167. Self Care for Times Like These

How are you feeling today? Are you one of millions of Americans who are feeling stressed and on the verge of current events burnout?

Today’s episode is about self care for times like these. Pour a mug of something warm and grab a notebook. The work of building a better world is challenging, and requires that we find opportunities for rest, joy, pleasure, and community. 

Links from today’s episode:

Promoting self care and well-being among feminist activists and women’s rights defenders: Reflections from Burma and Palestine by Ginger Norwood | March 2013

https://www.upaya.org/uploads/pdfs/NorwoodPromotingSelfCare.pdf

ICYMI another episode you might enjoy:

Episode#160 One Hundred Things to do Today Instead of the Inauguration

Love the book recos on this show? Check out the Progressive Pockets Bookshelf:

https://bookshop.org/shop/progressivepockets 

As an affiliate of Bookshop.org, Progressive Pockets will earn a commission if you make a purchase.

Connect With Genet “GG” Gimja:

Website https://www.progressivepockets.com

Twitter https://twitter.com/prgrssvpckts 

Work With Me:

Email progressivepockets@gmail.com for brand partnerships, business inquiries, and speaking engagements.

Easy Ways to Support the Show:

1. Send this episode to someone you know! Word of mouth is how podcasts grow!

2. Buy me a coffee (or a soundproof panel!) https://buymeacoffee.com/progressivepockets 

3. Leave a 5 star rating and review for the show!

//NO AI TRAINING: Any use of this podcast episode transcript or associated show notes or blog posts to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. This includes, without limitation, technologies that are capable of generating works in the same style or genre as this content. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models//

Transcript

Welcome to Progressive Pockets! I go by GG, that’s short for Genet Gimja. This is a show about reclaiming our power. Yes we vote, yes we protest, yes we call our representatives to express our wishes for our communities. This show is about an untapped source of power we all have. Our wallets. Where we shop, where we bank, how we invest, how we donate…all of these are sources of power that we might be leaving on the table.

Episodes come out weekly and you might hear an episode one week about how to take out the climate destroyers from your 401K one week and the next week you might hear some tips on how to decide where to donate.

This week I want to talk about self care.

If you listen to this show, chances are, you care deeply about our people and our planet and here’s the thing about love. It hurts sometimes. It hurts to care this much.

Lately the changes going on in our country and in the world are….stressful. A friend of mine went to get her blood pressure checked recently and her doctor told her that many of her patients have had increased blood pressure during the last several months.

I can relate to that. I don’t know when exactly it started, I think it was in December or January, but I started to feel a pressure on my chest, like someone is sitting on my chest. And I noticed when it is worse and when it is better. Spoiler, it was worse when I was catching up on current events, and it felt better when I had disconnected for a while. It felt worse after spending a long time talking about my fear and grief with friends and family and neighbors. This is just what I observed within myself.

So today I want to explore this topic of how we might take care of ourselves while we are engaged in trying to make our communities and our world a better place.

I get the sense that some people who are concerned have decided to completely block out the current events and have completely stopped engaged with the news. I think there’s a way we can stay informed, but still take care of ourselves.

This self care is even more critical if you are of a marginalized identity. 

If you are Black, or you are another race that is oppressed at every corner. And/or if you are a woman and/or maybe you are of undocumented status. Who we are informs how policies and mainstream cultural norms affect us. And who we are, our identities, inform the access that we have to rest and care. If this is you, if you are someone who wants better for our communities and you are also of a marginalized identity, in that case, I want to call back to Audre Lorde’s words. Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of

political warfare. Let that sink in. I’ll read it again. Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of

political warfare.

So I mentioned earlier that I felt some physical sensations that let me know that I needed to pay attention to how I was caring for myself.

Everyone’s different. For me it was pressure in my chest. But there are other ways to know if you are experiencing some sort of stress and burnout. Today I’m going to be referring a lot to a paper written based on some work with women activists in Burma and Palestine, I’ll link it in the show notes for this episode.

So in workshops with these activists, here are some symptoms of stress and burnout that the activists mentioned:

Physically, you might be experiencing headaches. You might be over or under eating. You might have trouble sleeping. You might have pain in your lower back, shoulders, maybe in your stomach. You might be experiencing digestive issues. You might find yourself turning to more stimulants or depressants.

Emotionally, you might be experiencing anxiety and confusion. A difficiulty making decisions. You might find yourself avoiding people. Or maybe you can’t stop talking about current events and the changes in our country that you are concerned about. You might be experiencing irritability or having nightmares.

Mentally, you may feel more forgetful. You may have the mindset that you are useless or powerless, you may not be as efficient as usual. 

Spiritually, you may lose trust in yourself or others. You may feel a sense of despair. You may feel isolated. 

Relationally, you may feel disconnected from your own body. You may have difficulty separating work and home. You may be having a hard time connecting with others.

Do any of those sound familiar to you? Maybe a combination of those? Maybe something completely different that for you lets you know that something is off and you need some tending to.

So let’s talk about some self care ideas. For times like these.

