Why self care is so much more than pampering yourself

By Dr Shuna Marr

Many people think self-care means things like bubble baths, scented candles and giving yourself a nice massage. Pampering yourself is lovely and I’m partial to a long soak in the bath myself. But, for me, that’s really only the tiniest fraction of what self-care is about. 

Self-care…or rather lack of self-care...has been a repeating cycle for me. I’ve had three major burnouts in my life and so I learned this the hard way. If you have also had a tendency to over-give, then maybe you can relate to my story?  If you prefer to read, find the transcript below:

Love

Nurturing Yourself: 

This powerful mini course offers 10 tools for awakening, aiding in exploring root causes of guilt, reinforcing self-worth and self-esteem and establishing balanced self-care practices for mind, body, and spirit. For more information about this amazing course, click here

Curious to dive deeper into your spiritual journey? Here are ways to work with us

1. Explore our comprehensive range of 1:1 services designed to empower you on your path of spiritual awakening

2. Find community and support in our low cost membership Ascension Pathfinders Adventureland

3. Discover a wealth of transformational opportunities awaiting you on our ‘EVERYTHING’ page, giving an overview of our range of courses, workshops and personalised coaching packages.

Here's the video transcript:

[00:00:00] : Many people think self-care means things like bubble baths and scented candles and giving yourself a nice massage. Well, while pampering yourself is lovely and I'm partial to a long soak in the bath myself, for me that's only the tiniest fraction of what self-care is about. Hi, I'm Dr.  Marr from Scotland.

[00:00:23] : I'm a former academic who now supports people to confidently navigate their spiritual awakening. And today, I'm talking about why self-care is so vitally important on your awakening journey and why it's about so much more than just pampering yourself. I'm passionate about self-care because this is a lesson I had to learn the hard way.

[00:00:49] : Because self-care, or rather lack of self-care, has been a repeating cycle for me. I've had three major burnouts in my life, and if you're the sort of person who also over gives, then maybe you can relate to my story. And if you stick around to the end, I have an offering for you that will maybe help. When we're growing up, our parents all have certain phrases that they repeat constantly, don't they?

[00:01:16] : And maybe you'd like to tell me in the comments what parental mantras you remember hearing all the time when you were a kid. But the one that stuck with me the most was, Do what you have to do before you do what you want to do. Do you recognise that one? That was a constant refrain in our house. My parents were hard workers and also were actively involved in charities and helping in the community.

[00:01:48] : They were always busy and we were encouraged to be the same. And this work ethic and service to others ethos was passed on to me and I also worked hard at everything I did. And because I was involved in charity work with them from an early age, I also embraced service to others as a way of giving.

[00:02:10] : And I have offered my services on committees and charities all my life. However, the desire to help others, laudable as that is, had gotten all tangled up with some unhealthy false beliefs about myself that I had picked up in childhood. And this lesson was shown to me in a very dramatic way. Maybe you can relate to this scenario.

[00:02:36] : And even if the details are different, maybe the results were the same. I'm a former academic who taught in higher education for 22 years and I now have a PhD in education but I didn't go to university straight from school. It wasn't until my mid 30s that I was drawn to take my first degree. And at the time I had two small children but I juggled my studies and worked hard and after four years I graduated with a degree with distinction that I was very proud of.

[00:03:11] : I knew I wanted to be a lecturer and after I graduated I managed to get two part time teaching contracts for evening classes and I was hoping that this would eventually lead to a full time contract further down the line. But meanwhile, I felt that I had a bit of slack capacity, so I took on various committee roles.

[00:03:35] : Secretary of a charity group, rota keeper at my son's playgroup, teaching Sunday school, being a member of the PTA, that sort of thing. So, with those and my two children, a husband and running a household, I was kept busy and feeling I was being productive. Then through a series of strange events that I haven't got time to explain here, I ended up out of the blue being offered a full time job as a technical manager in a food factory.

[00:04:09] : Now, as I wanted to be a lecturer in food product development at the time, my mentor at university, who'd recommended me for this position, said it would be great experience. So I took it on on top of my two part-time evening posts, plus the six committees and all the other commitments I had on.

[00:04:32] : And I tried to keep it all going because I didn't want to let anyone down. You know the "do what you have to do before you do what you want to do" thing. Well, it had gone in deep and what was the first thing to go? Yep. You've guessed it. My self-care. I cut out the time for exercise. I cut out making home prepared meals and we increasingly relied on ready meals and takeaways to save time.

[00:05:01] : I then cut out days off. I kept going seven days a week. I was working a full day at work, and then coming home to see to the children, and then after they were in bed, I either prepared to teach my evening classes, or I'd be out delivering the evening classes, or attending some committee or other. And on Sundays, I was teaching Sunday school.

[00:05:25] : So, no days off. And then my work asked me to start studying for a diploma in advanced food hygiene. You can see where this is going, can't you? Yeah, well, you're not wrong.

[00:05:41] : I began to study in the only time that I had left, which was late in the evening. So, I'd be getting on average four or five hours of sleep a night, if I was lucky, and never going to bed the same day I got up. Now, you might be asking, but now, Why didn't you just offload some of the other stuff? And believe me, I tried.

