Читать книгу We: A Manifesto for Women Everywhere - Gillian Anderson, Gillian Anderson - Страница 18

Taking Care of Ourselves

‘When I was around 18, I looked in the mirror and said, “You’re either going to love yourself or hate yourself.” And I decided to love myself. That changed a lot of things.’

QUEEN LATIFAH

As women we often find it far easier to give love than to receive it. Culturally we’re encouraged to be selfless, putting others’ needs before our own. It can feel more comfortable to love our friends, partners and children than ourselves. Being kind to yourself can even feel indulgent, greedy and selfish. But it isn’t. It’s vital.

Our bodies need love just as much as our hearts and minds – and if they don’t get it, they often start filling the deficit by looking for it elsewhere. Perhaps in a partner who’s not good for us, in endless box sets, or tubs of Häagen-Dazs. Or maybe it’ll play out at work where we crave a disproportionate amount of recognition or online as we develop a low-level shopping addiction.

Ignoring our needs can become habitual. Sometimes we don’t even realize we’re doing it, and we may not even see it as a problem. Maybe we’re comfortable living small – or, at least, we tell ourselves we are. We may give ourselves just enough to get by so there are no crises, but we never actually reach our full potential.

Some of us shove our wants and needs deep down inside so that we can be nice. Or maybe we call it being realistic. If we don’t ‘want’, we can’t be disappointed when we don’t ‘get’, our subconscious reasoning goes. But our needs are still there, gnawing away at us from beneath layers of self-protection. The problem is, we risk sabotaging the good that awaits us if we don’t attend to them.

EXERCISE: Befriend Yourself

This is an exercise to help you identify the things you may be missing in life.

Have your journal handy. Then take five breaths in and out to centre yourself. Now imagine that a close female friend – someone you really love – is having a tough time. You invite her to stay over for a few days and to prepare for her arrival you make a list of things you could do to make her feel loved and cared for. Perhaps you’ll run her a hot bubble bath at the end of each day to unwind. Maybe you’ll take her to a movie or a walk through the park to your favourite coffee shop. Or perhaps download a comedy that you know will make her laugh or create a special playlist for her to listen to.

Make your own list – put at least ten things on it. Notice what happens to your energy as you write each item. Let yourself imagine how happy and cared for she’ll feel. Now circle the three things that you think would be most fun and uplifting for her to do.

OK, here’s your assignment: do those three things for YOURSELF. Take out your diary and schedule them in. Notice any resistance – in particular the voice that tells you this is silly or that you’re too busy/tired/broke. From now on you’re going to cherish yourself as you would someone you love deeply. If you’ve got time to do more than three then go for it. And don’t forget to enjoy yourself – this exercise is about allowing yourself to have fun.

The list you’ve just made is a great resource. You can turn to it when the going gets tough. Add to it whenever you think of something else you’d enjoy and use it whenever you feel needy or depleted. As a rule of thumb, schedule a minimum of one fun or nurturing experience every week. More if you’re able.

‘I’ve been searching for ways to heal myself, and I’ve found that kindness is the best way.’

LADY GAGA

As you do the work laid out in this book, one of your aims will be to treat yourself as if you were your own best friend.

If you find yourself about to do something that might cause you harm, ask, ‘Would I do this to someone I love?’ If you find you’re berating yourself for a mistake, ask, ‘Would I talk like this to someone I love?’ If you find you’re ‘comfort’ eating or spending money you haven’t got, ask yourself, ‘Would I want someone I love to do that to themselves?’ It takes time to establish new behaviours, but do your very best to interrupt any negative habitual responses that you notice as often as you can.

Don’t blame or shame yourself; have compassion, and use your list to come up with kinder ways of comforting yourself. Some may find this harder than others, some may even find it excruciating. But it’s really important that the love starts with you, that you start embracing all aspects of yourself from here on out to the best of your ability. It may seem like a mountain to climb today, but we’re all in this together and there will be hundreds if not thousands of women on the same path to extend a helping hand.

Precious vessels

‘Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.’

AUDRE LORDE

Our bodies house all that is vital to our existence, yet we judge them and abuse them, and allow others to as well. Eating disorders and rates of self-harm continue to escalate and even those of us who stop short of obviously harmful behaviours often struggle with how we see ourselves.

Billions of dollars are spent each year trying to convince us that our lives would be better if we changed the way we looked. We may think of ourselves as independent-minded feminists, but on average we spend more time and money on trying to look good than ever before. Even the women’s magazines that profess to boost our independence and confidence frequently encourage us to compare and improve our bodies, boosting sales by stoking our fear that we’re not good enough as we are.

It’s not surprising so many of us struggle with how we see ourselves and, by extension, how we treat ourselves.

Criticizing our physical form can also be a way of avoiding our real feelings. It can be easier to hate our bodies than to admit we’re feeling sad or lonely or let down. Plus, if we can blame our physical body for our situation, we have an element of control and a scapegoat. Our subconscious thinking goes, ‘My body is to blame – and there’s something I can do about it – I can starve it or over-exercise it or ignore it.’

