Danielle Ireland (0:00)

Hey, y'. All.

Wayfair Customer (0:01)

As a growing family, my husband and I love game night. Especially when it's Wayfair edition.

Wayfair Host (0:05)

Let's do it. You gotta name as many Wayfair furniture and decor categories as you can. Ready? Go.

Wayfair Customer (0:12)

Sofas, bar stools, beds, ottomans, outdoor seating, bookshelves, kitchen tables, garden sheds, mid century modern lamps.

Danielle Ireland (0:18)

Time. Nice.

Wayfair Host (0:20)

You got nine out of a lot. Not too bad. Keep practicing by visiting wayfair.com which can shop every style for every home.

Danielle Ireland (0:27)

Way fair. Every style, every home. Hello. Welcome back to another episode of don't cut your own bangs. My name is Danielle Ireland and we are here. We made it. We made it a whole other week. I've got some personal stuff to catch up on and a really fantastic topic. Today we are going to be diving into sustainable self care. Now I know that may not be the sexiest title in the world, like self care that will blow your mind. Self care that will change the way you experience the world. Like, I know I could try to make it really zingy and really poppy, but what I want it to also be is true. And what I am finding through my lived experience and my clinical work as a therapist is that there are many different faces and facets of self care and it's only self care when it's working. And we deserve self care that lasts and sustains us because we deserve calm without having to earn it. So welcome. Put in your air pods, go on your walk or sit in a cozy chair or whatever you're doing. Wherever we are together, I'm so grateful to be here with you and share this time. Because what I have really come to find is I want to create a cozier corner in the Internet. Don't cut your own banks. As a space that's meant to be a cozy corner of the Internet where we can allow our tender selves, our imperfect selves, to exist. Where we can find and access compassionate curiosity and ask better questions, kinder questions that open up our thinking, open up what's possible so that we can help connect the dots in ways that we want to connect to live a more meaningful, more enriching, more joyful life. Here we are. Thank you for being here. And we're gonna be talking about sustainable self care. So rather than bulleting a list of things, these are things that could be self care like rather, because we could categorize self care by activity time, tuition. There's a lot of different ways to think about and look at self care. What I wanna do instead is kind of reverse the order so I want to talk to you about some processes that can actually open up your thinking about self care. And in terms of sustainability, they're not rooted in a calendar, they're not rooted in a commitment. They are simply grounded in what you're feeling and what you need at any given moment, whether that's a different day. You could do this every day and the result might look different every day. It could look different over a season of life or a period of time. But. But the process is something you can practice, that it can. It can move with you and it can change with you. Then we will talk a little bit more about some actual examples of self care. Because what I have found is that sometimes a laundry list of different versions of self care can feel very tense and tight. Because what I'm trying to do is get it right and follow a model that is getting self care right. And then it feels like a chore and it's not helpful. Or sometimes on the flip side, I will see someone doing something. I'll catch a video, I'll overhear something, or I'll just engage in conversation and someone will say a new. A new idea to me, a new. Maybe they're not even calling it self care, but something new that they're doing for themselves. Something kind. A place they went, a trip they went on, something they ate, a restaurant they went to. And that example lights something up inside of me that's saying, yeah, me too, me too. I want that too. So we're gonna do both. We're gonna talk about the process, because the process can move. You can carry it with you for the rest of your life, and it can grow and change and help it be sustainable. And then we will talk about some examples because those examples may light a spark or open up a new corner in your mind that you didn't even know. Oh, I didn't even realize that could be self care. We'll talk about all that too. Before we dive into that though, I want to give you a little tiny life update. I twisted my ankle. What's funny is that it actually I twisted my foot. But the result in the bruising and the pain, it's sort of a foot ankle hybrid. Happened last Saturday. My husband and I were leaving a date night. It was so lovely. We were having the best time. All of the stars were aligning for just a magical, magical, magical evening. Walking back to the car, I was wearing these really cute platform clogs. And I thought they felt like they had like Chloe vibes, the designer Chloe, and just hit My foot wrong on a patch of sidewalk and took me down. So I am currently in a boot. I've got crutches right here. Off camera, you can't see them. But that. That really took me down. And I haven't missed a week of this podcast in quite some time. But what I have been trying to remind myself is that who would I be talking about? Giving ourselves space, Grace, the capacity to lean into what we need to be gentle. We don't have to earn our calm. Well, friends, what I've