No More Bubble Baths
BY: SHELBY MILLER
I have the perfect bubble bath set up…candles, a cozy drink, my book, perfect amount of bubbles. My toes sticking out of the water just enough. Click.
I snap the picture and start inspecting every corner of it. Gosh I should’ve repainted my toes. Our vanity is so cluttered. What will people think about this book? I craft the perfect text to put in the corner of my story and add a “self care” sticker. Post to story. I spend the rest of my bath scrolling through stories and posts and comparing my life to everyone else’s. Someone’s house is so clean and organized. Another person is exercising. Someone else finished another book. This person got a new job. Another person spent the day doing something super creative with their kids. By the time the water fills the tub I am antsy just thinking about everything I need to do. I try to sit there and relax for a minute, but my head is spinning and the to-do list forming in my brain is getting out of control.
We live in a self care obsessed society. Spa treatments, face masks, skincare routines, manicures and shopping sprees. We are manicured and moisturized but also anxious and alone. We do self care for the sake of a selfie instead of really caring for our souls. Our rest is surface level or even just a distraction or excuse to escape reality. What we actually need is soul care, not another skin care routine or makeup tutorial. In the last few years I recognized this in myself, and I realized I was doing all these “self care activities” that were really just a check in the box that left me feeling more anxious and overwhelmed.
To have genuine self care, we have to assess what we actually need, define what caring for that area looks like, and then schedule time for the activities we choose. Assessing our needs means getting really honest with ourselves and asking some hard questions. You might take an afternoon or even a day to reflect on what your needs are. Maybe you need quiet alone time or maybe you need uninterrupted connection. Maybe you need physical rest or maybe it’s mental rest you’re lacking. It is impossible to care for yourself if you do not know what you need. As a nurse practitioner this takes me back to the nursing process – we always assess our patient before we start throwing medications and treatment plans at them. We must do the same for ourselves.
Next we have to define what things we can do to care for ourselves. In nursing, we would call this a care plan. This was where the change happened in my life in regards to caring for myself. I realized that I needed to rest my brain, not so much my body. I would sit in a bathtub as it filled, and before the water reached my chest I would feel antsy and anxious to get out. My mind was buzzing with things I needed to do and thoughts about the future. Active rest is a much healthier way to care for myself. I’ll go on a walk or read a book or bake something for friends. I’m not sitting silently, but I am resting my mind and caring for my soul. This can look countless different ways and it may take some trial and error to really define what self care is going to look like for you! That’s okay!
One of the hardest yet most important parts of self care is scheduling it into your life. In my experience, if I do not schedule self care into my life I will go a really long time without it and then almost use it as a crutch. Instead of setting aside an hour to spend walking, I will choose less freeing forms of “self care” which looks like shopping, getting my nails done, ordering take out, and then binging something on netflix. I wake up the next morning with a self care hangover which feels a lot like guilt and stress that I wasted a whole day with no actual soul care to show for it. Please hear me that those activities are not inherently wrong, and they are also often not what I actually need. So scheduling this in makes a huge difference, and it is easiest if these practices become a normal part of your routine. As an example, we go on a family walk every night before bathtime/bedtime which gives us space to talk about our day and get some pre-bedtime jitters out. After we get the baby to bed and get things ready for the night, we lay down and read a chapter of a book. Small little rhythms like this throughout your day makes scheduling self care feel less overwhelming and unrealistic.
This tiny bit of self reflection and shifting towards something more genuine and less trendy might not bring more followers or likes, it might cause you to look inward and stop numbing the things that you’ve been carrying for years, and it might take a little more work on the front end. But it will leave your soul more full and your heart more free. You might end up being more present and connected, less anxious and more settled. In the self care obsessed comparison culture, fight the urge to take a picture and construct the perfect caption and truly care for yourself. You deserve it. Your soul deserves it.
