Salon post: April 13

[jenett]

Welcome to this week's salon post!

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Topic of the week
A conversation with the assistant here at work made me think self-care would be a great topic.

(I had allergy testing yesterday, and am going to be doing allergy shots, but I mentioned I was going to have another session in the float tank tomorrow, which is where this comes from. Which are two very different kinds of self care in some ways.)

What counts as self care for you? What makes it work well for you? What kinds of things do you do? How do you pick which one, when there are reasonable options?

What I've been up to:
Presenting at a conference! (More details in a locked post on my journal, I am amiable about adding people, but don't want to discuss the details in a public post since they're quickly identifying). Getting allergy testing! Doing a modicum of other household stuff, and more writing than I expected given the rest of this week.

I'm looking forward to a three day weekend. Massachusetts (and Maine, which used to be part of Massachusetts) have the third Monday in April as a holiday for Patriots Day, which is for the battles of Lexington and Concord at the start of the American Revolution, and in the Boston area, especially so because it's Marathon Day. I plan to go out and do things tomorrow.

It does also mean sometimes one goes to the grocery store and spots someone in re-enactment gear.


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Comments

[sporky_rat]

There is a teeny tiny nail/hair/tanning/other salon here in my community college town that offers $5 shampoos. I have hair to a quarter of the way down my thighs and when neither me or my husband have the time or energy to deal with it, I pay the very nice lady there to wash it. It is well worth $5. No blowouts, just a towel dry (I bring my own towel because it's a lot of hair and it's easier), but it's so nice to have someone else deal with my hair.

[jenett]

Oh, that does sounds like a lovely degree of light fussing and something it's a lot easier for someone (with the best equipment) to do.

[sporky_rat]

It really truly is. And it's something that lasts long enough for me to appreciate it without me feeling like I'm wasting money on something that's not going to be around for long.

[jazzyjj]

My father and I started going to a barber shop several years ago that is owned by the son of the guy who owned our former barber shop. It's worked well ever since, and the people who work there including the owner are great. They also give nice haircuts at affordable prices. One of my life-skills tutors has also cut my hair before, and he does a nice job.

[adafrog]

Sounds like a great way to pamper yourself.

[monksandbones]

My least-healthy habits all revolve around procrastination and avoidance and chickening out of doing things, so a lot of the pampering-type things that spring to mind at the phrase "self-care" (even though I know those represent something of a flattening of the concept) can quite easily become their own forms of procrastination. I also don't respond well to rewards, because generally no reward is as rewarding as procrastination/avoiding doing the thing.

All that is to say that for me, self-care generally takes the form of doing the thing/things. I've been having some recent, very minor success at doing small amounts of work on, say, job applications, well in advance. Not that the small amounts generally add up to much less work when it comes to finally doing the thing, but they do at least cut down on some of the guilt about procrastinating when I'm doing the thing at the last minute, so at least I can focus on getting it done without feeling bad that I've put it off on top of the misery of making myself do it.

That said, selectively declaring official time off (for instance, when I go to bed and read at night, that is official time off, neither a fun time I am stealing from something else I should be doing nor a reward for productivity) can also be helpful, because I spend a lot of time wasting time and feeling guilty about it, and declaring not-work time is at least a break from the guilt. Sometimes forms of "active procrastination," when I use procrastinating on one thing to motivate me to do something else, also work, because at least I'm getting something done, and can sometimes fuel doing things up to maybe 60% as daunting as the thing I'm avoiding by doing that.

[theora]

Yes! This is me too. Getting stuff done makes me feel better, though at times it’s so so hard (especially when I need it the most). I find that productivity begets productivity, though I have to be careful not to let it snowball to the point that I get overwhelmed trying to do too much.

[jenett]

I am so good at active procrastination. Which as you say is sometimes really helpful. (I used to say my room was never so clean as when I had Greek homework.)

I am having a lot of luck with some kinds of measuring things (like writing X words a day - when job hunting, I've done the X apps a week or whatever thing, same concept.) But having something to get me started helps a lot.

