Establishing self-care as a manageable and measurable routine
In my last two articles, I talked about how to recognize depression, and using scheduling techniques and nutrition to work your way back out of it. Now I want to talk about routines, habits, and self-care and your new routines and habits will complete the process and keep you healthier, stronger, and more functional the next time depression tries to bring you down.
There are six categories of self-care. That’s not a science of course, and some people might identify three while others insist on infinite numbers. The majority of people who discuss self-care would identify between six and eight, but I tried to combine them as much as I felt comfortable doing, and personally got it down to six. I put these in an order from most important to least important in accordance with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, meaning that physical self-care is most important and that is followed by psychological self-care. A tough call for a mental health professional, but your physical body must still be in power-on mode to even get to the psychological aspect.
Physical self-care
Maslow said that physiological needs are most important. This means getting food and clothing are more and having other basic needs for functioning are most important. Therefore at the base of all self-care comes physical self-care.
We’ve already discussed what I think is the most important part of physical care, nutrition, because it’s fuel for the body. Without it your body doesn’t work well at all. Secondary to nutrition, proper sleep and good water intake are essential, and so is getting outdoors.
And I’m sure I don’t need to say it, but maybe we can talk a little about how to do it — you need to get regular exercise. For me, this is the hardest part. If I’m depressed I don’t want to get out of bed, much less actually move my body. I am not an athletic person and I’m not motivated to be, and I spend most of my workday in a chair.
So every morning I require myself to be in the gym by 6:30 AM. If I am unable to go due to weather, depression, or health issues, that’s okay because I can do my work in my neighborhood or on a treadmill at home. Every day I walk 10,000 steps before I slip into my office chair at 9 AM. That’s it. It takes an hour to two hours depending on my mood for the day.
When I’m emotionally doing well, I might do weight training or swim. If I’m having pain from one of my health issues I will add in a swim as well. But every day, I am in the gym on a treadmill by 6:30 AM, and if it’s a day I can’t make myself get all the way to the gym, I measure my steps on my phone and take a walk around the neighborhood or I get on my home treadmill.
For me, actually leaving the house and going to the gym is vital because there are days when I can’t or when I’m feeling so low I simply won’t. But every single part of my life that is a scheduled routine is that much easier to do if it has already become a habit.
Another important part of physical self-care is maintaining medical appointments. I do not miss my annual check-up or my dental cleanings every six months. I attend my counseling sessions every week, and psychiatric appointments every six months. I see all specialists when required. Because of my personal health issues, I also see a massage therapist, physiotherapist, and chiropractor that I consider part of my regular healthcare. These appointments are more important to me than any others.
Next in physical self-care, personal hygiene is a daily must. Shower, dental, skin, shaving and anything else that is part of your particular daily routine. It’s very easy to ignore these when you aren’t feeling well. But they’re also simple acts that take care of you first and firstmost and make you feel like you’ve accomplished something first thing in the morning.
When you’re at your low points, insist on wearing the clothes and accessories you love and doing your regular beauty routine, whatever that may be. You might notice that I’m slipping and am aware of it if you notice that I’ve started wearing clothes that are much more formal or bolder in color or style than usual, because that’s my favorite and I make an effort to wear things that make me smile.
Emotional and psychological self-care
Some people will separate these into two categories but I think they flow perfectly well together. First things first, psychological self-care includes making time for self-care. You’ll start to notice that some things overlap, as counseling obviously falls under this category but I also included it with physical self-care.
I’m going to talk about how to make time for self-care and how to balance it more at the end. Emotional and psychological self-care still fall under physiological needs and to some extent safety needs, which is the next tier up in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. It isn’t the most important because a functional body is necessary to even discuss mental health, but once the body is being managed, this is the most important need.
Think about the things that bring you calm and true contentment, and these things too can fall under emotional self-care. Spending time with your favorite people, listening to music or reading a good book, letting yourself cry, looking for the things that make you laugh. Compliment yourself and practice accepting compliments from others.
Great psychological self-care also includes saying no to extra responsibilities, learning new things, and paying attention to your feelings and your inner experience.