[00:06:07] : I went to each one of the committees and said, I'm a bit overloaded, and I need to put down some of these burdens, and they all said the exact same thing. Oh, absolutely. I can see that you're doing too much. Why not offload all the other ones and just keep this one on? Every single one of them said that.

[00:06:31] : So nobody would give me permission to put down the burden. And I so believed that love involves sacrifice and that if I'd made my bed I had to lie in it and do what I had to do before I do what I wanted to do. I so believed them that I just kept on going. And in some ways, this was a blessing because it brought it to a head fairly quickly, but unfortunately, not quickly enough.

[00:07:03] : I'd taken on a full time job, the full time job in October, and I managed to keep it going all the way until March, until one morning I walked into the office and someone said, good morning, and I burst into tears. I was mentally and physically exhausted. My nervous system was completely overwhelmed, and I had to take Two months off work.

[00:07:27] : When I was finally forced to put it all down, I wandered round for the first couple of days feeling all buzzy and keeping feeling like I should be doing something. And then, it finally hit me. And the thing about when you finally realise Or release the pressure of that level of working. It's that the pressure doesn't immediately go back to normal.

[00:07:53] : And maybe you know this too, but it's like overwinding the spring mechanism on an old fashioned alarm clock. If you overwind it Once it releases, it completely uncoils before it could be wound back up again to the right tension. And that's what happened to me. I completely unraveled. And for months afterwards, I had panic attacks and totally lost my confidence.

[00:08:24] : It took me a long time to recover. And you'd think that I would have learned the lesson after that, wouldn't you? But no, over the next 20 years I had two more episodes of taking on too much and putting others ahead of my self-care and burning out, although thankfully never as thoroughly as I had the first time.

[00:08:46] : The universe kept bringing this round again and again until 2016 I finally awakened and realised that the reason why I kept doing this was because I was running programming and conditioning from my childhood. I had come to believe that I had to sacrifice myself for others, that I had to put myself at the back of the queue for my attention, and that everyone else had more right to my time, energy, and effort than I did.

[00:09:21] : And underpinning those beliefs I eventually uncovered fears of rejection and abandonment. I felt that if I didn't bend myself out of shape and put everyone else first, then I would be left alone and unloved. And that is why I so often neglected my self-care. But when we give from that place of exhaustion and depletion, we are giving from an empty cup.

[00:09:50] : You want to give, but you are so exhausted, you are so tired, and you are so empty that you often become resentful of the people you're giving to because you are so burn out. And it just becomes a very vicious cycle. When we're giving from an empty cup, we become resentful because we know deep down that we do deserve to rest.

[00:10:16] : That we shouldn't feel guilty to take time to exercise, to eat well, to put ourselves first. But these false beliefs we have override them. And I finally came to realise that in fearing being abandoned by others, I was actually abandoning myself. And I came to understand that I needed to stop looking outside myself for what I needed, but look inside instead.

[00:10:44] : I came to realise that I was the one who needed to give myself permission to offload burdens. I needed to learn to trust myself that I'd always give myself unconditional love. That I'd respect my need for rest, not feel guilty if I had to step back from over commitment. Now, many might say that to prioritise yourself in that way is selfish.

[00:11:11] : And, do you know, I might even have said so myself at one time, but I now know from experience that self-care is not selfish, but absolutely essential. I came to recognize that true self-care is not about bubble baths and pampering yourself, but about creating for yourself a life that you don't need to take a break to recover from.

[00:11:34] : Because when we take care to give ourselves enough rest, to feed ourselves well, to take time to exercise, to do the things that bring us joy, then we fill our own cup. And when our cup is filled, then we're able to give to others from a place of overflow. We can give more to others because we have energy to spare.

[00:11:59] : We can give to others more successfully when we give to ourselves first and then give to others from our overflow. Because when we give from a place of overflow, then we don't become depleted. So when I decided to form Spiritual Awakening Support, the first offering I created had to be something that helped people to understand self-care, to share the message with others that we deserve our own love and self-care.

[00:12:35] : And this is what I came up with. Nurturing Yourself presents 10 self-care practices for your awakening journey, empowering you to cultivate self love, restore balance, and discover authentic well being. There are twelve 6-minute videos that explain how to make best use of each practice, and the course includes a number of additional bonuses, including a 40 minute video on self-care and why this is so vital on your awakening journey.

[00:13:02] : For more information about this powerful little course, click the link below this video. Thank you so much for watching and bye for now.

[00:13:29] ​

Nurturing Yourself: 

This powerful mini course offers 10 tools for awakening, aiding in exploring root causes of guilt, reinforcing self-worth and self-esteem and establishing balanced self-care practices for mind, body, and spirit. For more information about this amazing course, click here

Curious to dive deeper into your spiritual journey? Here are ways to work with us

1. Explore our comprehensive range of 1:1 services designed to empower you on your path of spiritual awakening

2. Find community and support in our low cost membership Ascension Pathfinders Adventureland

3. Discover a wealth of transformational opportunities awaiting you on our ‘EVERYTHING’ page, giving an overview of our range of courses, workshops and personalised coaching packages.