[lilysea]

What counts as self care for you?

Avoiding foods I have allergies/food intolerances to. (A constant struggle, as these foods - gluten, dairy, cinnamon, chilli - are both ubiquitous and delicious.)

Eating regularly.

Drinking water regularly.

Trying to get enough sleep.

Having the self discipline to take my painkillers the safe 6 hours apart in order to protect my liver, even if I'm in pain sooner.

Telling strangers not to touch me, because it'll aggravate my chronic pain.

Avoiding exposure to fragrance as much as possible (migraine trigger).

[alexseanchai]

Doing things to make this apartment a more pleasant place to spend my time is simultaneously self-care and what I need self-care after!

Art is self-care except when I'm frustrated that it won't do what I want.

Nail polish. I always feel a little better about myself when my nails are a fresh bold color than when the polish is chipped or absent.

[lilysea]

Also:

making sure I don't run out of prescription medication (remembering to get scripts from the doctor; remembering to go to the chemist);

remembering to take both my prescription medication and my supplements;

going to the dentist for cleanings/fillings even though I HATE it, because it's necessary;

doing laundry so I have clean clothes;

loading the dishwasher so I have clean cups/plates;

calling friends to say hello;

reading books;

asking for emotional support when I need it.

[theora]

Getting stuff done as I mentioned above. That’s a biggie for me in terms of ongoing mood maintenance.

In acute moments, when I just need to make it through minute by minute, strong sensory stuff seems to help: very dark chocolate, very strong mint, very hot coffee, very spicy chili sauce. Smelling freshly grated nutmeg or lemon. Loud heavy metal music. Calling people robustly rude names (not to their face).

Things I like to do, but that require conditions I don’t always have:
Looooong walks outside (like hours long)
Making elaborate meals or baked goods with lots of steps and processes - while not being interrupted by anyone
Visiting gardens and trying to figure out what makes them tick

Things I wish I had in my life but do not:
Regular deeply satisfying conversation
A religious/spiritual practice of some sort (what sort? how? do I know? no I do not!)

[ckd]

The fact that I'm having trouble coming up with examples of self-care is probably a bad sign.

(Well, I can think of one: I should book a massage soon, since that's one of the things I've been doing less often than I used to.)

I'm doing generally okay at the sort of maintenance stuff lilysea mentions, mostly because of external prompting through OmniFocus repeating tasks.

Getting my obligate-extrovert social time is also a big help, often through conventions but with a smaller "maintenance dose" from the weekly game night at work.

[jenett]

A lot of my routine maintenance stuff lives in my to-do app. Or meds live in an app just for meds.

(Prescription refills don't, but I fill separate containers every Saturday night, and if I need refills, I go put them in then online as part of refilling the containers. I have one I take to work that is the stuff I take with breakfast plus an extra of everything and things like a few ibuprofen and allergy pills in case I need them, the one that lives by my computer for taking in the evening.

And the thyroid pills which get their own container because a) they're tiny pills and b) I have a pill case that says "Zombie Cure" for them, and that will never cease to be hilarious to me.)

[ckd]

Prescription refills also live in OmniFocus, set to automatically become available 23 days since last refill and due 27 days since.

I have two weekly pill organizers that I fill alternately so that I always have 1+ week of pills and supplements handy, so watching for when I "run low" usually happens too soon for the insurance coverage to be willing to let me refill them.

[jazzyjj]

There is an online portal which I use for most of my healthcare needs. It is run by a local hospital network, and allows patients and their healthcare teams to communicate with each other. Appointments can also be scheduled, and this portal allows for a few other things. I was rather skeptical at first because I thought there might be screen reader issues, but that has turned out not to be the case. When I first signed up on the portal upon obtaining a PIN, there was one of those visual verifications which did contain an audio alternative but even that was timed. A sighted neighbor had to help me with that. But it has since been replaced by Google's new CAPTCHA, which only requires ticking a box. Other than that I've had absolutely no issues, and I couldn't be happier with my healthcare team. Some of them are in private practice so they aren't on the portal, but I have their phone numbers stored elsewhere. My primary-care doc is not on there but is actually on staff at one of the participating hospitals.





