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

[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.