Self-care is more than sitting cross legged and blowing out hot hair

I recently contributed to a post on self-care for therapists for the UKCP website when asked to reflect on my own self-care routine.  UKCP is my professional body and stands for the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy. When thinking about what to contribute I became more aware of what self-care actually means for me. Self-care can often be viewed as a so-called goody two shoes approach to clean living when actually I see it as more about understanding how the troublesome parts of my own mind become activated and how I better manage them.

Investigating whether someone has a positive self-care regime and a solid social support structure is often an initial line of enquiry for therapists when undertaking initial assessments. The holy trinity of good sleep, a healthy diet and a physical exercise regime are often the foundational elements that should be present in an individual’s lifestyle. But it doesn’t stop there. Other lines of enquiry, at an initial basic level during assessment, can be ascertaining who else is in their lives and what kind of external routine they might have in the world. There can be pointers to the internal strife that is the troublesome reason why they are in therapy in the first place when these are in disarray. Internal strife can take the form of difficult dialogue with internal parts of the mind, whether such parts are seen as aspects of self, or indeed parts, sub or super personalities, persona’s, or ego states. They can take the form of internal bullies, saboteurs, inner critics or simply the monkey on the shoulder. Perhaps real self-care is to thoroughly explore these internal characters and to positively seek to achieve integration by pushing down internal resistances and letting go of avoidance strategies.

I believe the work of a good therapist is to help someone uncover the characters that resemble their internal strife and to help them to enter into a form of dialogue with the really troublesome ones. This is often perceived as being counter intuitive by people who are in distress from such internal play. People don’t usually want to get in touch with the discomforting thoughts and feelings associated with their so-called monkey (or monkeys) on their shoulders. They would rather seek to dispel such discomfort by employing distracting behaviours or seek to bury such discomfort by not acknowledging the power that they hold. People often enter therapy essentially because their distracting behaviours are ceasing to work any more, or because such behaviours are causing negative consequences in other parts of their lives. There can be expansive and transformative therapeutic work when individuals give themselves permission to address their own troubling internal strife. This is when things open up and their troubling parts, little by little, lose their grip. However, when such consent is not given, to themselves, there can be massive potential for negative transference when there are attacks, often subtle, on the therapist when their role is being challenged and undermined.

So, whether it is self-care in the professional world of therapy or in the corporate office, good practice is not just sitting cross legged and blowing out hot air. Yes, it is about getting the fundamentals right, such as sleep, diet and exercise, but it is much more nuanced than that. It is ultimately about understanding how your emotional system operates and how your fight/flight gets activated so that you can enjoy your life more fully and engage more meaningfully with the people around you. This can be when greater meaning and purpose enters your existence as you boldly open up new chapters and adventures in your life.

Noel Bell is a UKCP accredited psychotherapist based in London and can be contacted on 07852407140 or noel@noelbell.net