Regarding other self-care issues, that's what my neighbors and tutors are here for as well as just to hang out with and have a good time. My family also pitches in a lot. I submitted an online application a few days ago to what is now the Hadley Institute for the Blind and Visually Impaired, and one of the courses I'm planning to take is Health. They used to have separate health courses for a number of sub-topics, but I think this one basically covers them all now. I just received an email yesterday from them indicating that I have been enrolled in my first course of choice, and the material is on its way.

[jenett]

My doctor's office switched to a different online system last year, and I'm liking the current one a fair bit - I just sent a message about a follow up on what the allergist told me (mostly because if my doctor wants a different prescription I'd like to know, plus to get the new one in my file.)

Finding a good doctor is so important. My current one (since I moved back to Massachusetts) is fabulous, and she makes it a lot easier for me to attack things. She's got a great sense of what order to do things in.

(Take the allergist: my asthma is not as well-controlled as it could be, but it's not as controlled for complicated reasons, and it's mostly been stably uncontrolled, which is a thing - lower lung function, but I don't need my rescue inhaler that often. So we have been doing other things that were more urgent, and now we're poking at the lungs again.)

[redbird]

At the moment, my self-care is mostly about PT and ongoing exercises: I have new hip stuff (that is now down to three days a week rather than six, and shoulder stuff that I would like to do three days a week again now that the hips are taking less time. I managed yesterday's minimum despite spending most of the day in travel (left my house at 8:30, got to Montreal at about 6:30, and to rysmiel's apartment after a quick meal about an hour after that.

I think Thursday's cortisone shot (in the knee) counts, as does having scheduled cortisone for both hips the week after next after the orthopedist disagreed with my GP's diagnosis. Memo to self: check in with the physical therapist about the hip as planned, but don't schedule another session until I see how the cortisone affects things.

On a meta-level, a lot of it seems to be about good habits (so I don't have to think about what I will do to make this work); eating basically the same breakfast every morning saves cognitive load and ensures I will get protein in the morning. My "take your morning meds" alarm went off while I was typing this comment, and I got up in mid-sentence to take pills.

[jenett]

Cortisone shots definitely count.

And yeah, definitely with the habits, and the figuring out which things I can have set solutions for, so I don't have to spend energy on it. (I do this with a lot of things)

[jenett]

So, finally having a chance to comment - part of why I was thinking about this was a conversation with my doctor (when we decided to do another round of referrals to poke at things) and the conversation with my allergist.

My doctor is not the first health professional who has pointed out that I'm really good at this taking care of myself thing - I pay attention to what's going on in my body, I think about what information will be most helpful to her and what I need her to help with, and I'm really good at prioritising what needs to happen most. (And also at setting a "Yes, that would probably be a good idea, but it's not a practical one, what are the other options.)

Chronic health stuff teaches you some things. Or at least teaches me some things. (Also my witchcraft training, which was heavy on the self-awareness: there's a lot of stuff you can work around if you know you need to, but you need to know it has to be factored in.)

And then there's things like the float tank - this is my third time - where I figure 90 minutes in a space that makes my body feel good, that lets me disconnect my brain, is good for me whatever else I get out of it. I've taken to doing it on the Saturday of a long weekend, to help disconnect from work and other schedule stuff better.

[eclips1st]

Self-care can be simple. Often, it means simply getting a day (an afternoon? A couple hours?) to myself. Where *I* choose what *I* want to do. Sometimes I clean the house until it's spotless, sometimes I read, sometimes I knit and binge watch Netflix, but what's important is that it's just me. I don't want kids or my husband around. (Or my mother. My mother often drops in when she knows I'm home alone. I had to tell her to stop last fall because she doesn't understand I need this. On the other hand, she needs the time to talk to me and unload things she's got on her mind.)

It took me a long time to realize I have this need to be alone. I think it comes from being an only child who got to spend a lot of time on her own.