March 9th, 2023
A Realist’s Guide to Self Care
Self care may be all the rage, but maybe you’re tired of hearing about it. You stayed up all night completing your latest paper, you work a thankless retail job on top of going to school full time, and you just spent all your cash on fixing your so-ancient-it’s-one-step-up-from-a-Model-T car’s transmission and will have to subsist on ramen noodles and air for the rest of the month. You’re tired, you’re cranky, and you’re a little hangry. And you want to tell the next person to advise “taking time for you” to put their Yoga with Adriene videos somewhere impolite. If the above sounds all too familiar, you’re in luck. I’m hangry and tired, too.. To help us both feel better, here are my most realistic tips for self care for the frazzled.
- Try a primal scream. Psychotherapist Arthur Janov invented “primal scream therapy” to help people expel repressed childhood trauma. The goal is simply to scream as loud as you can and let out all your pent-up feelings. If you regularly avoid anything that might bring on emotional catharsis, consider giving Janov’s technique a try. Stand in the middle of Walmart and unleash a few primal screams. With the advent of the self-checkout lane, the store has signficantly fewer human employees to unceremoniously banish you from the store, and you might just scare the people around you enough that they clear out, leaving you to shop the normally chaotic aisles in peace.
- Engage in deep breathing. The next time you get a spam call on your phone, answer it, and instead of talking, engage in a bit of deep breathing. This is even better if you forget to take your allergy medication that morning and can add some stuffed-up slurping noises. If the telemarketer doesn’t immediately hang up, you can always try a primal scream. Either one might finally get you off their calling list.
- Do Yoga with Adriene. Stream a Yoga with Adriene YouTube video on your computer or TV and heckle it. Adriene can’t hear you, but telling her to buy herself a donut might make you feel better about not having time to exercise. Apologize to Adriene and then go have a donut in her honor.
- Grab a cuppa. Brew yourself a cup of chamomile tea. Wait for it to cool down enough to avoid burns, and then fling it in at the next person who tells you that chamomile tea is “soothing.”
- Get our your journal. Write down how much you hate journaling. Keep writing until you degenerate into ranting nonsense and start sounding like Grandpa Jerry after a few too many hours yelling about political correctness at the corner bar. Burn journal before someone discovers it. Write some deep-and-misunderstood poetry instead. Brood and sigh dramatically like the unsung Byronic hero you are. (Editor’s note: Submit deep-and-misunderstood poetry to Northern Lights by April 2nd!)
- Drink more water. Make a pact to drink the five 8-ounce glasses of water that experts recommend imbibing daily. Midway through your first glass, realize that you hate water and make yourself a pitcher of Kool-Aid instead, preferably cherry. Pour half your weight in sugar in it and enjoy the nostalgia while pretending it’s totally the same as getting your five recommended 8-ounce glasses of water a day. Smugly pat yourself on the back before you start twitching from insulin shock.
- Sit and be still for ten minutes. Realize after 30 seconds that you have way too much to do to sit and be still for ten minutes. Make it ten seconds instead and then go do your homework. No matter how much you threaten it, your history textbook isn’t going to read itself.
- Take a bath. Realize after two minutes of letting the water run that you haven’t cleaned said bath since the pre-COVID era. Decide that not cleaning the bathtub is self care and run away.
- Buy yourself flowers. As you head to the checkout counter, realize that you cannot afford flowers as you are currently subsisting on ramen noodles and air. Put flowers back. Pretend you totally did not just pick them up and carry them around the store like a dork as you skulk out the exit. Remind yourself that it’s the thought that counts..
- Celebrate the holiday. It’s April Fool’s Day this weekend. Get out your dad jokes and your DIY pranks, and unleash jokester armageddeon on your loved ones.
This guide was unofficially and unwittingly “sponsored” by Despair, Inc.’s “Demotivational” posters. Actually, that’s just my excuse to share one of my favorites with you. Fair use FTW! Image courtesy of Despair, Inc.
Caption: When you wish upon a star, your dreams can come true. Unless it’s really a meteor hurtling to the Earth which will destroy all life. Then you’re pretty much hosed no matter what you wish for. Unless it’s death by meteor.