Self-Care That Does Not Involve Yoga or Meditation
Nothing against yoga or meditation, I’m just talking smaller picture
Picture this
See what I did there?
February 2022
It’s a cold Saturday morning in February. I make my way to the city to meet with a client. The trip is uneventful and the meeting goes well. I’m inside for only an hour, but when I emerge a blizzard has already begun causing poor visibility.
My usual route home already has large snow drifts across the road, in addition to blowing snow. When I try the highway in the hopes it will be a little safer, I arrive to find it completely closed due to dangerous driving conditions.
This all occurred in less than 1.5 hours.
That day I ended up stranded in the city for seven hours, finding all hotels booked and the highway still closed. I eventually got home safely, but it was very much an unexpected adventure.
June 2022
Fast forward to summer, and we’re on an epic cross-country family camping trip. Before leaving I did the responsible thing and had my vehicle in for a tire change and tune-up.
We’re driving through the middle of nowhere, on a highway in the rural prairies (in Saskatchewan), when our vehicle starts to wobble. Thinking it’s a flat tire, we pull over and ready ourselves to put on the spare… except none of the tires are actually flat.
Upon further inspection, we discover the lug nuts on one of the tires are so lose that one has fallen off and is gone, and three of the remaining four are so loose I can unscrew them with my bare hands.
Seems a little unsafe.
I called roadside assistance and the first person I spoke to didn’t even know what a lug nut was. He actually asked me if my tire was missing.
No, sir, I was not driving down the road at 120KM per hour (that’s about 75 mph for my American friends), only to have my tire fly off and go completely missing. I’m now calmly calling roadside assistance instead of 9–1–1 to help after a life-threatening emergency.
Yeah, that did not happen.
When I finally got a competent person on the line, I explained what happened and she quickly had someone on their way to help. The problem was trying to explain where we were. In the middle of the nowhere, that’s where.
She asked if there were any landmarks nearby and I said “a field of cows, but they’re not helping.” She laughed and remarked at how cool-headed I was given the circumstances. I had much less of a sense of humour with the previous person, but this lady was actually helpful and doing the best she could to help.
As snarky as I can be, I recognized that giving her attitude certainly wasn’t going to help matters.
We eventually made it safely to our next destination, after unpacking and re-packing the car (twice): Once to get out the jack, then again (because my husband decided to re-pack it while waiting) to get the key for the theft-resistant lug nut.
Even after all that, I was relatively even-tempered, cracking jokes. We were able to laugh at our misfortune rather than lose our minds, which we had every right to do under the circumstances.
Why is that?
Here’s my theory
I figure the reasons I didn’t completely fall apart that day are:
- We’d already been on holiday, having enjoyed a beautiful stop over in the Grasslands, so we were feeling relaxed and happy.
- That year had gone much better than the previous three for our family, with or son finally having found a school that is the right fit for him, so my stress levels were much lower to begin with.
- I’d been on medications for my ADHD and anxiety (later discovered to be ADHD and Autism, but I digress) for more than two years at this point, so my symptoms were well-managed.
- This happened at about 3pm, so I’d eaten lunch and was not yet hungry, so my blood sugar was probably relatively stable.
- My husband had been driving for a few hours by this time, with me reading a book and rocking out to music in the passenger seat, so I was in a good mood.
But some of these are quite minor, aren’t they?
Yes, yes they are.
Self-care is The Little Things
Those larger, unexpected stressors tend to be mostly outside of our control.
Smaller daily stressors are insidious because they tend to slowly chip away at our reserves, sometimes without us even noticing (especially if we struggle with self-awareness).
They can add up throughout the day or week until we reach (or surpass) our limit.
The good news is many of those seemingly minor stressors are more likely to be within our control, and when we take care of those small self-care tasks, we are better prepared to handle the unexpected.
Those of us who are neurodivergent often expend more energy than neurotypical (NT) people trying to do everyday things due to executive functioning challenges and our differently wired brains.
We may expect ourselves to “keep up” with the NTs, but trying to live a Neurotypical life when you’re Neurodivergent just isn’t sustainable if we want to care take good care of our mental health.
We (the royal we, I certainly include myself) can get caught up in doing All Of The Things and forget about the essentials. The basic-basics like eating, drinking, and peeing (hyperfocus plus interoception difficulties for the win, amiright?).
It’s a good idea to regularly check in with yourself (set a reminder if you have to) and see if you’re taking care of The Little Things.
Think about the last time you did the following:
- Ate a nutritions meal or snack
- Hydrated
- Got outside for fresh air
- Stood up and stretched or walked around
- Took a meaningful break from work
- Got some exercise
- Spent time with friends
- Had a good night’s sleep
- Had time alone doing something you enjoy just for fun
…or whatever else may be on your day-to-day self care checklist.
If you don’t know what would be on such a checklist, now might be a good time to make one.
© Jillian Enright, Neurodiversity MB
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