learned is that there was the level of understanding I thought I had, and then there's the basement. There's another level beneath that that I didn't know. I was blind to the fact that I didn't have access to it because apparently at the beginning of this week, I thought I meant everything I've been saying this whole time until it meant I couldn't work and move through my life in the way that I normally do. This was by far one of the most frustrating and challenging things that has happened to me in a while. And again, in the big picture of life, you might be listening, thinking, jesus, it's just a sprained ankle, sprained foot. And you would be right. I'm not trying to inflate the severity of the issue. It all. All it's really showing me is how I was saying the right thing. I was saying the thing that I knew, which was, you need to slow down, you need to be kind, be gentle to yourself, take it easy, take breaks. This doesn't have to get done right now. That doesn't have to be put away right now. You can open up space for yourself in your calendar. All of those things were right and true. And I. There was a part of me that was aware of them, but what I wasn't doing was acting on them. And I'm not even saying that's what caused the ankle twist, but what was roaringly apparent, like screaming in my face apparent, was that when the pain and the challenge of moving through my house with two young kids with crutches, meaning now my hands aren't available, so I can't take them. I can't help take them upstairs to bed. I can't get them in and out of the bath safely. I can't pick up after, Like, I can't pick up I. Items, messes, things that fall on the floor. Like, just all of the things I knew I was. That needed to happen. I needed to take a break, make some space, make some time, ask for more help. I was thrust into a situation where I have. I have to do those things. It wasn't a choice. It was like, this isn't an option. And. And there were even a couple of times where I thought I could take on more than I could and I fell again. Thankfully I didn't hurt myself more. But yeah, it. It's just this life update, this whoopsie doodle. This injury has revealed to me some of my own blind spots in not just what I know, because knowing you can't think your way out of a feeling problem. And what I knew was very different than what I was embodying and what I was acting on in my life. And. And so I'll say a small silver lining is that I am learning this lesson in a deeper way. I don't want to have to learn it this way ever again, but I'm learning it. And that's what we're here to do, right? So I do apologize for the podcast, the hiccup in the schedule, and just a side note, make sure to follow me on Instagram, on TikTok, or even on LinkedIn if you're not on some of the other platforms. I did mention on Instagram and TikTok, for example, that the podcast would be delayed for a week, and I shared a little couple of tidbits on what was happening in my life. So if you're a part of this podcast community and you were just curious like, hey, where did you go for a week? That's totally understandable and makes sense if you follow me on those other places. If, if and when, God forbid there's anything wacky that happens like that again, you'll probably get the update a little sooner that way. Foreign. As a mother of two and a human on the planet, one thing I know for sure is that we have big failings and we don't always know what to do with them. This is why I wrote a children's book called Wrestling a Walrus for little people with big Feelings. And I'll also add a subheading for the big people raising little people with big feelings. I am confronted with my own big emotions every time I feel out of control or my child is having a tantrum, or they're just not listening. It's hard. It is so hard. And it's so much easier to say than it is to embody in practice. What do we do with these combustible emotions? The heart of that process, that question and how we come together to find a way to do it is all wrapped up in my sweet little children's book called Wrestling a Walrus. So that's linked for you in the show notes. I love this little book. It's a sweet, sweet, tender story. It's illustrated beautifully, it's filled with a lot of heart and it's rooted in not only my experience as a parent, but my work as a therapist. So hop on over to the Show Notes, grab your copy. It's available on Amazon.com barnes and noble.com or if you forget both of those, you can just check the link in the show notes. Thanks so much for listening. And now let's get back to the episode. Okay, that's the life update. We're locked in. We're ready. Let's do this. Let's talk about sustainable self care. And we're gonna start with the processes first. The first process is imagining your ideal day. Now when this was originally presented to me, it was actually suggested that there's like the optimum time you can do this. But what I wanna just add like a little asterisk. You don't have to limit it to this time of day. You can do this exercise any time. But when it was originally suggested to me, it was recommended that in that sort of liminal space, assuming you're not being awoken by a baby or a child. But again, let's talk about the best case scenario. First, you've been asleep. Maybe your alarm goes off, or maybe you start to wake very gently, if you can catch before your eyes open or before your feet hit the floor. So you're awake and conscious, but you're not active, you're not engaged in