Self Care in Stressful Times

Last time I talked about the importance of self care and how caring for self is what really enables caring for others. Care for self is what recharges our reserves and gives us the energy to do the same for others. Care for others without care for self is draining and unsustainable. This time I'm going to talk about some strategies for practising self care in stressful times. This really applies all the time but is particularly relevant when we are under unusual stress.

This past 12 months have been a very difficult time for many, if not most of us. Pandemics, lockdowns, work insecurity, added to natural disasters and a long overdue reckoning on racial injustice made for a very stressful time. During stressful times, self care is especially important and many people recognised that at the beginning of the pandemic. There was a lot of talk initially about using the lockdowns to reset and invest in self care (Covid baking, sourdough, cooking, exploring your neighbourhood, investing in home exercise equipment, colour coding your bookshelves). Followed a few months later by guilt and shame at not being able to maintain that initial drive long term. Many people found themselves paralysed and unable to even start the simplest of projects. Lots of time but no energy.

Stressful times present us a paradox - self care is important, but starting new habits is difficult. The reason for this is cognitive load. We are not like machines - switch us off at night and we do not completely reset. We are not blank slates at the beginning of each day. We carry things with us from day to day. Events that happened yesterday, last week, last year or even decades ago, stay with us. We also carry with us things that haven't happened yet. Decisions that need to be made, worries about the future. Even though we are not aware of them consciously, all those things require mental effort to deal with.

We don't have unlimited reserves of mental energy. There is only so much our brains can cope with. Push beyond those limits and you cause problems. Motivation drops. Mental health suffers. Physical health suffers. All those unresolved problems that we carry with us provide a base load on our cognitive systems. They reduce the energy we have available to us for our day to day activities. What we have available for new projects is whatever is left over after our base cognitive load and day to day load are taken out. It's usually not much. This is hard enough for me as a middle aged, white, educated, straight man. The world is basically set up to give me an easy ride. If you add in the additional load caused by sexism, racism and discrimination against any other minority group you belong to, that level of mental effort rises sharply. Just living day to day can be incredibly draining and leave no reserves left.

Take the last 12 months with all the issues that raised. All these issues significantly raised our levels of cognitive load. They reduced the amount of energy we had to run our day to day lives and left even less than usual over for starting new things. Not much energy and a very ambitious program of new habits to acquire or projects to tackle is a recipe for disaster. It's like starting a race with an empty tank. You might start strongly but you will run our of gas very quickly. This results in guilt and shame at failing to achieve your objectives, which becomes yet more cognitive load. You can see how this can quickly spiral out of control.

So what to do? There are five things you can do to make sure your self care doesn't fall apart in stressful times.

The first is to acknowledge where you are. You have cognitive load. We all do.  We need to acknowledge that load. It's there. It's part of us. We can't get rid of it overnight and pretending it isn't there won't help. You don't need to catalogue it all, just be aware of its magnitude. Think about what has changed recently and whether that is likely to increase or decrease the cognitive load you are under. If you suddenly find yourself under lockdown while home schooling your kids and working from home, you are likely to have less energy that you may be used to. And remember - available time does not equal energy. You may have all the time in the world but have no energy available to do anything with that time.

Next is to use that awareness to set your goals. Be ambitious but not too ambitious. Don't take on too much at once. Just living day to day is a worthy goal. Survival is fine. Survival is great. Don't feel that you have to improve. If you have energy to spare above what you need to survive, fine, set your goals realistically.

Once you have your goals, make sure you set aside some time to work on them. Small and regular is way better than large and infrequent. If your goal is to develop a meditation practice it's far better to go with a couple of minutes a day regularly than an irregular hour every week or so. Small, regular effort is what builds new skills and habits.

Next, check in with yourself frequently. How's that cognitive load going? Up? Down? Hold your goals lightly and be able to let go of them if they prove too much. Sourdough baking and meditation? Too much? Pick one. If things change and your load changes, change your goals. If you misjudged the amount of energy you have, change your goals. Stay realistic.

Lastly, don't be afraid to ask for help. Reach out to friends, colleagues and family. They can help you reach your goals. You don’t need to do it all by yourself.

If you need help assessing your cognitive load and setting realistic goals, a coach can help you. They can even help reduce cognitive load by showing you strategies for decision making, prioritisation and other great stuff. If your cognitive load is overwhelming and impacting your ability to operate day to day, particularly if that cognitive load is the result of trauma, a qualified therapist is probably your best bet. They can help you work through and release that cognitive load.

We all need a support network around us and I'll be talking more about that next time.