"Workout" B - Self Care

Draw some boundaries. You may have noticed that teachers, friends, and family members are in frequent communication with you at all hours of the day and night. People may expect that you are always available or that you can immediately attend to their concerns and requests. You may end up feeling pulled in multiple directions or overwhelmed with zoom meetings, Drawful challenges, snapchats, phone calls, and texts. While we don't have external boundaries like business hours, physical meetings, and classes to structure our flow of social contact - we certainly can't be "on," available, and at our best at all times. Make decisions about windows of time when you will answer emails or texts, assert when you are too "spent" to socialize, give yourself permission to respond to others at your own pace, go off the grid for at least an hour a day.

1. Why it works: Everyone feels most comfortable at a different "volume" of social contact. Recognizing and responding to our own needs for connection and separation can help us feel satisfied with our relationships and in control of how we expend our social energy.

2. By the way: Taking intentional time to recharge your social "batteries" is not the same as withdrawing and instead helps you engage more fully in your relationships.

If you are troubled by fears specifically about COVID-19 -- put words on your experience by trying to narrate what you are actually afraid of either to yourself or to a loved one. Once you acknowledge the issue your feelings are alerting you to, list ways of circumventing, controlling, or coping with the problem.  If the problem is beyond the limits of your personal control, be gentle with your feelings and then focus on smaller aspects of the situation that you can influence or change. Put your energy into these things. For example, you may not be able to ensure that you can walk at graduation but you can find a way of marking and celebrating this accomplishment with a meal, a purchase, a scrapbook etc. Observe your feelings again: chances are your mood will be brighter, your mind will be more focused, and your body will be less tense.

1. Why it works-- Acknowledgment, acceptance, and discovering that making choices about what you focus on increases self-esteem and self-effectance, and results in better confidence and personal resilience.

2. By the way - - pay careful attention to how your stream of thought makes you feel, and when you're ready, select things that make you feel the way you want to feel.

Cultivate pleasure. Without parties, sporting events, end-of-semester celebrations, cues of pleasure and mastery may not be as strong and obvious as they used to be. However, happiness is not outside your control. Notice what brightens your mood as you go about your day. When pleasure shows up, fully experience it, describe it in detail, notice its temperature, observe where you hold it in your body. Don't bother yourself with when pleasure will end, if you deserve it, or how long you might have to go without it. Consciously engage in small acts of pleasure: get lost in a good memory, look at a picture of someone attractive, dance to a favorite song, knit, look at a scrapbook, read the signatures in your high school yearbook, write a letter, or bake something new.

1. Why it works-- Finding ways of creating pleasure in our lives, different as they may be, increases our sense of control, engagement, hopefulness, and self-worth.

2. By the way-- Attending to all feelings both pleasant and painful allows us to earmark that both experiences can coexist and that experiencing distress does not preclude experiencing pleasure.

Permit difficult feelings. Start by naming which ones are present and observing the sensations that go with them, how long it takes them to peak and abate, and where they are held in your body. Soften to your distress by allowing your feelings to be what they are without trying to change them, judging them, amplifying them, resisting them, or interpreting what they mean. Next, get curious about what this kind of feeling might need. Ask yourself, how do I care for this distress? What supports freedom? What might help?

1. Why it works: Gentle acknowledgement and validation quiets defensive reactions, releases us from exhausting self-justification, slows thoughts, soothes feelings, and lessens suffering.

2. By the way -- even painful feelings can be informative data, a source of motivation, a signal of something important, a marker that something was meaningful to us. Plus, learning to acknowledge, regulate, and soothe our feelings helps build self-compassion, self-esteem, and self-control.