Practice invisible self care

Happy New Year. We're off to a bizarre start. A new favorite meme I saw yesterday said something along the lines of "2021 just to 2020 to hold her beer."

Meanwhile, the month of January promises its usual deluge of diets-that-claim-not-to-be-diets parading their before and after photos, positive testimonials, and gaslighting gaslighting and more gaslighting.

Given all of the above, now is a perfect time to practice invisible self care. The industries selling self care would have you believe that it consists of salt scrubs, bottles of wine, mani-pedis, and impulse buys. Things and services that require your hard-earned cash. That may be true in some cases but I would posit that self care is much more complex and that some of the most potent acts of self care are invisible (and un-buy-able).

Here are a few examples:.
- a client started to spin out so she called her girlfriend for a new perspective
- that act allowed her to offer herself a new perspective in which she naturally invoked the three components of self-compassion.
- a client was down on herself for not engaging in movement more often but gave herself the space and time to come back to it on her own terms.
- a dear friend takes herself off of social media when she starts to feel the (negative) amped-up energy it can cause.
- a client gave herself permission to order groceries even thought it's not the norm in her community so that she could have a stocked fridge and pantry to choose from..

And I recently took a $200 nap because I had an appointment scheduled with my therapist but realized I was exhausted and needed to lie down. It was worth every penny.

What are your ways of practicing invisible self care?