Self-care

[Tangled Web]

Being multiple can come with a lot of challenges. Coming from a history that has horrible trauma in it we never really learned what it meant by the phrase “self-care”. It was hard for us to break those words down and learn what providing self-care was all about. We now know how important it is to take care of ourselves but it can still remain quite a difficult thing to do with many challenges.
So what are the things you do for yourselves or the others inside your system to provide them with comfort or somethings you do for yourself to promote self-care? Can you come up with at least 2 things? Maybe one thing you do for yourself and one thing you do for your inner selves?

A new one of mine is-usually I only remember to eat just once a day. I am starting to try to eat twice a day now and with smaller meals.
The thing I try to do for the lils inside is when I have a day off work, I pick a day to let them watch a video or play or colour at least once in my two week rotation.

So what are some of the things you do to provide self-care or comfort?

[FreyasSpirit]

The major self care thing we have started doing recently is whenever things are feeling too intense or we are feeling too anxious or we are just feeling not so great in general is to take time for ourselves. This comes in a variety of forms:
- cancelling weekend plans or not making plans in the first place so we have a weekend alone to think or to not think and to simply relax and do nothing
- taking walks to create a long uninterrupted time for thoughts to flow freely. Lying in bed and during walks seem to be the best time for this. Sometimes we process things, sometimes we don't and regardless of whether we do, walks create time to open the possibility of processing.
- taking a mental health day from work when needed

Another thing we try to do is to keep track of who is fronting. When we don't do this, our system tends to do this for us which results in more involuntary switches. Keeping track of who is fronting falls under the larger category of monitoring our mental state. Only when we are aware of how well we are doing can we react appropriately and take steps to guide ourselves into a better state.

[The People]

We exercise. Indoors and out as we are fortunate to have a small gum downstairs. We also just got out bikeout. Physical health issues caused this to fall behind but we are getting going again.

As for the not eating, we go through that. IMO I believe that some of it is the littles. Forget to eat. Some of this too is related to health issues as eating anything more solid than cereal was an issue for a long tie. As a result it will be 3 pm and the stomach will start burning because it is foodless. We are working on having 3 meals a day even if one is just fruit.

[MakersDozn]

Great topic. We try as much as possible to practice self-care, but we have to take a moment to think about what we do. We're experiencing a bit of mental spaghetti at the moment.

In terms of food, we have a tendency to be emotional eaters, so we only buy/keep food that will minimize the likelihood of us doing this. We succeed more often than not, but we know that we have more work to do on this issue.

Another important self-care activity is blogging (see our signature below). Blogging allows us to sort out our thoughts and process things more easily. And we encourage our T to read our blog posts, because they help her get a better idea of what we're going through.

MDs

[Unity]

I guess i'm pretty bad with this one lol When i'm not well, even people often give me things in the street lol ha ha in the same time it make me laugth but it's not funny

Well i still do physical exercice, yoga, tai chi stuff like this a bit, but regarding other things, F- lol

Sometime i don't eat anything for 2/3 day, i don't have very good hygiene or cleaning or things like this lol i need to work on this lol

[Cammy]

Sometimes we just need to be alone. I get in the car and drive and then just park and sit with a milk shake or other treat. I need to know no one is going to interrupt me. The alone time feels relaxing and somehow regenerating. I usually do it at least once a day. Fortunately my husband totally understands this need and just lets me be. 

[Tangled Web]

Welcome Igraine
Alone time is definitely needed for relaxing or regrouping for us also!
TW