How we treat our bodies is an indicator of our emotional and spiritual state. If we’re not comfortable in our own skin it means we have internal work to do and emotional wounds to heal. Our ultimate goal is to inhabit our bodies and selves with ease, joy and grace.

As a result of walking this path we will come to see our bodies as unique and precious vessels rather than objects to criticize and compare. But for the principles to work their magic you first need to get some basics in place.

Think of what happens to a toddler who doesn’t get enough food or sleep – tantrums. We may be older and more sophisticated, but our bodies have the same needs and our emotions will be affected if those needs are not met.

It can be humbling to discover that quite often when our emotions are out of control it’s not because of the complexity of the issues we’re facing, but because we’ve been ignoring a simple physical need – like keeping our blood sugar level steady.

TIP: HALT is an acronym for:

Hungry

Angry

Lonely

Tired

HALT is widely used in 12-step fellowships, these are free groups set up to help people in addiction or affected by it (here). Whenever we’re hungry, angry, lonely or tired we’re in danger of our emotions getting out of control and tipping us off balance. So if you notice yourself feeling one or more of those four, HALT and attend to it, fast.

Four essentials to self-care

There are four essential areas that we often neglect or let slide when it comes to our physical well-being. If you want to get the benefit from all that WE’s principles have to offer, commit to taking care of yourself in each of them in turn.

Food

It’s only human to want to be desired and so most of us at some point cave in to the toxic messages of the beauty and diet industries and mess around with our intake of food. The extent to which we do this will depend upon our self-esteem, our conditioning and how addictive is our personality.

If you find it difficult to regulate your food intake or if your weight tends to yo-yo, fuelling self-hatred, then for the duration of this work we recommend following an eating plan.

Structure and boundaries around what we consume free us up to think about more important things and keeps us from exacerbating the natural highs and lows of our emotional and hormonal circuits.

There’s nothing faddy about it – it’s boringly sensible, which is why it works. Three moderate-sized meals a day, eaten at regular intervals (between four to six hours apart), with one snack either mid-afternoon or before bed. If you’re not sure what moderate means, ask someone else to serve your portion and make sure it contains protein which sustains your energy and doesn’t give you the ups and downs that sugary foods do.

Watch for resistance in the form of ‘But I’m not hungry’, ‘I’m just not a breakfast person’, or ‘Just one more muffin won’t make a difference’. Try your best to ignore those voices. Many of us have trained our bodies not to need or want what is actually healthy or to want much more than what is healthy. Try following this simple plan and you’ll be amazed by the results.

If you’re prone to binge eating, avoid foods that trigger cravings. For some that will mean foods full of sugar or white flour; others have problems with dairy. All of us benefit – if our budgets allow – from cutting out processed foods that are laden with hidden sugars and additives. If your body–fat ratio is above or below the average range you may need more concentrated help. Remember, your own assessment may be distorted. For more information on healthy body weight visit www.calculator.net/body-fat-calculator.html and www.calculator.net/bmi-calculator.html.

When I went into treatment for depression and health professionals told me to eat three meals a day I thought they were trying to make me fat. I’d spent so many years avoiding breakfast to try to shrink my stomach for the rest of the day that I thought the act of consuming a bowl of oatmeal each morning would add another 14lb to my weight. But after two weeks of eating three meals a day I found I’d not only lost 7lb, but that I’d also ended the battle that had raged in my head since adolescence. I was liberated from the almost constant ‘Shall I eat this or not?’ debate and free to think about things that mattered far more. Plus I started to feel a lot more comfortable and at ease with my body.

JN

For most of my life I have vacillated between carefully watching what I eat and eating whatever I want. The periods where I stay away from sugar and wheat and cut down on or even remove caffeine, I am a calmer, more patient and kinder human being. When I don’t I am moody, impatient and grumpy. It’s really that simple. And it’s my choice.

GA

Physical exercise

When we don’t feel comfortable in our bodies, we can view them as separate from ourselves and get stuck in our heads, thinking obsessively about whatever is preoccupying us from one moment to the next.

For many women, food and exercise have ceased to be a form of self-care and instead become another lever we pull to try to change how we look. If we can’t starve or eat ourselves into the right shape, then we can exercise our way to it.

Physical activity is, of course, an important aspect of healthy living. It not only gets our limbs moving but it sends necessary oxygen to the brain, helps our organs to function properly and our muscles to stay supple, and maintains bone strength. We know we should do it, but often we either don’t do it at all, exercise like crazy or swing between the extremes.

If you find it hard to exercise, starting small can sometimes be the only way in. Committing to just ten minutes a day is enough to make a real difference. Try a brisk morning walk, or if you’re short of time get off the bus one stop early so that your exercise uses up time you’d be spending in transit anyway. There are also hundreds of mini-workouts available online that are free to download. It needn’t cost you anything to feel better inside your own body.