anything. Your baseline mental state is fairly neutral. That's one of the best places for this type of exercise. But what you do is as you're in that gentle, tender, slowly rising state, you stay cuddled in your bed, nuzzled in your pillow and your blankets, and you take a breath and then you ask yourself, what is my ideal day? Now, I've led clients through this exercise, I have been led through this exercise. And what I want to tangentially add is the pushback that often comes from this exercise. Is the logical, critical thinking mind that, well, how would that ever happen? Why would this be beneficial? Those thoughts are really to start to pump the brakes in this process. So I want to speak to that mostly because what I want to do is let that voice have a little space. Because sometimes all of our critical mind needs to do is feel heard so that it can kindly step aside and we can actually do the work. So imagine you're in that gentle space, you've asked yourself, what would my ideal day be? And it could be anything. And the point is to give yourself anywhere between two and five minutes. With this, you can certainly indulge and take it longer and further. The season of life. I'm in with young kiddos. Two minutes. If I get two minutes in, I'm winning. Five minutes. It feels like a real thumbs up. But sometimes I'll actually turn my meditation time into this exercise too. So just know you can take as much time as you want. You don't have to limit it to that. But I'm speaking the lower commitment to my high achievers, people who are navigating burnout, who. The idea of taking any time to do something like this is gonna feel like a big task. So just know it counts and it will work and be effective if you start. So you're laying there and you ask yourself, imagine your ideal day immediately when you ask that question. Thoughts are going to rise or images are going to come to your mind or a memory is going to come to you. Your mind is going to go somewhere. Because your mind is always going somewhere. It's always active. And this thought is almost like a compass. It's trying to find your north. And when the thoughts come up, well, yeah, but like, that would never happen. Or I can never afford that, or yeah, it's not like I can buy a plane ticket and end up in Paris. Or like, yeah, sure, I'd love to be that. All that voice is doing is trying to protect you from the disappointment of potentially not having your ideal imagined day. So when you can recognize, oh, there's my mind telling me all the reasons why this probably isn't a good idea or why I probably shouldn't be doing this, or why this might be a waste of time, My critical thinking mind is putting up these roadblocks actually is an attempt to protect me. But that's okay. Cause I'm safe in my bed. I'm safe, I'm cozy, I'm warm. Life will be taken care of without my hands involved for the next two to five minutes. Okay, life's got this. The world's got this. Let me just indulge in this for a minute and then let your mind wander. Let your imagination take. Flight attendant imagination. That is an exercise and an experience that is so atrophied in many, many of the adults I work with and the engaging with your imagination. Anything that exists, anything that exists, that we have created was an idea first, it was imagined first. And it's Sometimes, especially if we're not actively engaged with creativity or like I said, we're just hustling in through then it just feels too hard and heavy to give ourselves permission for something as light as imagination. But what I want to say is that that is like the first snowflake in the beginning of the momentum that becomes the avalanche, right? It's, it's the spark, it's the catalyst. So let's go back to. You're in your bed, you're cozy, you see the clock, maybe you set a timer, maybe you don't. And you just let yourself imagine your ideal day. Wherever you go, whatever comes up for you, let yourself immerse in that for as long as you can sustain it within that 2 to 5, 10 to 15 minute range. So I'm gonna come at you with some benefits of why that's actually really good for your body, for your nervous system, for you. And then we'll talk about how you can take that further into your work with self care. So your body doesn't know the difference between what it's experiencing and what you're imagining, which is kind of terrifying and also incredibly powerful. Like we have these massive supercomputers in our brain that are constantly computing, processing, dreaming, imagining, creating, problem solving, communicating all of these incredible things. It's doing it, this work all the time. So as you're imagining being in a hammock on the beach, you hear laughter in the background. You're holding something cool in your hand and you realize it's like an icy drink, it's like this beautiful icy coconut water with a twist of lime. And you hear the laughter of kids. But you can just feel totally settled because in this imagined perfect day, everything is taken care of for you, right? And you just let yourself indulge, let yourself indulge and you go down and you go down. Or you find yourself walking down a street in Paris and you're almost through eating one of the most amazing croissants you've ever had. And you find this gorgeous cafe. And you find it next to it is an even more beautiful and charming bookshop. And you walk inside and you touch old books. Like wherever your mind goes, let it go. And what you will have already done before touching your