Talking about self-care requires nuancing the term.

First, self-care isn’t about buying yourself things to feel better. Of course, that can be involved, but it is not required.

Second, self-care isn’t just things like bubble baths or warm drinks – it isn’t necessarily things you actively love doing. Of course, self-care is meant to be taking care of yourself, however, sometimes, it isn’t the most fun thing you can do.

Often, the discussions around self-care fall into two categories. Either, it focuses entirely on buying products – often ones advertised specifically for this kind of purchase – or it simplifies into behavior that is basic, for neurotypicals, to maintain wellbeing. Think things like “just do yoga and you’ll feel better!”

While the second focus of self-care is not wrong, the point of self-care isn’t to force you into a regiment that works for someone else. It is about finding what works with you to help your well-being.

For me, self-care is admitting that I need a million reminders on my phone to check in on my sibling or remember to take medicine. It’s encouraging myself to keep my space in a clean disorder, even when I have no energy.

It’s especially important for me to keep up the self-care at this time of the semester. As it grows colder, the days shorten and finals week nears, it’s easy to get swept up in the ever-present buildup of assignments and stress.

It is also necessary for me to remind you that you are not the sum of your work or the quality of your grades. You are a person, and you are so much more than what you can produce in an academic setting.

Whether your semester has been good or bad, I am proud of you for getting through it.

These are things I have to tell myself frequently. These are things I tell my friends without thought, but when it comes to telling myself, I have to slow down and believe the words.

Of course, as nice as it is to know that you are not just the work you’ve done, it’s still just a sentence and it doesn’t rectify all of the current stress.

Self-care, in my opinion, is both the things you tell yourself and the things you do for yourself.

For whatever reason, bad habits or stress or both, I’ve had to be more vigilant about eating, because I haven’t been eating enough lately. I have to actively remind and cajole myself into making the most basic meals – sandwiches and pasta. I have to stay vigilant because I will ignore my body, and this is not acceptable.

This is the self-care that is crucial: treating yourself with the respect and care you deserve.

Self-care is also making sure I take time out of my week to crochet. Even though my anxiety has been low, I find crocheting very soothing, and I can tell when I haven’t let myself do something besides writing papers or reading for classes.

For me, self-care is also much less necessary to my immediate academic performance. Sometimes, it’s about listening to what I am craving and letting myself have it. Recently, all I’ve wanted to drink is hot chocolate, even though it’s more time consuming to make than tea, and there are more dishes to clean.

I’ve been using my craving for hot chocolate both as a direct way of treating myself and as a motivator to complete my other necessary tasks, such as work or making meals.

I believe this side of self-care is important to discuss. As much as buying yourself nice things or treating yourself is part of self-care, there are also aspects to it that are mundane.

Self-care is more than a gaudy catch-phrase for positive mental health practices. It is the literal care and keeping of your wellbeing, whatever that may be.

It might involve talking to someone about how you’ve been doing, how difficult – or not difficult – life has been lately. It might involve realizing that you like structure and need to start planning your day more, or it might be the exact opposite.

It Is important to remember that self-care is about taking care of you because you deserve to be taken care of. Or, maybe it is easier at this time to take care of yourself because you need to accomplish a task or goal. If you’re not ready to dive deep into full positive self-talk, that’s okay! Self-care is working towards a healthier you.

Self-care does not have to be passive. It does not have to be one-size-fits-all.

Cover photo courtesy of socialsciencecollective.org.

I agree with many others, neurotypical and otherwise, who find people telling others to just “get over” mental illnesses or “be more positive.”

It seems fairly commonplace to denounce these platitudes. At least, I see people countering them with anger–rightfully accusing the phrases of inadequacy.

I do want to talk about how beginning to alter my thought process has helped tremendously with how I function now. However, it is important for me to stress that this could not have been possible without medicine. I also want to stress that this is my limited experience and that this works for me, and perhaps, me alone.

The important thing I learned was that gaining a healthier self-awareness and self-dialogue didn’t just mean internalizing sappy catch phrases. I paid attention to everything I could about myself and found that practicing intentional mindfulness helped tremendously.

