Self care is about the whole picture.
Of both what you’re doing on the outside and what is driving you from the inside.
Free yourself from overthinking
Overthinking or worrying is taking one small thing and thinking about it beyond the facts that you actually know about it. When you are unsatisfied and unable to relax with or accept a situation, you think and think and think about it.
This is harmful. This is something we all do on a daily basis and it needs to stop.
Does overthinking ever help you?
Anyway we tend to use overthinking to avoid or get away from how we feel.
To use thinking in order to suppress or cover up how you really feel will ultimately do nothing but strengthen those feelings you’re trying to avoid.
Then the distress you generate through overthinking will add to the current stress you’re trying to avoid, which will lead to more overthinking and is how you get yourself stuck in an endless cycle.
I found over the years, that I was always worried, stressed or anxious for a good reason, so overthinking to avoid these feelings would be useless and do nothing but make me feel worse, so it was best just to let myself feel that way, without trying to avoid it or judge it.
Which was hard, sure, you never want to feel those feelings, but I found the longer I would avoid, and distract myself away from feeling those feelings the longer they would be drawn out.
Coming back to just feeling them, the overthinking would fade away and the unnecessary worry that I brought into my life would decrease.
Try this out for yourself.
You can prove that you don’t have to harm yourself, just to avoid yourself.
Whenever you start to harm yourself by overthinking. Feel the disturbance behind that thinking; whether that is worry, stress or anxiety just let your overthinking go into the background where it will eventually fade away.
It won’t be easy at first but the more you do it the easier it’ll get. And persisting with this till you get it is really really worth it, believe me.
In doing so you will feel and know a true and real sense of you, away from the harm you and others cause you.
Then you will have a chance to truly care about yourself.
It is that simple.
Related article: How to stop overthinking
Breaking free from negative self-thoughts
Most of what we think about ourselves we pick up from the outside world, social media, our parents, friends, even society and assume these thoughts are our own.
So how do we discern our own thoughts from the ones that come from outside?
If a thought is coming from the outside; it will be putting you down, making you feel disturbed, angry or critical of yourself.
If a thought is coming from you, from inside; it will lift you up; it is guiding you, taking care of you, it is coming from a deeper felt sense of you.
Think about it, what is more related to you? A thought that comes from inside of you, the felt sense of you in the body.
Or a thought that comes from the outside, from someone else’s bias perception of you or how you should be.
There is no way, we as humans could think horrible things about ourselves unless we were taught to do so. We are who we are and unless we compare ourselves with something outside, there is no reason for us to hate who we are or think such thoughts.
Animals don’t hate who they are. You don’t see a dog sulking because the other dogs have prettier fur than it does.
We should be no different.
Be honest with yourself now, if you take all your comparison, criticism and nasty thoughts away and just come back to how you feel behind all those thoughts.
However, it feels, is fine. Because that is how you feel, and there is no wrong way to feel.
And you know the most amazing thing! Unlike thinking, there is no way we can compare how we feel with anyone else, because we have no idea how other people feel.
Sure, they can describe it to us, but who knows what they actually mean. Their ‘happy’ could be your ‘depressed’, and visa versa…
So, if there is no way you can compare how you feel with anyone else. How do you know it’s wrong, or bad? You don’t, so let it go.
Stop thinking these nasty thoughts about yourself and come back to how it feels to be you in the body.
And if that feels gross, or disturbing or makes you want to run away from it, stay with it and feel it until that feeling fades.
Because unlike your nasty thoughts, feelings will come and go as they need to. Thoughts drag on forever if we keep repeating them.
So stop.
And finally, Allow yourself to heal the harm by feelin it
Don’t use this article as a list of rules to follow, use this as a guide to help you stop the harm you are causing yourself.
This doesn’t mean that you have to stop eating ice cream forever. Eat the goddam ice cream, do the things that make you feel like shit. But once you’ve done them and you’re sitting there feeling like shit.
Feel how that feels. Don’t avoid it, because part of stopping the harm is feeling the harm that you’ve done to yourself.
In feeling that harm your able to see the impact it has on you, which will help you to stop it.
Stop the harm and your body will heal naturally by itself.
Here’s a great example:
We have been complaining about environmental crises and global warming for a long time now. Talking about all the things we could do to fix it, all the things we need to apply, to change, to stop.
Then about 3 billion people all around the world went into lockdown. And within 3 weeks of humans not going outside, not imposing themselves on the world, the world began to fix itself naturally.
The canals in Venice cleared up, cities in India saw the Himalayan mountains for the first time in 30 years, people in London saw the Eiffel tower from their homes.
The natural world fixed itself, simply because we stopped the harm. Because we left the planet alone.
So maybe… that’s what you need to do for yourself. Don’t you think. And don’t forget, you too are also part of nature, and so you work the same way.
There is no fancy cure to all of this, to your pains, illnesses, distresses, it’s all up to you to stop harming yourself. And let nature – the body, do its thing. And it will if you let it.
You know when a certain situation, person or food makes you feel sick, disturbed or vulnerable. So stop putting yourself in harm’s way.
Take into consideration the self-care you’re neglecting. If you can sit on social media for an hour a day you can spend at least 30 minutes giving yourself the space and quite you need by meditating.
Don’t ignore your body when you feel disturbed around a person, you’re allowed to cut them out of your life. Nobody is worth causing yourself pain. No amount of pills are going to help you when the junk food you’re eating is making you sick.
You can just let yourself feel anxious, worried or distressed, and it will pass. But you will achieve nothing by overthinking and only cause yourself more anxiety, worry and distress.
Can you see now that any negative thoughts about yourself are coming from the outside. Therefore, they have nothing to do with you, so let them go and focus instead on how it feels, rather than what you’re thinking.
And finally feel the harm; even if you do fall into old habits, or harmful behaviours, that’s fine just feel the harm you’ve caused yourself without criticising and judging it. And move on without dwelling on it.
Only you can heal yourself, only you can stop the harm that is caused. Sure, you may have picked up certain thoughts, and behaviours from other people, but you can stop them now and only you know how.
Now that you know what the problem really is.
Leave yourself alone, which means, stop the harm.
This is the most natural and most intelligent solution.
Just as the natural world in Venice, India and London fixed itself when we stopped harming it and left it alone, so to, when you leave yourself alone in this way, your body, which is also nature will take over the care and fix itself…every single time.
You just need you to get out of the way and stop the harm, and wherever or whenever you do, everything will just sort itself out.
Voila!