phone, before responding to being needed, before jumping into action or thinking about a to do list, you've just nourished your nervous system because it got to go on that journey. You imagine it time traveled, right? The gap of space and time collapsed. And you were on that beach. You were in Paris, you were wherever you wanted to be with whoever you wanted to be with. Or maybe you were alone. You got a little bit of solitude. But then here's what you do with the next minute. This is the follow up of, okay, how does this exercise lead me into something like sustainable self care? Then you ask yourself, is there anything from what I imagined that I can pull into my day and quickly file through the movie in your mind again. And what it might be is, God, that croissant looked so good that I was imagining, maybe what I need is a buttery, flaky, gorgeous pastry. Or maybe like in the other example, God, I loved the warmth I felt from the sun when I was imagining being on the beach. And the weightlessness I felt on that hammock. That sensation was really, really lighting me up inside and calling out to me now, what that might look like in real time or in life that might be, maybe you need a bath tonight. Okay, it's not exactly the beach, it's not exactly the sun, but it can create a little bit, you're pulling a little bit of that imagination into your reality. And this is just on the most like, basic, simple level. But what I don't want you to feel is limited to these examples by any means. You can book a plane ticket. That might be what you find. Like, some people have gone through this exercise and when they go through their exercise and their ideal day, they're alone in a room with a bed. And what they have ended up needing to do was actually cancel their day and take a nap. You can take this to any place you want to go. But what will make it not only sustainable, because you're not actually committing to anything other than tuning into what you are feeling, needing, thinking, and how you could best support yourself in the day to day, but what you're also doing is you're tuning into you first. This isn't rooted into something that's statistically stated as the utmost form of self care. This isn't a goop blog that Gwyneth Paltrow wrote, although this is not a diss because the woman, she has nailed down her own self care like she's got hers locked in. This is not about trying to aspire to be something that you're not or trying to follow a prescriptive list, but to tune into you and ask yourself and trust the wisdom of your inner knowing and then responding to that and honoring that. Doing that will also start to create a new feedback loop. Because you've tuned into yourself, you've let yourself Imagine, which is a little playful, actually. And then you validated yourself by acknowledging the truth of what you were wanting. And then you took a tiny action step. It could be, again, it could be big, but you took an action step rooted in that. So that is creating such a healthy and secure relationship between you and your inner knowing, which, the ripple effects of how that can help you in a positive way just go on and on and on. But that's the process again, you can really choose your own adventure. Take as much or as little time as you want. First thing in the morning. That's when you're the clearest you have. You're not carrying around the stress from what you were just coming from or worrying about what you have coming ahead. You're a little bit more present. But again, that's okay. If you're catching this in the middle of the day and you wanna try it today, you don't have to wait until tomorrow morning. You're welcome to try it now, but see what comes up as you try that process. If you've been listening to this podcast and you've thought to yourself, dang, I really want to do some deep diving. I want to ask myself some bold questions, but I don't know where to start or I'm ready, but I just need someone to help hold my hand through the process. I have a tool for you. It is called the Treasure Journal. It is a seven part guided journal that is infused with and informed by my therapy practice. There are sentence stems so you never have to feel stuck looking at a blank page. You never have to wonder where to start. There are stories to help remind you that you're not alone in this process and to kick off some of the inspired creative thinking that really gets the healing process going. And also there's lots of blank space in the back. So if you think, okay, I loved answering this question, but I want to take it further. There's space for you to make that practice your own. You're welcome to visit the link in the show notes for the Treasure Journal and you can grab your copy. Today I've got another process for you and then we'll get into some examples. So the next is a little bit more simple to describe. You're gonna take three deep cleansing belly breaths. In through the nose, out through the mouth. It just, that's always like the best way to start any kind of exercise like this because it just brings your body to the space where you are. It just ground you down a little bit and you just do a quick body Scan, you can close your eyes, you can keep em open. It's totally up to you. And just from the top of your head down through your neck, shoulders, chest, arms, hips, back to the tips of your toes, see if you can notice where you might be holding some tension. And then once you are aware or you have some awareness around where that tension might