It was with the help of my current therapist that I began this process. Paying attention to myself was the first step towards beginning an intentional internal dialogue.

For me, I had to deal with a fear of myself. Among other inducers of paranoia, my misguided sense of self–primarily that I was one step away from self-sabotage at all times–probably was impacted by my religious upbringing. There were so many things I internalized from my conservative evangelical church settings – namely that I was inherently, disgustingly sinful, that I was on the brink of an unknown death (the Rapture) constantly and that I was responsible for every thought I’ve ever had – that I had to walk away from the church a second time.

I had to separate myself from many aspects of that denomination to heal the rest of myself.

This second departure couldn’t be excused by the transition from high school to college, living in a different state with no vehicle, or simply lacking solid information on church environments around me.

I purposefully acknowledged that I internalized layers and layers of shame and paranoia for things I had no control over. I realized that they did not bear good fruit, resulting only in a muted sense of self.

Beneath the layers of anxiety and depression, I had no idea who I was. Thanks to the process of applying for college, I could certainly highlight the strengths I was aware of, but beyond that I knew nothing.

So, my crash-landing into self-dialogue was anything but gentle. It began with large, unwieldy realizations and quickly crumbled into basic observations.

When I needed to, I spent the more rational moments following anxiety attacks with self-soothing hobbies and incorporated some stereotypical positive phrases.

I made sure to focus on celebrating the end of a panic attack, reminding myself that they did end and praising myself for getting through them. At first, it was necessary to tell myself the obvious basics, mostly that I love myself, that I am proud of myself, etc.

Later, I could break away from stating the obvious and instead reinforcing the statements with acts of self-love, but I had to begin with laying the positive foundations. Furthermore, I didn’t remove dramatic self-love statements from my mind entirely–I just began to rely on them less.

Beginning with emotional and cheesy statements was uncomfortable. Even if it has helped in the long run–and even if I believe in its ability to help ease anxiety, alongside other treatments, repeating the statements felt like taking a walk in too-big shoes.

I was relieved when I found myself improving.  

My current therapist recommended the self-love statements, but beyond that I was somewhat left to my own devices on healing how I interacted with myself.

I continued clumsily, internally pointing out the obvious. I made sure to notice what foods I liked and to make/buy them when I could, to intentionally play music I liked and what trees I felt compelled to stop and admire.

For me, going on medication cleared my head of unnecessary and harmful clutter. I had a calmness I’d never felt before, and it allowed me to enjoy aspects of existence I didn’t know could be enjoyable.

Starting out small was easy, and I kept doing it even as I expanded into more introspective self-inquiries. It improved everything from understanding more about myself, learning how to self-soothe and avoid difficult subjects, to making my hobbies more enjoyable.

I happen to enjoy over-thinking in general, especially about miniscule things. Now, it is more or less something I have control over and it isn’t as much influenced by paranoia. I have found that learning to be aware of myself and go out of my way to appreciate things I like was something I innately enjoyed, once it got more natural.

Different things work for different people. I never knew that a good form of self-care was simple awareness of myself but, for me, it has been one of the most healing things I have done.

Cover photo courtesy of socialsciencecollective.org.

I knew, and know, that everyone relates to their gender differently. I also knew, though, that I felt discomfort with some situations wherein I was identified as a woman.

So, I thought about different terms. Lady, girl, woman and female are all clumsy and wrong. It’s a little like wearing a shirt that’s supposed to fit and looks soft, but the material feels awful. The closest to woman that I consider myself is woman-aligned.

I knew those terms were out. For me, the next ones to examine were daughter and sister.

These were a lot more complicated for me to examine. Quite frankly, I doubt I’ll ever understand the complexity of these titles.

At first, I noticed that I disliked the assumption that I was just female, as though there was nothing more to my gender. So, I tried mentally replacing daughter with child and sister with sibling.

