So why am I entering the fray?
Well, self-care and I have a tricky relationship. Like many people, I've struggled with my mental health - the British charity Mind reports that one in four people in the UK will experience a mental health problem each year. On my worst days, I struggle to look after myself in the ways that I should. Sometimes that means that I don't fuel myself properly and either go without eating, or I overindulge in the wrong things. Sometimes it means that I forego exercise and fresh air to wallow in my own soup of self-pity. Sometimes it means berating myself with unkind thoughts that I would never dream of voicing to another soul.
I've made many attempts to break free from my spiralling self-doubt and self-loathing. Lots of things have helped - like several, albeit brief, courses of counselling - but I felt that I needed a gradual but complete lifestyle overhaul. Yes, I had baggage from the past that was weighing me down and there is no doubt at all in my mind that proper counselling has been one of the best ways to unpick it - I would never advocate a do-it-yourself approach in lieu of proper professional help if you're at a point when you need it. Indeed, admitting that it's time to speak to somebody about the state of your mental health surely has to be one of the most important acts of caring for yourself.
But I felt that I needed to do something more to improve my present, to complement my talking therapy by treating myself like I loved myself.
In my quest to be a happier me, I happened upon the self-care movement by accident. In 2019, you can hardly escape it - it's packaged in neat, Instagrammable squares, as hashtags, as easily digestible social media snippets. There's no doubt that it's a burgeoning industry, and the cynical part of me realises that, in consumerising self-care, some companies are out to make a quick buck from people's mental health management. But I also read stories of people who had found the mantras, the meditations and the bullet journals genuinely helpful.
I think that the key is recognising that the 'self' in 'self-care' is not just reflexive - it means that it's subjective too. I think that there's a sensible, pick'n'mix approach to self-care, through which we can each compose our own contentment.
That's what I plan to do with this blog. In a past life, I was a sort-of lifestyle blogger. But when my mental health took a nose-dive, posting unfailingly sunny content about days out and travel destinations felt hollow. It felt like I was forcing my life and my personality into this badly-fitting mould I'd made and eventually, I abandoned the blog.
I've missed writing. It's been several years since I've felt I've had the right kind of seed of an idea, one that rang true to me and wouldn't feel like a facade or a sham. While I suppose that this is a lifestyle blog of sorts, too, in that choosing to treat ourselves with love and respect is choosing to live in a certain way, I hope that The Caring Self will feel like it has an authentic voice.
There's another aspect I want to explore in this blog too. In caring for ourselves, I think it's also important to keep others in mind - most of us are hyper-aware of the fact that there's a line between self-care and selfish, but I feel that it's important to state it nonetheless. For a while, I've been mulling over the saying 'you can't pour from an empty cup' and, to me, I think that's what I'd like this blog to be about. I've been doing a lot of thinking over the past few months about empathy, communication and our relationships with others, for a whole host of reasons. It seems to me that this old adage is true - in order to be able to relate healthily to the world around us, we need to learn that it's OK to look after number one. From there, the rest can follow.
In short, I hope that this blog will help us to care for ourselves in order to become caring selves. To look after the people around us and to make the world a happier place.
So this is my own pick-and-mix, take-it-with-a-pinch-of-salt, suck-it-and-see version of self-care. Feel free to join in whenever you're ready.