be, tension, discomfort or tightness, ask that part of your body what it wants you to know. And for some of you that might sound like oh yeah, of course, that sounds very intuitive to me. For some you may hear that and you're like, well that's weird. This is somatic work. So think of somatic work as we are embodying mindfulness and we're trying to bring our thinking mind and our emotional body into our physical space. And we're trying to connect those dots in somatic work. There is so much research on how that can help reduce anxiety, how that can reduce stress. It's fantastic for anybody who's navigating burnout, we're trying to bring all the parts of ourselves home. Just a little side note, there is also somatic yoga which is, it's newer to me. It's very similar to Yin. Think of it like a yoga nap, but between each pose you lay in savasana, which is essentially a yoga nap, you lay there and you just notice the sensations in your body. So little side note there, you can take that too. That could be your version of self care for today if you want to give it a try. So ask that part of your body where it's holding tension, what it needs. And here's the incredible thing. You will get an answer. You won't be met with silence. And if you're. And if you ever were met with silence, sit a little longer. And if you're still maybe in your head with it, you can always say, well, what would I imagine this part of my body would want? So I'll give you an example because I actually did this for myself when I twisted my ankle. I asked and I didn't do this. Day one, when I was really writhing in pain, or day two when the swelling was gnarly and crazy. I just let myself kind of dissociate and watch TV for a while and ice a lot of ice. When a little more time passed, I asked that part of my body. What it wanted me to know. And what it wanted me to know was that what I really need is to ground down more, be where I am more. I have a tendency to want to float off in my Mind and ideas float off into the future, into the calendar, and focus on forward, forward, ever forward. But the foundation for everything that I want to make rests on the ground first. So starting there. And I, again, I'm not shifting the blame. I'm not blaming myself. I certainly didn't cause this, nor did I want this to happen to my, my sweet foot and ankle. But if I can choose to look at this as okay, now that I'm no longer writhing in pain, what might it be teaching me or what be able to learn from this? It just gives the pain a little bit more of a purpose. And then it's not just constant suffering and discomfort. But yeah, what does that part of body want me to know? To slow down, ground down, and to really settle into the foundation. Because that's where everything that I want to build starts. And that made sense to me. And I actually felt some tingling in my legs. I felt some release in my, my abdomen, some tightness I was holding onto. Even my shoulders dropped a little bit when I repeated it. Now almost this very similar to how I felt and experienced it when I did the exercise for myself the first time. So that's just my example. And take it or leave it as you will. I hope that you try it. Because I have yet to lead somebody through that hasn't learned something. And sometimes what they feel is, oh, I'm hungry, oh, I'm thirsty, or goodness, I need to stretch. Like, sometimes the thing that part of your body wants you to know, you're gonna get a physical answer. It may not always be an emotional or an esoteric answer. It could actually be you need to stretch or whatever it is. But give it a try. And I want to hear what you get and what your body tells you. Because the best things in life are shared. So now let's talk about some examples, some self care examples. Because the more rigid or tight our thinking is around what self care should look like, we don't engage with it because we were like, well, I don't have the time for that, or I don't have the money for that, or I don't have the resources for that. So like on the high end, self care, I'll give examples for clients. Self care is travel for a lot of people. A lot of people. My husband and I, we sat down this year and we looked at our calendar. Cause self care is travel is definitely self care for my husband David. And we looked at the calendar and it was like, okay, so we've got these school breaks with the kids. I'd love to have at least one trip where it's just me and you and we're not being pulled or needed by anybody. What's one thing you want to do by yourself? What's one thing I want to do by myself? And then we looked at the calendar and we actually broke that stuff down and we're like, okay, so this one's already booked and this is how much money we're spending on it. This one is not booked yet. But what do we want to spend? What's the budget? And then that also influenced how we made decisions for the other trips. Now, that may not sound like self care, that may sound very analytical, that may sound very cerebral and planning, but one it, it was really bonding for the two of us. It was definitely self care for our relationship. But in terms of making it sustainable, we were scheduling it. It wasn't a pie in the sky idea. We didn't just stay in imagination. We actually took the things that we knew we wanted to experience and we gave a gift to our future selves and we put them on the calendar and we actually booked a couple flights too. But the great thing that came from it was or another example for me is solitude