Practical self-care
This is the boring adult stuff no one likes doing even when we’re at our best but we have to do it! I place it just above psychological and emotional self-care in the safety needs category in Maslow’s pyramid.
Making budgets and creating and maintaining savings plans, paying our bills, cleaning our houses and making sure they are comforting places of calm and security for us are all included in practical self-care.
Organization falls here, which we’re already doing! Scheduling which was our step #1, and seeking help when you need it — another thing we fail to do when we’re in the throes of a depressive episode. Seeking and establishing (or beginning to reestablish!) security and stability also fall under this category.
Social self-care
There’s no way around this one; isolation is one of the biggest urges in depression, and to come back out of it you have to come out of isolation or never give in to it in the first place. Social self-care falls under the love and belonging category for Maslow, which is just above security.
Make time for your family and attend church and other activities as you always have. Add some new ones if the opportunity comes up. Go on dates and go to brunch activities, bars, or nights out with friends. But establish and maintain healthy boundaries always! Remember with psychological self-care you’re also perfecting the art of saying no.
Spiritual self-care
No matter what your religious or spiritual beliefs are, this element is always important, and it is the highest tier of necessities in Maslow’s hierarchy. This is the esteem level, in which one needs respect, strength, and freedom. If your beliefs don’t include a higher power, care for others and self-respect also fall into this category.
In spiritual care we include meditation and prayer, church services and religious studies, but also volunteer activities and contributions to the causes you care about. Journaling and mindfulness, spending time in nature, and engaging in nonmaterial activities such as playing music or even reading and reflection can all be considered spiritual self-care.
Self-actualization
Those familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs said Wait just a minute when I said that spiritual needs come at the top of the pyramid. Self-actualization is the point of the pyramid, the desire to be the most one can be. It’s not so much a self-care category, but the ultimate achievement unlocked after all this self-care.
Self-actualization is what occurs when you’re meeting your goals because of all the work you did in the tiers below. It’s often described as selflessness, but I find that in complete contrast and a bit of a toxic perspective in an environment in which we want people to focus on themselves and pulling themselves out of dark spaces.
Self-actualization means achieving your goals and being the person you want to be. It might include very selfless activities such as pursuing an art for the love of the creative process and not for money, or helping others for the sake of being in the right place and the right time and without considering your reward or having to consider your costs.
But it can also include very selfish things. You deserve a five-star vacation and now you can afford it and take the time for it. You can buy a thing you want and not need without having to check the price tag or comparison shop. You can get your nails and hair done and cover yourself in tattoos if you like. (Some would say these fall under physical or social self-care, and they can, as you see that many things blend into two or more categories. But in survival mode, a nail appointment might be what pushes you back over the edge and in self-actualization mode it just gives you more joy and energy.)
Professional self-care
The last category is for your work life, and obviously it does not come after self-actualization. But because a job for most of us is 40 hours per week and sometimes more unfortunately, it gets its own category because I divide them up in order to task-batch them, which I’ll talk about in a bit. In fact, a job is part of safety needs, just after the foundation in physiological needs, and if you’re lucky a job will also blend into belonging and esteem.
This may also seem like it shouldn’t go in self-care at all, but I beg to differ. In a world that preaches work-life balance (which is a rant I will save for another article), or that it’s nothing but a paycheck despite the fact it or preparation for it takes most of our waking energy, we need to be as happy as possible at work in order to be happy at home, and vice versa — nothing will make your work life terrible quite like when personal problems spill into the office with excessive absences, phone calls, or late arrivals, personal visits, and so on. A personal problem you can’t leave at the office door might find you jobless pretty quickly!
So how do you do professional self-care? First, seek educational and development opportunities so that you can better yourself. Always work as if you’re preparing for a promotion, and when opportunities for a higher-level position open, apply even if you’re perfectly content where you are. Frankly, apply more vigorously if you’re already content where you are because then you might get surprised but a potential rejection won’t hurt your feelings. Furthermore, if you’re in this mindset, you learn more and you get better at your work, which means you’re producing more and of better quality anyway.
