The importance of self care WMHD16

The theme of this year's World Mental Health Day is 'psychological first aid' and thanking those who give it to us. So my two pennies is: self care, and how to give yourself psychological first aid, or just a bit of a MOT.

I always thought the term ‘self care’ was the hippiest pile of shit - grouped with ‘self love’ and ‘self help’. I thought, like ‘clean eating’, it was a notion that did more harm than good, and it wasn’t until I actively tried it that I realised how important it was and how much I could learn from it.

Self care is about nothing other than looking after yourself. That’s it. Really. It’s not associated with hippies, or vegans, or mental illness. It’s not restricted to certain groups of people. It’s certainly about your mentality, but it’s not just for those who struggle with it. Everyone should know how to treat themselves with a little TLC, both when life is going well and when it’s not, and it shouldn’t be something you’re ashamed of admitting we need. It doesn’t make you weak. You need to cancel plans and have a self care day? Go ahead pal, you look after yourself.

With that in mind, it can still be hard to know how to… do it. It sounds ridiculous but sometimes we just don’t know how to best look after ourselves. We’re not taught it. We’re taught how to look after ourselves physically by exercising, showering, brushing our teeth, and eating well, but not how to look after ourselves mentally. And it’s tough, because you have to work it out for yourself. Not everyone will have the same self care ‘routines’. It’s totally individual to you. But hey, once you’ve worked it out and stick at it regularly, it may well 1) stop any mental downhill spirals, or 2) help you out of them if you’ve already dipped.

So here’s what works for me. My list of stuff I can do when life gets a bit much, my brain’s being an arse, or just when I want to check back in with myself. 

• Have a bath with a shitload of bubbles and a good bath bomb. Everyone says it, but it’s true. Baths are relaxing. Some find them boring, and I definitely can’t lie there for hours, but just lying down in a vat of too-hot water can calm me right down. Phone stays in the other room, always.

• Run. Here she is, banging on about running again. Didn’t take me long. Running has been completely revolutionary for me. It gives me time away from my phone and laptop, gives me a fuckload of endorphins, gets air in my lungs and the blood around my body. It gives me time to think and reconnect with my body. Now THAT sounds like the hippiest pile of shit…

• Go outside. It sounds so bloody simple but it can totally change my day. I know exactly when I’ve spent too long indoors and acknowledge that by getting the fuck outside. I can just stand outside the back door of our flat in my pyjamas, or spend an hour in the park on my lunch break at work. The outside is a game changer. 

• Light candles. I just love fire. 

• Clean the flat. Sorry, yeah. I love a good clean. It makes me feel more in control when other parts of life are going to shit. Scrubbing the bathroom sink, ravaging the hob, or Freddie Mercury-ing it when mopping the floors. It makes me feel good (and keeps me on good terms with my flatmates). 

• Drink water. I don’t care if it’s eight glasses a day or not, I just know that drinking water keeps your body in check. It keeps everything inside moving, stops your headaches, makes your skin glow, and stops you from getting tired so quickly. 

• Find new recipes/holidays/flats. If I’m ever feeling stuck in a rut, I try to look forwards and plan. I can spend h o u r s on rightmove, booking.com, and BBC Good Food and getting excited for new things, whether it’s a different way to cook spaghetti or a getaway to the middle of nowhere. 

• Do my nails/pluck my eyebrows. Your body is important, inside and out. My nails looking battered and my eyebrows looking like an overgrown garden is a sure sign that I need a bit of a MOT. The pain of plucking my eyebrows is a serious guilty pleasure and my Barry M collection is growing bigger by the second (payday). 

• Colour/cross-stitch. Yeah, I’m an adult who has colouring-in books. So sue me. It’s proven to help those with their mental health and it’s so soothing. It’s also something my boyfriend’s mum and I used to do together before she passed away earlier this year, and cross-stitching is something my mum taught me when I was a little. So shut up. 

• Write lists. I BLOODY LOVE A LIST. Whenever things are getting on top of me, I write down a list of everything I need or want to do in my neatest handwriting. It’s then out of my head and on to paper and I can’t ever leave a list unfinished. Competitive? Me? No…

• Read. I got a Goodreads account last October and OH GOD I love it. I love finding new books, being recommended others, reading reviews, and finding out what my friends are loving/hating. You can also create a Goodreads Reading Challenge of how many books you’re going to read in a year, so that also lends itself to the competitive streak that I clearly don’t have…

• Stick on Spotify. I actually pay for Spotify now. I AM ADULT. I mean, I grabbed my cousin’s student discount so I could get it for half price, but… whatever. I always find a new playlist to have on in the background when I’m working from home. It’s just nice. There’s not much more to it. It’s lovely, calming, sometimes nostalgic, sometimes motivating. Always helpful.

• Open the windows. This is more meaningful when Elbow’s on the above Spotify playlist, but it’s imperative regardless. As soon as I’m properly awake in the mornings, the windows around the flat are open. I want the air, the rain, the birds, even the screaming kids next door. I want the outside world to interfere with my inside world. Otherwise everything gets a bit too much. 

I thought that was going to be quite a short list, but apparently there are quite a few things that come to mind when I think about what makes me feel better. And that’s rather importantly great, and something I should remember. Now where's your self care list?

