Quotes About Self-care

Hold on...Hold on to yourself. This is going to hurt like hell.

Doing something for yourself doesn't make you selfish. My students tell me it's called self-care.

As women, we often feel we have to put our needs at the bottom of the pile. But why are we less important than others?

She'd read somewhere that if you gave your brain tasks to do it stopped overthinking. She'd given herself a lot of tasks. Sometimes she felt like a robot. It seemed like a lifetime since she'd felt human.

As my mother says, your forties are when you finally pay for your past mistakes, the cigarettes and sunburns, the Big Macs and smooth-talking men. She may be right.

I must be better, she thought—realising it then, in that moment, for the first time. I must be OK.

Now, from the crown of my head to the curve of my toe-nails, there was an unguent for every part of me - oil for my eyebrows and cream for my lashes; a jar of tooth-powder, a box of blanc-de-perle; polish for my fingernails and a scarlet stick to redden my mouth; tweezers for drawing the hairs from my nipples, and a stone to take the hard flesh from my heels.

Walking and hiking does this. Cooking does, too. The witchy, grandmotherly type of cooking where you prepare things from scratch and you treat it as a hobby, not a chore to be rushed through. Fermenting vegetables gets me back in sync. Yoga works. Hot and slow and controlled by breath, breaking down to our bone-heavy pace.

I am not my sickness; I have a condition that can wander all lonely and cloudlike into view from time to time. I (the whole me) can choose to sit back and witness the clouds, let them be, let them pass.

We can be in grief, we can itch, we can be overwhelmed, and we can choose to do something about it. We don't have to be rendered numb, asleep, despairing. I learned some time back that I could be fretting with anxiety and I could choose to live a great life.

My self-destructive inclination when anxious has been to distance myself from the world. I'm really very good at extracting myself from those around me and hiding out until I think I'm a more bearable person to be around.

If you go to an event, give yourself permission to leave early when you're worn down, knowing that you want to go and connect to people, but that you want to leave before you stop enjoying the situation. Set it up and think it through in advance so you don't feel anxious. Plan for your AD/HD.

Relationships simply bring too many things to do and to consider, adding to stress and feelings of being overwhelmed. Women feel, at some level, that developing more relationships or even a few relationships to a deeper point will put them over the top.

They don't know how hard they are working or how much of their energy is going into just surviving. They don't know that living is not supposed to be that hard. Too often, like the frog, by the time they discover this is not the way it's supposed to be they're already depleted, depressed, or overwhelmed.

Learn to know your particular balance between being overstimulated/understimulated and overwhelmed/underwhelmed.

It wasn't a perfect body but it was the body she deserved. Not just from every bar of chocolate or bag of crisps or laden plate of food that she'd eaten. This body was also testament to all the hours in the gym and cycling up hills on her bike and glugging down two litres of water a day and learning to love vegetables and fruits that didn't come as optional extra with a pastry crust. She'd earned this body. This was her body and she had to stop giving it such a hard time.

Avoid fried meats which angry up the blood. If your stomach disputes you, lie down and pacify it with cool thoughts. Keep the juices flowing by jangling around gently as you move. Go very light on the vices, such as carrying on in society. The social ramble ain't restful. Avoid running at all times. Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you.

If your stomach disputes you, lie down and pacify it with cool thoughts.

One thought-murder a day keeps the psychiatrist away.

Tolerations are the seemingly inconsequential little things that drain away your energy.

Relax your body slightly. Inhale through your nose to a slow count of three, four, or five—whatever is comfortable. Remember to allow the air to fill your diaphragm as well as your lungs. Retain the air, then exhale to the same slow count.

Be kind to your future self

I practise selective deafness to hurtful remarks.

And for all our sakes, tame that mess on top of your head. Use fire and a poleaxe if you have to.