I like cats. I like sleeping cats. I kinda wish this was going to be a post on sleeping like a cat, but alas, I have NO idea how to do that. If you do, tell me your secret!
No, today is about a different kind of rest: A rest from whatever the hell is causing you unnecessary stress right now.
The election season posts on Facebook? Give it a rest.
Impossible people in your family? Give it a rest.
Your health? Give it a rest.
One of the subtle aftereffects of trauma is a belief that you’ve got to do things right, that doing things right is a way to be safe. Even when it comes to self-care, I’ll sometimes make up rules for how to do it right. And if I fail those rules, the self-loathing comes right out. I’ve had to learn that even how I phrase my choices is an important part of self-care.
And that’s why I say “Give it a rest.” Because I can do a rest any time, even if it’s for a microsecond.
I have friends who do social media ‘fasts’ or ‘sabbaths’. Those words are dangerous for me. My brain interprets “fasting” as a complete absence/removal of something (food, water, Facebook, Twitter). So, if I sneak a peek at Facebook, I’m no longer fasting. I’ve broken the rules! Sabbath is similar – it implies a certain amount of time, maybe 24-72 hours, maybe longer.
But a rest? If I tell myself I’m getting off Twitter and getting to work, then find myself back on Twitter 2 minutes later… My rest lasted 2 minutes. And I can plan to make it last longer next time.
If I know I have to talk to my family, I can plan on taking a rest from falling for their manipulations. Sometimes I succeed and sometimes I only succeed for a little while. Well, at least I had a rest from being suckered into that crap.
My health is currently going to hell. I wish I could phrase that nicer, but I’d be lying. It’s frustrating, scary, and there’s no diagnosis or treatment plan in place yet (working on it). I can get pretty wound up thinking about it: how it’s affecting my children and partner, how I can’t do things I want to do, how the pain is making it hard to think. There’s no way I am just going to be able to put that out of my mind, but I can give it a rest.
This is really about multiple skills: (1) evaluating what’s draining us, (2) getting some space from that, and (3) supporting our self-care by talking to ourselves in ways that are kind and set us up for success.
Someone reading this is thinking, “Oh please. If you can’t get off Facebook for a weekend, you just don’t have willpower.”
Fuck that. I’ve got iron willpower. So do you. You don’t survive abuse, pain, trauma, and build a happier life without willpower. The question is: where do you want to spend that willpower? I don’t want to waste it on managing my Facebook consumption. I don’t want to waste it yelling at myself for not being able to do something perfectly.
I do want to use that willpower to lead to more happiness for myself. I want to turn my considerable willpower to being kinder to myself. It takes willpower because I learned from an early age that the best way to treat myself was to beat myself up. It takes a lot of willpower to undo lessons learned early in our lives, and that was a lesson I learned before I could even sit up. It takes willpower and practice.
If “give it a rest” doesn’t work for you – what phrase does? What will help you support your decision to reduce some negativity in your life? Talk with me on the Quiet Storms Facebook page.
More soon,
dawn
Another sleeping kitty, because I find they cheer me up, and the internet really is for cat pictures, isn’t it?
Image credits:
1st image: condesign on pixabay.com
2nd image: shardy on pixabay.com
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