Honestly, in a religious setting I find the terms clunky. However, when I considered them alongside both my position in my family and in my sorority, I found myself disliking the alteration.

In my experience, divorcing myself of the title daughter made me feel like I was robbing myself of the label’s emotional dynamic. For me, daughter feels like a term that encompasses more than just my gender – it is feminine, but it is also tied to a place of intimacy.

I am reluctant to leave that place of familiarity because my identity as a daughter never felt strongly aligned to personally malignant sexism or gender discomfort. My conception of myself as my parent’s daughter focuses more on the nurturing and loving aspect of our relationship than by socially assigned gender assumptions.

Not that child lacks meaning, but I found myself unwilling to give daughter up, so the term stays as a personal way to remain connected to my familial identity.

Then the word sister underwent similar examination.

In one sense, sister is a term connected to my relationship with my one sibling, my younger brother. Sister is also too tightly wound in sibling affection for me to abandon it.

Sister is also related to my sorority at Jewell, Alpha Delta Pi. As you can imagine, this is especially complicated because I discovered more about my queer identity after joining. Ultimately, I believe that my experience as a sorority sister does not negate my identity as a queer person.

Being in my sorority didn’t just help me grow as a person both independently and within the sorority community – I also confronted my own internalized misogyny.

Firstly, if you’re thinking that it sounds exhausting figuring out both gender identity and internalized misogyny, it definitely is. It’s also rewarding, but the course of self-exploration never is smooth.

Secondly, this process didn’t happen after I joined the sorority. It happened the second my first-year roommate came to our dorm room after formal recruitment, ecstatic. She’d joined a sorority, and the sorority she’d wanted, and I was immediately jealous.

I don’t just mean a little jealous. I was completely consumed, and it was the first time I had to confront the fact that I wanted the very thing I constantly internally – and, on occasion, externally – ridiculed.

Of course, I was ashamed of it, so I let it simmer in silence. I was genuinely thrilled for my roommate but I also wished I could have her happiness.

It wasn’t even all about rejecting the concept of being in a sisterhood – it was my internalized rejection of anything considered undesirably feminine. Ultimately, much of our current culture contributes to cultivating so-called essential female qualities within those presumed female while also instilling them with disgust towards other emblems of femininity. This is seen in the phrase “I’m not like other girls,” wherein the prime issue isn’t that the speaker isn’t a woman, it’s that she doesn’t behave like other women do.

It’s meant to keep women in competition with each other for male attention. It commodifies the female experience, attributing positive or negative qualities that make women more or less marketable while demeaning all of it.

The fact of the matter is: internalized misogyny keeps people preoccupied with insulting divergent experiences of femininity rather than addressing larger oppressive and bigoted structures.

It’s not something anyone has full control over. I know that I will always be fighting against what our social setting sells in this regard. However, joining a sorority helped me address that I had internalized misogyny, and, slowly, I found myself exploring aspects of femininity I previously suppressed.

I found myself incorporating more pink things in my life. I let myself admit to liking skirts and lace. I found that there are some stereotypically feminine things that I will never like (high heels? I don’t know her). I found that engaging in this ongoing awareness with myself taught myself how to grow comfortable with my preferences.

For the first time, I started treating myself as a human being. I wanted to learn more about myself.

It can be a massive headache, juggling the knowledge that all binary gender constructs are just that: constructs, alongside allowing myself to experience different gendered perspectives/tastes and exploring where I feel female and where I feel nonbinary. It isn’t easy, but it is rewarding.

Although there are spaces where I find myself preferring neutral pronouns and masculine compliments, there are other spaces where I am happily a daughter and a sister.

With labels tied to family, I am grounded in a deep awareness that our bonds, though sometimes messy, are strong.

With labels tied to my sorority, I am reminded in the strength and beauty of femininity. It makes me proud of my fellow sisters, of my complicated relationship with all things female and our shared desire to be the best we can be.

Sometimes, the language you are initially given doesn’t work. It’s okay if it doesn’t – and it’s okay if it does under specific situations.

Photo courtesy of socialsciencecollective.org.