Vivienne, What's Self-Care?

 


Happy Monday! We're going to talk about self-care. What is it, why should we care, and how do we self-care properly? First of all, self-care is taking care of your physical and mental self. Self-care is important, and it is Not Selfish, even though those of us who struggle with anxiety and depression tend to think that it is. But taking care of yourself helps banish the shadows lurking in our heads, helps us feel better physically, and while it doesn't Fix the problems, it makes them feel smaller than they were. 

Self-care can look like a lot of things, eating more than once a day, reminding yourself or a friend to drink water, disrupting anxious thoughts with a movie or music, taking a walk and getting fresh air, going to see a friend to get out of your head, practicing a creative hobby, playing a video game, and a hundred other things. Find what works for you, something that's refreshing and breaks you out of your thoughts when you get stuck.

Personally, this is why I play DnD with my friends. I get social time, and to pretend I'm someone else. This is great because it's not only a creative outlet, it's a safe place to have and show emotions. Sometimes your character struggles with a lot, but that can either mirror how you deal with things in reality, or you can do the opposite and sit with those emotions, share them with your party, and deal with things. Or keep 'em secret. It's interesting to have a place to explore options and see what happens. You can learn a lot from collaborative story-telling. 

The point of self-care is to give you more reasons to get out of bed. Sleeping and resting is good and important, but sometimes getting up is too hard, and it just seems easier to not do anything. However, I've found that giving myself things to do makes it easier to get un-stuck, like meeting up with friends for coffee in the morning. To me it feels like having to argue with a toddler in your head that doesn't want to do anything, and bribing it with the promise of yummy coffee and being able to see a friend just to get things accomplished.

💜💜💜

Just a reminder, I'm doing a giveaway with Joanna from Lilla Rose, and we're giving away a My Story flexi as part of Mental Health Awareness month, as well as a charm to go with it and some Lilla Bucks! Giveaway details are below with all the links you need. ^_^ And don't forget!!! When you buy a My Story Flexi of your own, let me know! I'm going to be donating $5 to my favorite charity for each flexi bought, so let me know how much to spend. <3

Giveaway ends May 29th at midnight. Winner will be chosen May 30th, and there are three ways to enter. 
First, you'll get 1 entry if you Like Joanna's Facebook page, and 1 if you like my Facebook page. Also, 1 entry for each Share and Comment on social media posts about the giveaway.
Second, you can get 5 entries if you buy a My Story Flexi from her website.
Third, you can get 10 entries if you donate any dollar amount to one of these charities: Mental Health America (MHA) or National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI).

Do any of these and let us know by commenting either here on this blog or our social media posts. ^_^ (All donations to NAMI will be matched thru May 31st, up to $75k) 


Joanna, Lilla Rose:

Facebook: www.facebook.com/UpInHair

Contact Her Directly: https://shop.ami.co/upinhair/contact?ref=share


Vivienne's Facebook:

Vivienne Aulaire, Writer | Facebook


Charities: 

Mental Health America https://mhanational.org/

National Alliance on Mental Illness https://www.nami.org/home

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Vivienne, A Music Lover

Image
  I have wonderful friends and cousins. Every now and then someone sends me a song recommendation, and it turns into me becoming obsessed with an artist for a while. No-one can take the cake from Poets of the Fall for me, but Twenty One Pilots are right up there on my list. One of my favorite songs from them is Guns For Hands. The music video is a good, but simple one, and I found it rather endearing to just see the two band members of TOP with a white background and blue and red duct tape. (Watch the video, you'll see what I mean.)  But the lyrics are really what get me, the whole idea of struggling to sleep, knowing the world is sad and broken, and feeling like there's nothing to fix it. But then, realizing that if nothing else, there are little things we can do. Reach out to those we know, express yourself with art (whatever that looks like for you) and go outside and connect with people. ^_^
Read more

Food? What About Food?

Image
Food! Food and snacks and caffeine are really important. As a writer, I tend to forget to eat (I'm working on that, though), but when I'm writing, if I have a snack nearby, I eat without having to think about it. Win-win for me! So I wanted to talk about snacks for Nanowrimo. Everyone has something different they like to munch on as they write. Some people have a container of mnm's, I like to have a bowl or two of skinnypop popcorn, and some like cheese sticks or cheeseits.  There are loads of snacks to choose from, so I suggest something that isn't primarily sugar. Fruit and veggies are good, as well as things like crackers, popcorn, and nuts. Whatever you choose, make sure it's something you can keep on your desk. (So you know, maybe a bowl of popcorn instead of a massive Costco bag haha.) Another aspect of this is meal prep. If you premake meals, you'll be able to get more writing done, since you won't have to spend as much time making dinner, for example...
Read more

Mental Health Through the Holidays

Image
A lot of us neurodivergent people struggle with the holidays. As a kid, it was my favorite time of year. I had time away from school, I got presents, and I got to see my family and eat lots of yummy food. As I've grown older, the holiday sparkles have faded and grown dimmer.  There are a thousand different reasons for not enjoying the holidays, but it's not all bad. I'm excited to introduce my nephew, who's not quite 2 years old, to our favorite Christmas movies and teach him to make cookies. I want to see him get excited about presents and seeing family and trying new things.  However, the massive amount of Christmas decorations, the expectations of getting and decorating a tree, putting all the lights up and whatnot, and making sure you have gifts for pretty much everyone you know...it's a lot. It's made me feel a bit like the Grinch. Not angry at the holiday itself, but annoyed by all the decor and overt CHRISTMAS everywhere. As someone with anxiety and depre...
Read more