sacrifice yourself for someone else and lose out in the process. But isn’t it true? Giving compliments is so much easier than accepting them. Cooking someone a meal feels so much more satisfying than just cooking for yourself. Such is the life of communal beings.
Our behaviours are all based on survival. Whatever we’ve kept as we’ve grown is because of this simple monkey-brain psychological conditioning reason. It’s worked in the past, and maybe it’s not necessarily healthy! Not everything is. Not everything will be.
Ultimately, it comes down to owning whatever is weighing on the mind at the moment. We’re problem-solving creatures; our brains seek conflicts and strive to fix them. Trust that your unconscious brain is working on it and take a break, sometimes, too. I’ve found that doing things where I lose track of time, like cooking or writing, helps the mood more than wallowing in things that can’t be changed. And for the things that can, maybe I’ll make a plan to change them.
Time is like money that you have no choice but to spend; the remaining question is how. Mindfulness is found in how you most enjoy daydreaming/ thinking in the ways you’re comfortable with, which isn’t always a meditation session. Sometimes it’s taking the time to not rush through brushing your teeth or doing the dishes. Incorporating healthier habits into daily life is much easier than trying to add a new one to an already full life.
Some final food for thought: firstly, what do you want? Secondly, what do you need? And in combination, what do you need to do for yourself to get what you want, and what do you want to do for yourself to get what you need? I’ve learned that overall, the journey of life is simply too short not to ask ourselves what we want out of it.