and some treasured time alone is not self care that I need all the time, but there are definitely seasons of life where I really need that. I don't know if it's because I'm an only child or I'm just like a deeply feeling person and I just need to be in my own space and not around other people. And looking at the other things we had committed to knowing I wanted to make that time for myself. I could see so clearly. I don't want to have to travel far. I don't want it to be overly complicated and I know that I'll feel better about where I'm going if it's do I want to spend a little more but take less time or do I want to take more time and spend a little less money? So again, all of that planning, all of that strategizing, thinking through and scheduling, that was a massive form of self care for me, for my marriage, for my husband. Because we're. We're investing that time into ourselves. Another example of self care. And I may have talked about this last time, I'm pretty sure I did. My. It's going to be on pause for a bit because of the boot on my foot, but I started tap dancing. That. That is absolutely self care. It lights me up whenever I think about it. I tend to be an intuitive, emotional Feeler, perceiver for anybody who knows Myers Briggs. So I'm going to lead with my heart for the most part. But every time I think about taking tap, my experience in that first tap glass, and knowing that I've got that to look forward to once I recover, that is sustainable self care. I can tell it's sustaining me because it's energizing me even in the thinking of it. And it's a spark. And sometimes, you know self care is working or not based on how it's making you feel. I've gone through like nails, for example, like getting your nails done. These are more, I'll say, certainly more commercial examples of self care. They're transactional, they can feel nice. But for me, sometimes getting my nails done feels like maintenance or it feels like something else to do or just another appointment I have to keep. And depending on the season of life I'm in, it doesn't feel like self care, it feels like work. This leads me to one last little trick that you can take with you when you're trying on different versions of self care. Because sometimes you do just try something that sounds good and you don't know until you try it if it is or isn't going to work for you. Take inventory. How does it feel when you think about it? How does it feel when you do it? And how did you feel after? So, like, for example, exercise. Exercise is one of those things that a lot of us think about doing, think about wanting to do, wanting to shift our relationship with, but then we're resistant to. And I think it's just a great example for the thought of exercising may not feel exciting. The act of exercising might feel really challenging. But then afterwards, the rewards, the benefits, the all the feelings you get after, like a really good sweat session, they may change the way you feel about it. So some forms of self care may not feel comfy, cozy when you think about it. Some may not feel super comfy, cozy when you're doing it, but you may feel great after, or vice versa. Like a very indulgent, decadent, rich dessert, for example. You might find thinking about it sounds great, enjoying it sounds great. But then afterwards you're like, okay, well, my stomach can't handle that all the time. It's kind of like my relationship with ice cream. Love never doesn't sound good. I just know how my body's gonna feel after. So that may be something nice and indulgent to enjoy in a moment, but that can't, that's not a sustainable form of self care. For me, because long term, it's just. It doesn't feel good. So you can use that as one last sort of gauge as you're trying on different forms of self care and trying to figure out what's working for you. How do you feel when you think about it? How do you feel when you do it? How do you feel after friends? We did it. We did it. We are all self care masters. We have crushed it. Swish. Basketball reference. That's right. I can do basketball. Actually, I can't. Another reason why you if you're not following me on social media, you should check that out. Because I, yeah, sometimes I. I'll share embarrassing examples in my stories of my lack of athleticism. But anywho, I digress. This was so much fun. I really needed this. And I hope that it's arriving for you at a time in your life where you can benefit from a conversation like this too. The best things in life are shared. It is my pleasure, my privilege and an honor to share this space with you. I'm so grateful for this. Don't cut your own bangs Community a cozier corner of the Internet because we need a safer, tender place to allow our human selves to exist. And the Internet is. We're all plugged in, so we might as well make it kinder if we can. Thank you for being here. Make sure, make sure, make sure to rate, review and subscribe to the podcast. It helps it grow. It helps other people like you connect with it that need it. Hit me up, let me know. You can comment. You can shoot me an email@danielireland.com in the subject heading bangs. Do you have questions? Do you have follow up questions? Thoughts? Let me know. Do you have podcast topics? Do you have friends who you're like, have you met my friend Regina? Because she would be an incredible guest. I want all of that information and more. Thank you for being here. This has just been a blast and I hope that you continue to have an incredible day.