Real Self-Care, page 18
The power of the dialectic is critical when it comes to real self-care. It’s possible to move toward inner peace with your decisions and create societal change—these two are not at odds. Take my patient Sonia, who felt guilt and shame for sending her kids to the babysitter on the weekends so she could catch up on work. She had to come to peace with her assertion of individual power within her family. It didn’t lead to big changes in the moment, but ultimately Sonia’s embrace of real self-care led to her husband asking for paternity leave at his small start-up. The company ended up initiating a paternity leave policy going forward, to attract and retain talent.
Inner peace and social change do not come without inner conflict. We are both the wooden figurine on the chessboard and powerful players with the capacity to change the game.
To Practice: Imagining Your Chessboard
Think back to the voices you identified in Chapter 6, when we were learning the skill of self-compassion—your optimist, your wise woman, and so on. Now think of a situation in which the knight on the chessboard metaphor applies to your life—perhaps a time when you felt powerless in the face of circumstances that were out of your control.
1. How would your optimist narrate the story? Your wise woman? Your quirky one?
2. Are there some universal truths that stand out to you in each of these retellings that apply no matter which voice is telling the story?
3. Imagine these different voices engaging with each other. Are there insights about your character or personality that stand out in each of these retellings? Some of these might apply across retellings, while some of them will likely be contradictory. That’s okay.
When we look at ourselves and our situations from the lens of “both, and,” we give ourselves the benefit of perspective. We recognize that there is rarely just one story, and we’re able to see that more than one truth can be possible at the same time.
TURN UP YOUR COMPLEXITY
It naturally follows that after we focus on the dialectic, the path to remembering your power is to turn up the complexity of your story—not turn it down. Our culture has a way of flattening women’s existence, and of viewing complexity and contradiction as a threat. Instead of seeing ourselves and our roles as one-dimensional, we can empower ourselves by reflecting on and embracing the alternative stories.
Several years ago, along with a colleague, I initiated a project with immigrant survivors of intimate partner violence.[3] We used a technique called testimonial therapy, in which survivors came together and shared their narratives of survival and strength. These women had been through horrific circumstances, not only in trying to seek refuge in the United States but also due to violence in their personal lives. In this process of sharing the good and the bad, the women no longer felt defined solely by their traumatic experiences. One survivor said that from the ashes of her prior relationship she carried the fact that “I was able to move forward, alone. . . . It took a lot of strength, yet I was able to do it.” This survivor narrated her story as a journey of discovering the truth about a man who had betrayed her. Her testimony was marked by growth—she started off as a naive young woman and, at the end, she described a feeling of self-reliance and strength. This is not me waving a magic wand and saying that the trauma these survivors experienced was rightful or needed. Trauma is never deserved or needed. Instead, testimonial therapy is a modality that centers moving forward and finding sources of meaning and hope in the face of hardship.
Your Real Self-Care Compass can help with this, as you can apply your personal manifesto to various aspects of your life—your relationships, work, community—and bring your values forward in unexpected ways. For example, a friend of mine who works as a scientist and who deeply values adventure spent a recent sabbatical traveling internationally. Typically, scientists use their sabbaticals to write books or catch up on research projects—it’s meant to be a time of concentrated work for pushing out peer-reviewed papers or gaining favor in the race for tenure. But my friend had spent the past few years burned out, facing a number of rejections and even considering leaving academics altogether. She viewed herself at the nadir of her career. So, from a place of desperation, she took a risk and followed a different path—she visited four countries over seven months and took her family along with her. She came back from her sabbatical refreshed and full of energy. Ultimately, she did not meet her department chair’s expectations for academic productivity. One could think of that as a failure. Or you could say that because of her time spent living life aligned with her values, she felt less conflicted about leaving academics for good and taking a job in the private sector (wherein she had more time off to travel and explore).
I suspect if you are reading this book, you have had some failures and losses, some memories in your past or even situations in your present that make you wince when you think about them. It can be tempting to make those experiences our whole story—and social media, even our families and friends, might pull for hardship or trauma to define us. Yet if real self-care is about self-preservation and self-expression, it follows that we can find power in recasting our narratives. For example, I recently read a headline that said “Burned-Out Moms Gathered in a Field to Scream,” and thought to myself, shouldn’t the headline really be “Nation Abandons Mothers and They’ve Had Enough”? When we consider the alternative headlines and embrace the complexity of our stories, we are more likely to feel empowered.
To Practice: Owning Your Headline
When considering the headlines of our lives, it’s often easier to start outside ourselves because it’s easier to be generous to others and much harder to extend that generosity inward. With this practice, the goal is not to tell yourself that everything happens for a reason and all is perfect as it is (that’s toxic positivity). Instead, our intent is to embrace the nuance and see if you can look back at a hard time in your life and find some nuggets of wisdom or truth.
