3 Lessons in Self-Care
By: Megan Brewer, LMHC
The first time I had surgery, I was well into my thirties. It wasn’t major—just removing a small abnormality inside my leg. The surgeon told me to expect 1–2 days to heal; then I could walk on it. He also said most people returned to work shortly thereafter. This was good news, because I didn’t want to spend any more time than was absolutely necessary away from my regularly scheduled week. Being kind to my body and giving it time and space to heal is something I have regularly wrestled to do. So, you can imagine my surprise and disappointment when after 1–2 days I still needed my sweet husband’s help to get around the house. I eventually borrowed crutches in order to move about without pain.
Two weeks after the surgery, I was still unable to walk without pain and sat in my physical therapist’s office feeling frustrated—like my body had failed me somehow. She too was surprised to see my leg so swollen and so unusable, which helped me to feel a little more validation. As we talked about how my leg had responded to the intrusion of surgery, she helped me understand why my body had responded the way it did. She explained that my body had produced more inflammation than the surgeon had expected, which would have made it impossible to be up and walking in 1-2 days as previously anticipated. She gently but intentionally tended to my leg and stretched it in ways that caused exceptional pain, but the pain of stretching helped loosen the muscles so I could walk normally around her office. It took more than a month of stretching and intentional walking to get my leg back to how it had been before the surgery. Throughout the process, I learned helpful lessons about caring for the body and the self that God gave me:
-Self-care is different for everyone: We all have different bodies that have lived in different stories and those stories have impacted us in different ways. What may be easy for one person to face with little disruption may cause an avalanche of emotions and challenges for another. If we do not take time to understand how and why we are impacted in the ways we are by what we experience, we will expect responses that do not fit. And when they don’t fit, we will have contempt for ourselves. This leads in the opposite direction of care.
-Caring for yourself is not comparable: We have a unique self that responds differently than other selves. We will need to pay attention to the ways we uniquely need care and how we will best receive it. Comparison takes us out of our own circumstances and story and holds us up unfairly against the backdrop of someone else’s where our story does not fit. When we do this, we rob ourselves of the opportunity we have to learn something about ourselves and the care we need. We cannot truly find care for our hearts by trying to make ourselves respond in the way someone else would. Other’s experiences can be helpful when they call us to deeper reflection of our own. Their story may resonate with something in our own and help us to tend to our own body and heart in ways we had not thought of before.
-Self-contempt makes self-care impossible: If our story has led us to feel contempt for the parts of us that are hurt and need care, we will work as hard as we can to stay far away from those parts of ourselves. Contempt feels like a harsh judgement upon ourselves that separates us from care. Self-contempt is like taking a wounded part of ourselves (that deeply needs attention and care) and leaving it in the desert instead—while driving as fast as we can in the opposite direction. This may work for a season, even a very long one. But the part that was left will always find its way back until it is tended with the care it needs and deserves.
Learning what you need for care takes practice. It is a practice you must pay attention to everyday. So, spend today paying attention to how your experiences impact you and to what may be getting in the way of acknowledging you need to tend to yourself well.
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