I want to encourage you to look for opportunities to rest. That can mean sleep. That can mean laying in a dark room covered in a cozy blanket. That can mean sitting still and closing your eyes in the middle of your chaotic office for a minute.

I want to encourage you to look for opportunities to incorporate some joy and pleasure back into your day. Is there a way to make your afternoon cup of tea a little more pleasurable. A little more luxurious. Is there a way to make getting dressed in the morning a little more joyful?

I want to encourage you to look for opportunities to incorporate more community into your day. Community as a place to unwind, to really be yourself, to connect, to relax, to laugh, to have fun. Venting and sharing about our challenges and stresses is an important part of a deep relationship but I want to encourage you to protect the space to also just have fun with your community. It can’t always be policy discussions and talks about where to find cheaper eggs and how to call your representative. Of course those things are important, of course they are. But it is also important, every once in a while, to protect the space to just be with your community in a stress free environment.

I want to encourage you to think about connecting with nature. I’ve shared with you before that I am more of an indoor cat myself, but nature is for everyone. For me, it can mean throwing open all the windows and getting fresh air all in my space. It can mean taking a walk to a favorite cafe or on the tree lined sidewalk near my place. Really looking at the trees. Maybe you’re outdoorsy. I’m sure you’ll think of things to do outside that for some reason you find restful lol.

And lastly, I want to encourage you to look for opportunities to imagine a better future. I’ll read from this paper about promoting self care with the activists in Palestine and Burma. Here’s what the writer says:

“In workshops, we reminded participants that spending time alone and with colleagues and friends visioning and imagining a positive future helps us to open up to possibilities of what can be and helps us to live them more fully now. As Alice Walker, an American poet and writer says, “Look closely at the present you are constructing: it should look like the future you are dreaming.”’

These are some ideas to get you started, but I want to encourage you to interrogate what self care really means for you. I’ll go first and share my own personal journey with understanding what self care means to me. I started with manicures and facials and tried to get into candles and baths, and that stuff felt kinda good, I guess, but I did not feel cared for, I didn’t feel restored in the way that I expected to. 

I discovered that what self care means to me is not something I personally have heard anyone else talk about, although there have to be lots of other people that feel this way too, but for me, self care is connecting with my creativity. There are no candles or baths in the world that will soothe my soul or feed my heart like connecting with my creativity. So I have a literal printed list of concrete ways I can do that, taped onto the inside of my bathroom mirror. So when I brush my teeth in the morning I see this list of ideas and ask myself when the last time was that I engaged my creativity.

That’s what I found out by being honest with myself and really tuning in to how I feel after I try different self care activities.

Self Care can mean what we add as well as what we subtract. So let’s talk about subtracting some things that might be doing us dirty.

For me, it also means having some discipline around the images that I consume. Although I grew up watching the news, like all immigrants, and really value international news programs, which sometimes are only available in video format, I have become disciplined in restricting which videos and images I will consume. So if there is a video of someone being physically harmed, a bomb or explosion, a plane crash, a body belonging to someone who was brutalized, I don’t consume it. And I have extended this into my entertainment as well. So if there is a movie where these types of images are present, I don’t consume them. And if there is a novel that I’m reading, with descriptions of violence, I also don’t consume that. The outcome of that is that I end up reading newspapers instead of watching the news, which I think has been really good for me. I find myself reading a wider variety of news and sometimes going a little bit deeper and conducting further research on topics that I want to know more about to understand the bigger picture.

I know someone that has set a timer to limit the amount of news she can consume in one day or in one sitting. This is another great idea.

What else can we subtract for self care?

There might be a person that you need to define some boundaries with. Someone who, for one reason or another, you just can’t talk current events with. Of course there is value in talking with people who don’t agree with you, but you might have someone in your life where the conversation is so toxic that it becomes harmful to you and your relationship. That might be a good boundary to explore.

If we think about our work to care for our people and our planet as a marathon, we see that we need to stop for water breaks, we need to figure out nutrition during the race, our playlist, our breathing, our gear, our preparation and our recovery. There’s so much self care that goes into doing something difficult like running a marathon or building a better future.

So I hope today’s episode helped you think about how you might care for yourself during a time like this.

So to recap, here’s what we covered today:

• We talked about how to determine if you might need to tend to yourself. Some of the physical, mental, emotional, even relational clues that you are stressed and burnt out.
• We talked about ways to incorporate self care practices into your day. We talked about looking for opportunities to rest, for joy and pleasure, for community, for nature, for imagining a better future.
• We also talked about how self care might mean something different for you. Something not mentioned on any self care list. Try some experiments on yourself and find out.

If you have more time today, here’s another episode to check out, that was the popular episode #160, One hundred things to do today instead of the inauguration. There are some crowd sourced concrete activities that can get you started.

Are you subscribed to the Progressive Pockets newsletter? It comes out about once a month, no spam ever and it’s a great way to get information that you won’t hear in the podcast.

Let’s end with a quote…

“To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is itself to succumb to the violence of our times. Frenzy destroys our inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.”

This quote comes from Thomas Merton in 1966, from his book Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander.

Let’s talk again soon!