1. Think of a friend who has gone through a tough time in life, whether it was due to a failure on their part or in relation to external circumstances like illness, divorce, or loss. Describe their story in terms of what was lost and the suffering they experienced.
2. Now think about how you could tell this story in a different way. What if instead of starting with the low point, you picked a different starting place? What other narratives are possible with this story? What hidden strengths lie inside your friend’s low point in their life? Did you notice any positive changes in them that emerged as a result of this hardship? What meaning came out of the low point in their life?
3. Now go through these steps for yourself—identify a low or difficult moment in your own life and see if you can apply the same nuance and generosity toward yourself. Did you find meaning in unexpected places? How did your experience shape who you have become today?
Resisting the flattening of our stories helps us hold on to agency and power. It’s one way to push back against our society’s expectation that women conform to one stereotype or narrative. Make a note of your answers for this exercise and keep them in a trusted place so that you can read over them when you are feeling low or stuck.
TRADE CYNICISM FOR AGENCY
You might be thinking, “This is all great for people who already have some power, like an author or a public figure, but what about the rest of us?” Let me reassure you that I see many tangible examples of real self-care in my clinical practice, working with patients who are dealing with the struggles of their daily lives, and are up against decisions that challenge them to the core.
Take my patient Lena, who worked as a video producer for a local TV station. Lena enjoyed her work, but she was woefully underpaid and undersupported. The TV station she worked at largely ignored employee complaints because they had won a series of prestigious awards in the industry. Lena felt like her hands were tied—if she spoke up about the lack of support she had, the station could easily let her go and find another producer who was champing at the bit to get their foot in the door. In one session she said, “What’s the point of speaking up about my terrible working conditions? Nothing’s going to change. I have no power here.” Lena felt that no matter what she said, the status quo would prevail, and as such, it wasn’t worth making a fuss.
Together, we worked through the process of real self-care, and Lena took a risk to set some boundaries with her work, such as no longer pulling all-nighters, and taking sick days when she needed them. She softened her self-talk, gave herself permission for self-compassion and got clear on her values. Lena was a creative individual and she was energized by the social justice programming that her network produced. She did not want to leave her job, but it was also not aligned with her values for Lena to keep getting the short end of the stick. So she began to ask questions—about what it would take for her boss to hire an assistant for her and about why her pay rate was so far below the market average for her experience and expertise. After a yearlong battle, Lena got an assistant. Perhaps even more powerful is that young women at the network saw Lena as an ally and began asking her for advice in their own careers. Ultimately, her advocacy for herself led to new policies being put in place so that producers had their costs reimbursed in a timely manner and several new assistants were hired for other folks at Lena’s level. Lena is still negotiating for a raise for herself and advocating for a restructuring of her department to be more equitable for junior members, but these early wins helped her remember her agency in what is sure to be a long battle.
Practicing real self-care requires taking ownership of yourself back from the system that has held you down—whether that system is your family, your workplace, society writ large, or all of the above. If Lena had given in to cynicism, none of these changes would have occurred. Through her practice of real self-care, she was able to improve her own situation and the situations of those who would come after her.
To Practice: Planting the Seeds of Revolution
Real self-care is about changing our internal landscape so that we can go forth and exert power and agency in the outside world. I think of this as planting seeds of revolution—we are seeding the future for ourselves and for the next generation as well.
1. Make a list of recent situations or encounters that stand out to you as places where you have witnessed injustice or unfair practices.
2. Using your Real Self-Care Compass as a guide, reflect on where in your spheres of influence you might be able to assert agency and power for yourself or on behalf of others. This could take the form of asking questions about systems that are opaque in your workplace or starting a petition in your neighborhood.
The process of systemic change does not happen overnight. When we think about real self-care as a practice of planting the seeds of change, it helps us remember that this work is ongoing and blossoms in unexpected ways.
ESTABLISH HOPE AS A PRACTICE
At George Washington University, a group has operationalized the practice of hope into what’s called the Hope Modules.[4] Initially designed to support people who were going through severe illness, like cancer or chronic pain, the hope modules were expanded to apply to everyday people who are going through very difficult external stressors or adverse life circumstances. I was fortunate to receive training in this framework when I was a psychiatric resident and have seen it work for many patients. The gist of it is this: In order to cultivate hope, people need to activate one or more of four different types of coping skills:
Problem-solving (i.e., jumping to a task or action that helps you move forward tangibly)
Emotion regulation (i.e., reducing your in-the-moment stress level or feelings of discomfort)
Activating a core identity (i.e., connecting with an individual or collective identity)
Relational coping (i.e., connecting with mentors or important people in your life)
For example, when a patient of mine who has a medically complex child comes across the plethora of obstacles that her insurance puts up to getting coverage for medical care, she uses these skills: she makes a list of what she needs to get covered, she reminds herself that this work is hard and it’s okay to take breaks, she goes to regular meetups with her church moms’ group, and she spends time with a close friend who is also a mom of a special-needs kid. These hope-activating skills help her feel like she has some power.