Inside the office, decorate your workspace within the confines of the rules. You don’t need to (and probably shouldn’t) fill a cubicle with fairy lights and disco balls and audacious decor just because it makes you happy, but a couple of personal photos and a few sentimental items that serve as good luck charms or reminders of something that makes you happy serve well. A couple of plants are proven scientifically to brighten mood and productivity. Make your office as quite and calming as possible.
Take the time to chat with and get to know coworkers. Some people may make a face of disgust at this and others will remember the coworkers who spend their days gossiping and not working. That isn’t what I’m talking about at all. You don’t have to be their best friend or even like them much, but asking how they are, how their kids are, listening if they have a complaint, will make them happier which makes you happier.
Make sure you have a schedule and a to-do list so you don’t get lost in one particular task and have an unbalanced workload, and take and honor your breaks. Remember the pomodoro method of a 5 minute break every 25 minutes. Don’t come in early or work late unless it’s for an exceptional reason.
Remember also to have outside hobbies. This is especially important if you work from home but it means you aren’t always thinking about work. If your hobby is, for example, a choir or a sports team, this might mean you are enthusiastic all day Tuesday because that evening is practice, and you honor yourself and your limits by getting out the door at 5:00 sharp. If your hobby is book club or knitting, you might have your book or knitting project at your desk to read in your five minute breaks or to calm yourself when stressed. It also gives you something else to think or talk about when you feel like work consumes you.
Putting time into self-care
As I’ve already discussed, I’m big on living and dying by a schedule when trying to come out of depression. This may sound like a nightmare to some but the schedule isn’t so that we can become monotonous machines; it is so we can view our achievements and celebrate them, and so we can measure where we are falling short, in what categories and what time of day and so on, then making adjustments.
The amount of time as well as the schedule for work isn’t very flexible, unfortunately, but if you’re taking good care of yourself you have 16 waking hours per day, not more, and hopefully not less often, but you’re not to guilt-trip yourself when you find you need more sleep than other times.
Physical self-care is most important and should take about 25% of your waking, non-work time. That’s about two hours per day. Emotional self-care can take 20%, or about an hour and a half. Practical self-care should take about an hour, and social can as well. Spiritual self-care might be 45 minutes per day.
Counting all this up, you can see why people love multi-tasking (another rant for another day), or just fall off the wagon completely on some of these activities. Hygiene, the gym, and nutrition might take way more than 2 hours per day and emotional self-care for an hour and a half sounds like you’ve just been asked to join a cult of off-the-grid hippies who chant in the global language of cultural appropriation. Budgeting, paying bills, and cleaning for an hour a day sounds like a nightmare, and an hour to catch up with all your friends and loved ones and get out of the house isn’t enough. Not to mention it leaves only an hour or two a day for things like driving, waiting for other people, and the overflow that inevitably happens in the rest of life.
First, emotional self-care, apart from counseling if you receive any, can be built into every other category. It’s the art of saying yes to you and saying no to anything that confines you. Just incorporate it into your daily activities and I guarantee you’ll get far more than ninety minutes without having to cross anything else off your calendar. Physical care should absolutely take two hours and if you need more, go for it, but never do less. That is hygiene and nutrition and physical activity. You can blend it with other things but never sacrifice it. Practical self-care can certainly be pushed aside to your weekends; do 15 to 30 minutes of quick clean-up every day and bank the rest for Saturday morning marathon cleaning sessions. You can easily grab lunch or dinner with friends once or twice a week and flag it under physical self-care, and go out once or twice on other days of the week and feel socially satiated. Spiritual care can be meditations in the car before heading into work and listening to audio self-help on the drive.
Obviously if you incorporate all of this you’ll feel like a cog in a wheel, but these are examples. Take a few of them that work for you and let the others inspire you to think of some that work better for you.
Choose the activities you want to focus on in each category of self-care and block sufficient time in your schedule for the categories. Worry far less about reserving each time block for exclusively this category, and at the end of your days, catalog what you did in each block and the time it covers in each category, remembering that many activities cover others as well. Once you’re giving yourself adequate time in each category, and you’ve gotten things back on track with scheduling and nutrition, you’ll see you’re getting things accomplished and climbing out of the darkness of depression.