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The friendzone and its self absorbed inhabitants

Once upon a time there was a girl. Let's call her Anthilofloraptus, because I can call her Anthilofloraptus because this is MY STORY. Anna, for short. Anna was a nice girl. She was pretty, smart, funny, and lovely. Anna had a lot of friends, and some of whom she was quite close to. One of those friends was a boy called Jakubromorph. Jack, for short. Anna and Jack were really good friends. Some might even call them best friends. They laughed together, they confided in each other, and they debated on whether Matt Smith and Karen Gillan WERE, indeed, secretly married. One day, in this troublesome tale of mine, Anna and Jack were joking around eating lumps of cheese and watching youtube videos of cats falling down slides when Anna turned to Jack and said, with all sincerity, "You know, Jakubromorph, you really are like the brother I never had." BLESS ANNA. How CUTE of her. How lovely, how genuine, how showing of their friendship. 

BUT SOFT, what light through my window breaks on the floor (or something. hope they have insurance. call autoglass)? Jack apologises and says he has to leave. Fair enough, maybe his grandmother is on fire. Anna shrugs it off. That night, she logs into Facebook and sees THIS:

Jakubromorph 'Jack for short' Halluzitath FRIENDZONED. Don't come moaning at me when you get treated like shit by other boys. You manipulated me and you're selfish. Have a nice life.

Oh dear oh dear. Jack didn't speak to Anna ever again, because she didn't want to be with him.

WHAT A SHAME. WHAT A TOTAL. UTTER. SHAME.

"Friendzoning is when you are expected to support a girl you really like while she searches for a smarter, richer, and more handsome boyfriend. There is little you can do to get out without feeling like a dick. All in all, one of the meanest things a girl can do."

The term 'friendzone' makes me itch, and I despise it. I'm gutted that you, boys who are spouting out friendzone bile, are in the 'zone' of 'friends' because, shit man, being friends is awful. Being someone to rely on, care for, joke with, have days out with, share with, is total crap. I'm really sorry this has happened to you all. Tossers. Maybe I'm reading too much into this term, and of course feelings can't be helped (apparently. i don't really take feelings that seriously. maybe i'm not sentient. new wave of human. what? oh yeah. friendzoning), but I see red every time I see complaints about being friendzoned. 'Girls are not machines that you put kindness into until sex falls out.' If you're only being nice to a girl, and therefore not being yourself around her, in order to have your way with her, then that's kind of shitty. You're not being nice to her because you feel like she deserves it. You're being nice to her in order to get something out of it. Whereas, in fact, she doesn't owe you anything. She doesn't owe you her body because you've been nice to her. Fuck off. It instantly devalues anything a woman can offer which isn't sex.

I'm not having a go at all boys/men who are gutted that a girl they like just want to be friends. That's natural and happens all the time. Rejection sucks, in all forms. To you, if you're not angry at the girl, I'm sorry. I'm sure you're a great guy for someone, but just not the right guy for her romantically. I hope you appreciate her feelings and continue to be a really great guy and develop an even more brilliant friendship. I'm having a go at those who after realising the girl doesn't want a relationship, proceed to chat a load of shite about her; about how she's a manipulative bitch who leads people on and just uses them to moan at. A girl exercising her right to say no doesn't mean she's putting you in a zone away from everyone else and just using you as a pet with a fence to separate you.

The term can be used both ways, but it's generally used by men, inherently making it a sexist term. Expected rejection reactions for men and women are different. Girls are supposed to be self-deprecating, and wonder what's not right about themselves. Too fat, too clingy, too not willing, too short. But men, generally (and i hate generalising, so i'm sorry, but i think it fits) are quick to blame the girl. There's something wrong here.

If a girl is told that she is only seen as a friend, that's it. In a way, I have quite a bit of respect for the boy when a girl is told that. That shows the boy doesn't want to get into her pants because he can, because she wants it. In another way, it's sad that the girl tries to be really really nice and acts differently around him to make him like her. No. Stop. You're doing it wrong. But when a girl says that to a boy, she's a total and utter bitch for letting him be nice to her. For letting them be on the same level, instead of being submissive to him. No, she just doesn't find you attractive. So boo you. You can only ever put YOURSELF in the 'friendzone'. Suck it up, and move on. She owes you nowt, she appreciated your apparent loveliness and shouldn't be vilified for not wanting a relationship. You're not the victim, and I can guarantee she feels a bit shit for not feeling the same way. But what do you want her to do? Pretend? No. LET IT GO.

Just because you're a 'nice guy' doesn't mean you deserve any girl you want. That's not an entitlement. It's just a part of the bullet point list of what a girl looks for in a guy. Funnily enough, forced niceness doesn't appear. If you like a girl like that, then let your intentions known instead of waiting for her to succumb to your front. Don't find fault in a girl who thought she had an honest friend. She's your friend, she LIKES YOU. You're not in the 'friendzone', you're in a FRIENDSHIP. You know, that good thing. She's done nothing wrong, you arrogant and egotistical knobhead.

Don't make girls feel guilty. It's not cool. I only dig the friendzone if it's got an electric fence and piranhas. I hope you can swim.