She is not naive about her situation—it’s a mess, and it’s unfair that this is her fight, but at the same time she is able to recognize when her actions lead to progress for her daughter’s health. She is careful not to take on the burden of trying to change the whole system—that would be impossible. But she uses these hope-building tools to prevent herself from becoming apathetic. In balancing the two extremes, that’s where we hold on to hope—and with hope comes power.
To Practice: Identifying Your Hope-Building Skills
Everyone has the capacity to practice hope, whether you’re an optimist or a pessimist. This exercise will help you identify which coping skills you already have and which come most naturally to you, so that you can continue to shore these up as you move forward in your real self-care practice.
1. Think of a recent experience in your life about which you feel crummy—it could be something going on in the world or something that’s happened to you through no fault of your own, or an event that you feel ashamed or guilty about. Why did this situation make you feel so bad? If you can, try to remember the feelings that you experienced at the time.
2. Now remember what actions you took immediately after this event happened—in the hours, days, and weeks of the aftermath, how did you cope? Did you move into problem-solving and take specific actions like researching or collecting more information? Or did you immediately reach out to a trusted friend or colleague (i.e., relational coping)? Perhaps your first instinct was to move into activating your core identity and connecting with your faith or church group.
3. If you can, get granular with your process. We often use a mix of all four coping skills in order to build hope for ourselves. And while for each of us there will be one or two that come most naturally, all of these tools are available to you in times of distress or hardship. If you found that you did not utilize any of them, reflect on if there is one that resonates most with you now that you can call up when you feel hopeless about change.
When faced with the litany of systemic constraints and failures, the practice of hope is the ultimate source of resistance because it’s always available for us to practice. Make note of which hope-building skills come most naturally to you so that you can put them into practice during times of hardship or when you are starting to feel like you have no agency.
WHEN TO SEEK PROFESSIONAL HELP
It can be difficult to tell the difference between clinical depression or anxiety and the all-encompassing existential dread that comes with living through systemic oppression and the collapse of basic human rights. It’s also possible to be experiencing both—despair over a world in which you feel powerless and a clinical mental health condition. In fact, when you’re living through systemic failures and have less access to resources and support, you are more likely to suffer from a mental health condition. You can suffer from the effects of a deeply unjust society and benefit from treatment for a mental health condition. If you find yourself feeling consistently hopeless and unable to enjoy or take pleasure in any activities that typically cheer you up, this could be a sign that you’re suffering from a clinical condition like depression. In some cases, extreme hopelessness can manifest as symptoms like going to bed at night and wishing you don’t wake up in the morning or hoping that you are in a fatal accident. These types of thoughts are what we call passive suicidal ideation, and if you are experiencing them, seek care from a mental health professional.
PAY IT FORWARD
In the fall of 2021, something groundbreaking was happening. The US was coming up on nearly two years of being ravaged by a global pandemic. And for the first time in decades, the federal government had paid leave for caregivers and new parents on the table in the form of the Build Back Better Act. In the initial iteration of this legislation, Congress proposed twelve weeks of paid parental leave. And then, as quickly as we cheered, paid leave was removed from the bill due to opposition from several senators.
Women and mothers were furious. So they took to the streets—literally. Thousands of mothers showed up at the steps of our nation’s capitol, in the rain, to demand that paid leave be brought back into the proposed legislation. Grassroots movements popped up all over the country. On social media, a coalition of advocates and leaders came together, and we called ourselves the Chamber of Mothers. Nearly overnight a movement of ten thousand women came together to take action.
Due to the work of new advocates and groups that have been working on this issue for decades, lawmakers put paid leave back into the legislation—albeit at four weeks instead of twelve. What was striking to me about this movement is that many of the women who signed up, donated, and showed up in the rain were done having children. They were not going to personally benefit from a federal leave policy. But they were willing to donate their time, energy, and money for others who would benefit. They were paying it forward. Moreover, the logistics around this movement took into account the fact that people who had the privilege to show up to protest and to organize had resources—such as childcare or support at home—so that they could get on a bus to Washington, DC. Groups organized donation campaigns to pay for childcare so that women who did not have those choices could come and fight for this cause.
