Many years ago, I was living with excruciating back pain. I joked that the knots in my back had calcified and taken up such permanent residence that they became bones of stress causing extreme pain which I shrugged off (as much as I could move) and worked through. Handsome husband and I took a weekend trip to New Orleans. Among our sightseeing and exquisite meals, I squeezed an hour in to treat myself to a massage. After about 5 minutes on the table, the massage therapist stopped. She couldn’t conceal the disgust and bewilderment in her voice as she asked me “How could you let it get this bad?”
I’d been wearing my pain and stress like a badge of honor. Look at how much I’m giving my job. Look at all of this stress I can shoulder. I was proud of how hard I’d been working despite how hard it was on me.
What a fucking idiot.
Not that I gave so much to my job.
But that I gave so little to myself.
I thought I was ticking off my self-care boxes by taking a weekend away with hubby, staying in a nice hotel, eating fancy meals, buying some jewelry for myself and getting a massage.
Wrong!
Self-care isn’t a special occasion treat. It’s an all-day every day occurrence. It’s a habit, a series of habits.
Let’s get science-y with it for a hot minute.
Our stress response is regulated by the autonomic nervous system, an involuntary part of our nervous system that controls heart rate, blood pressure, and digestion. The two branches are sympathetic and parasympathetic. The sympathetic nervous system readies our body to react to stress (“fight or flight”) and the parasympathetic helps us recover from stress (“rest and digest”). The sympathetic system ramps up when we’re stressed by doping us with cortisol and adrenaline. These original performance-enhancing-drugs were handy when our primitive forebears had to fight off predators. When the danger has passed, the body recovers from acute stress via a natural feedback loop with the brain. High levels of stress hormones in the blood signal the parasympathetic system to take things down a notch or seven to mellow us out.
Unfortunately, the system hasn’t kept pace with our contemporary lifestyle, so doesn’t know the difference between a news flash about SCOTUS or COVID and a wooly mammoth about to attack. Stress is stress. In ye olden days, our bodies only required this boost for short amounts of time to run from lions or to fight off competition for resources. These natural chemicals pumping through us are helpful for quick bursts of energy, short term memory, and sending blood and oxygen to where they’re needed the most. Our bodies and brains weren’t designed for these stress hormones to flow like unlimited refills of sweetened iced tea, constantly circulating through us.
With a constant barrage of everyday stress (text messages, laundry piles, deadlines, etc) the parasympathetic system doesn’t know when to kick in and settle us down with its patented blend of chill. We have to turn it on manually. Luckily, there is a super easy hack for that: breathing.
Deep breathing sends a signal to your parasympathetic system that the danger has passed. Production of adrenaline and cortisol stops and relaxation starts. The body settles into a state of equilibrium.
But wait, there’s more.
Neuroplasticity is your brain’s ability to adapt and change. The human brain wants to be as efficient as possible, so when it detects you repeating an action, it will make it easy for you by getting all the appropriate neurons strung together and ready to go (kind of like how you have a series of masks and hand sanitizers all ready by your front door, in your bag, in your car). The more you repeat the action, the smoother the neural road. Think: practice makes perfect. This is a great thing when you want to learn something new, but a real drag when you’re trying to eliminate bad behaviors.
Many of the actions you think of as habits are actually hard-wired into your brain through this process. This includes everything from how you shower to how you do your job and even your self-talk. The more you do a thing, the more your brain is ready for you to do it.
An important part of self-care involves being aware of your neural superhighways and how the roads your brain has paved may not be taking you to the most stress-free destination.
A quick note about phones: while they’re a great distraction, social media platforms are not your friend. Scrolling is a great way to give you a break from your thoughts, but where has it brought you? Into a performative no-man’s land where everything is staged to make you feel bad about yourself (aka: stress). Yes, it’s so easy to shut your brain off and let the stories flow. The cumulative effect of 10 minutes here and 15 minutes there adds up. In the course of the day, that’s over an hour of mindless scrolling. Can you invest that time more wisely? In yourself? In your well-being? In BREATHING?
Social media is a difficult habit to break, but it’s easier if you replace the action with another one, like reading or drawing or BREATHING.
An easy formula for a little self-care, when you don’t have a lot of time and without having to hand over too much of your tip money to the 450 billion dollar self-care industry: Creating good habits = less stress. Good breathing = less stress. Less stress = better, happier you.
Your assignment this week:
How can you find and replace small habits that aren’t working for you with small ways to breathe and take care of yourself? How can you make space for bigger daily habits? This is really where the strength of your daily practice comes in to help you.
Go after your moments of self-care with the insatiable yearning of a 1990’s restaurant server sneaking off the floor for a cigarette.