Self-care is a skill set.
If you’ve never heard of re-parenting before, a lot of the work in that area of psychology is focused around the concept of skill chains and the way we were not fully parented as kids. (And it’s not a “fault” on parents, because when they don’t pass skills along, it’s usually because they don’t have them.)
But if we think about “why don’t I take better care of myself” and questions like that, I think there’s a level of honesty we need about the skills we have, as adults.
Many of us do not have the capacity for emotional regulation because we were not taught how to do that as kids.
Many of us do not have the capacity for self-confidence because we were not taught how to do that as kids. Or it was not modeled for us.
Many of us do not have the capacity for (insert literally anything here) and instead of acknowledging the pain and going about the work, we’re stalled and overwhelmed by it all, because everyone assumes we should “just” be able to do these things we can’t do.
QTP “just” wording, absolutely anytime you hear it, by the way.
Constant suggestions for how to take care of yourself, when you do not possess the instinct for self-preservation feel shameful and overwhelming. (Whether they come from me or from anyone else, it doesn’t matter, and no matter how well-meant the encouragement, it’s still not helpful if we don’t have an in-tact skill chain.)
Constant admonitions to believe in yourself or your work, when you do not possess the skill of accurate self-concept feel shameful and overwhelming. (Or just frustrating.)
So if you are one of the people who hear “just” sentences and get frustrated or overwhelmed, know that we’re doing the work to help fill those skill gaps right now. I talked about it a bit last week in a conference talk that I will reproduce for the Quitcast. But many of us would be doing the work if we knew how to fix the skill gaps in a very-dependency-driven skill chain that is not currently in tact.
But self-care is a skill set. If you are not internally driven for self-preservation, you might not have an in-tact skill chain dependency when it comes to taking care of yourself. But we can fix that. If you can’t execute on a skill, there’s a good chance there is a dependent skill you don’t have yet.
It’s worth working on that skill, if you want to be able to practice that complex, interrelated set of tasks (like self-care) that all require a desire for self-preservation, for instance. I once spent 18 months learning emotional regulation, and it was the best skill chain fix I’ve ever personally done.
But it was different from the “life change” that Strengths provided for me. Strengths was a “knowledge” that allowed me to act as the person I was, instead of the person I thought I was supposed to be. Acquiring skills, though, is often a very long and arduous task, and I get why not a lot of us will do that work. It’s a lot. And it can take over your life.
I mostly want to free some of us up from feeling guilty or ashamed when we see admonitions for self-care that we just can’t practice. We’ll keep lovingly trying to help with that.
The Energy Pennies deck was built to help with this. And the Overwhelm book is built to help with this, too. But I see so much more of this guilt and shame around these topics than I used to, and I wanted to say… you’re not alone if you feel that.
On a side note, I am so excited to get this deck out into the world. When Krystal and I were talking through it yesterday, I couldn’t believe the possibilities of application. It’s going to be so amazing. And yes, don’t worry–after the beta, it will be widely available. But for now, just know, more tools are coming to help with this. I’m so excited for the future.
– Becca