Halp! How do you do self care?

[flamingsword]

First off: I am safely home from the funeral.

Second: on this trip, when I was not worrying about other people I was doing desire mapping and trying to set intentions for the coming year. I had some realizations. Such as:
• I am in need of remedial self-care lessons! I have no idea how to get myself to do the things for more than a week.
• I was not the only person in Mom’s family whose passive SI/low self esteem/existential rage shows up in the form of being cavalier about risks to your life and health. I think it might be all of us.
• I did not get gendered correctly a single time by anyone in the Missouri side of the family, but I’m still going to try to get them into therapy, only I might be a little bitchy about it, bc I am not a fucking saint.

Like, I do have a list of things I want to do more often, but like … how do you remember to consistently do stuff that’s good for you when your brain doesn’t want to form habits? Should I just add voice memos to do self care to my existing alarms? That’s literally my only idea, here. If you have more, PLEASE SHARE! Omg I need so much help.

Comments

[tuzemi]

Glad you're home and safe. 💗

For self care, I have recurring (usually daily) alarms on my phone with things that I frequently forget. While I may not always do something at that second, the reminder helps me come back around eventually to doing it even if it's a few days later.

I was also prompted by my first therapist to compile a list of personal triggers and things that can help as a living document. (I think this also helped cement my diagnosis.) On some of the really bad days it helped to scan my "what sometimes helps" and just try something.

For keeping me on track with difficult people, I recently made a simple procedure with checklists for before/during/after and spots to collect comments and needed changes. The goal here is to conserve spoons otherwise needed for my own daily tasks, and throttle long-term losses to the narcissistic emotional vampires.

Dara Hoffman-Fox's gender identity book (which one should not search for on sites like libgen) has a list of self-care things too that is worth perusing for making your own list. I remember baths, cooking, doing nails, reading, and listening to music as some items that I adopted.

I hope you find a good groove for taking care of you. You've done a lot for us/me these last few years, it's totally right for your turn now. 😺💖

[flamingsword]

As a random aside to the personal autistic triggers, do you have autistic glimmers? Like, the opposite of triggers, where something happens/you have a particular sensory experience and then you feel a rush of euphoria or relaxation, etc.? Since our brains work a bit differently, we can often experience heightened sensations of pleasure and ASMR-type waves of relaxation and weightless calm, which apparently NT people don’t really get under most circumstances?

Give it some thought and I’ll do the same. Let’s see if we can replicate some autism study findings on stuff that doesn’t suck.

[silk_dragon_zen]

we're wearing an ealy lovable soft comfy 💜🐛🧤💗 on our hands and 💜🐛🧣💗 around our neck

— Silke

[silk_dragon_zen]

This was in reply to the mention of autistic glimmers, something we hadn't ever heard of, but clearly we experience. Whenever Silke even sees something made of 💜silk💗 on a video she lights up with happiness (therefore so do the rest of us).

— Sage

[tuzemi]

I am familiar with the feeling I think, but it's rare. The few times I remember it are when someone was physically close to me and (deliberately or not) ended up doing a gentle stroking motion on my arms or back. Kind of the opposite of goosebumps.

It doesn't happen much anymore though. Noodling on it, that might be because I have almost no body hair now compared to a few years ago.

*gentle pets*

[flamingsword]

I wish you less body hair but more glimmers, less rarity in your finding of joy.

[sabotabby]

Glad you're home safe *hugs*

[flamingsword]

Thanks. 🫂

[dhampyresa]

I'm sorry things went poorly. I hope you figure out the selfcare thing (and then tell me lmao)

[flamingsword]

Okay so I needed to read this article today: https://getpocket.com/explore/item/11-tips-for-anyone-who-doesn-t-know-how-to-relax

I have changed some of my alarms to voice memos that tell me to do self care, and that should help. Plus, one of my friends said on Discord that he has a D20 and a list of twenty things that work for his self care/relaxation. That way he can roll the dice on what form self care will take today, which would help with my need for things to not always be predictably routine, while still making sure that I do something good for my health. I can do that, I’m pretty sure.

[dhampyresa]

Thank you for the link!