Learning to take better care of oneself

These past couple of years have been rough on everybody. With that being said, a lot of people(like myself) have been trying to find coping mechanisms and habits that produce better quality of life. I personally have found it exceptionally difficult to not be so hard on myself in this journey of trial and error. It seems that every time something goes “right”, another thing goes “wrong.” I’ve dealt with moving around a lot and fighting the feeling of not belonging anywhere, trying various jobs to find an environment that I genuinely love, dealing with grief and passing of loved ones, and overall finding my peace of mind in the midst of it all. I am a people pleaser and find it hard to advocate for my own feelings and well being. Now more than ever I’ve pushed things, people, and feelings away so that I can keep the feeling of perseverance. In hindsight, survival in our modern society is a more prominent instinct than actually living when you had to learn how to survive first. In this learning process, I’ve learnt that by pushing things away is denying what my body, mind, and soul need. I am still struggling to accept the fact that nobody else is living my life but me. People can advocate for you, teach you things, and help you through the process, but you can only help someone so much before asking yourself if it is worth putting your energy towards. Putting up those boundaries is something that others have to do to protect their piece of mind. “So, why is it so hard to put those boundaries up for myself?” is a question that I have to keep doubling back to every time I let someone push their limits with my boundaries. Nobody prepares you for how much trauma can effect not only your mental, but also your physical. I’ve had long nights where I’ve had ruminating thoughts and emotions that affect the amount of sleep I’ve gotten, just to turn around and prepare myself for the long work day ahead of me. I’ve also had short days because it feels so much easier to not deal with those thoughts and emotions by sleeping them away. Eventually, you have no other choice but to deal with those thoughts and emotions that you tend to push away. It’s very overwhelming to finally clean all the messes you’ve made, start caring more about your hygiene, cooking for yourself, allowing yourself to socialize and open yourself up to others all at once. I get very overstimulated from functioning like a “normal person” usually does on their day to day basis because I decided to push everything back. After all, it was all I knew how to do. I can’t fully say that I’ll promise to get better sleep or that I’ll be able to “properly” take better care of myself, but what I can say is that I promise to try to the best of my ability, at any given moment. I will at least try to give myself the effort that I give others. I will try to improve my quality of life for myself. I will try to work on old patterns in hopes that I can supplement it for new ones. I know that I no longer want the grogginess from improper sleep, but I am only human and can only pride myself in knowing that I am finally showing up for myself. Let’s face it, resolutions only work if you have the skills to make them work for you. So in conclusion, my resolution to improve my sleeping patterns is to try to work on obtaining the skills I need in other aspects of life. Here’s to creating patterns that will set me up for the life that I’ve always dreamed of, but never knew I could actually have.