If you’re at the other extreme and think you might be over-exercising, try cutting back and notice what happens to your anxiety levels. If there’s an increase in self-judgement and panic that you’re going to put on weight, it’s highly possible there are feelings underneath your regimen that you’re suppressing. Again, start small by cutting down on the intensity of your workout or the hours you spend at it per week and see what comes up. This is a good place to start getting honest about what’s really going on for you, because that’s a big part of what this journey is all about.

Rest

We know we need rest, but the pressures of modern life often make it impossible to prioritize it. It may simply be that we’re working too many hours or nursing a waking baby, or we may resist rest because of our own internal resistance to self-care, but like nutrition and exercise, your brain needs rest to function effectively.

Do you have enough energy as you go through your day or do you find yourself feeling sluggish or falling asleep? Do you push through exhaustion so that you’re stuck in an adrenalin-fuelled cycle or do you take breaks as needed? Do you keep your sleeping space safe from the stresses and strains of daily life? If you have trouble sleeping, is it because you’re using your laptop or phone in bed? That alone can lead to stress and sleep disturbances.

Even when we know what’s missing, it can still be hard to change our behaviour around it. Try to imagine you had a daughter with the same issues around sleep. What would your advice be? Really think about it. Don’t take your phone or laptop to bed? Head on the pillow before midnight? No caffeine after 4pm? Whatever your loving advice might be, follow it yourself.

It’s also really important to take at least one break in the middle of the day. If you can’t take a lunch hour, make sure you take a pause of some kind. Notice the sky, notice the temperature, breathe deeply and return yourself to centre before engaging in your next round with life.

Appreciation

How do you feel about your body?

Try asking yourself that question while standing naked in front of a full-length mirror. ‘What?!’ you might ask. Once you’ve moved through the shock and the fear and are actually standing before your reflection, notice your reaction to what you see. Hopefully you feel happy and fond of your physical form – that’s certainly what we’re working towards. But many of us are not only uncomfortable, but also highly critical. We focus on the parts of our body that we don’t think are perfect – like our thighs, our tummy, our breasts. We feel vulnerable and even ashamed. Our poor bodies endure some harsh judgements, whether we are naked or fully clothed.

Now, take in your whole reflection again, spend a moment centring yourself by breathing in and out deep into your belly. Instead of thinking about what your body looks like, think about what it does for you. This magnificent vessel before you enables you to live this life. Look at your legs, which carry you every day; your arms and hands, which perform so many tasks; your torso, which contains your vital organs: your heart, your lungs, your stomach.

This body houses you. It has grown with you. It sounds like an obvious statement, but so often we forget that it is the same body we came into this world with. Would we forgive it more if we remembered our newborn selves? Try to connect with the kindness you’d feel if it belonged to that baby or to someone else whom you love.

Run your hand over the parts that you find hardest to love. Breathe deeply, take your time and consciously release each negative thought that crosses your mind.

This is a powerful experience. If you can, try to commit to doing it a couple of times a week until the habit of praise for what you have overrides the habit of shame. One day this body will be gone. The time you have with it is precious. From now on, commit to treating it with kindness and care.

For a large part of my life I hated my body. Even when I was at my skinniest, which was really underweight, I thought I was fat. At the depths of my despair I used to self-harm as a form of punishment for being what I thought was ugly. Now I’m deeply happy to be me. I’m older (of course!) and heavier than I’ve ever been, but I wouldn’t be any other way. However, I still have to put in the right action on a daily basis – it only takes a missed meal or too many late nights and my mental state starts to slide and suddenly I’m looking in the mirror and checking my tummy to see how many inches I can pinch. Now, though, I know exactly how to get back on track. And I do. Fast.

JN

So many of my living years have been spent engaging in one form of self abuse or another. I’ve often wished and prayed that it wasn’t so easy to escape. Denegrating oneself is a form of abuse and a way to hide because, in doing so, we refuse to see and acknowledge the beautiful being we are just as we are. What if we could make a commitment to ourselves and to our daughters that we will stop abusing ourselves and our bodies in thought and in action? When we abuse ourselves we teach others that we are worthy of being treated badly. We show our daughters that we think we deserve to be abused and therefore they deserve it too – which is not true. Nobody deserves to be abused.

GA

Beauty really is an inside job

‘A mother who radiates self-love and self-acceptance actually vaccinates her daughter against low self-esteem.’

NAOMI WOLF

Taking care of your body will make the work ahead infinitely easier and more pleasurable. When you write your gratitude list each day find at least one thing you’re grateful to your body for. And as you go through your day, find ways to say thank you to your body through your actions. Notice how your relationship with it starts to shift as a result. You may also start to feel more confident in the process, because you know that you are doing right by yourself. Self-assurance will come more naturally and your relationships with others will change for the better. If we don’t care for our body, how can we expect anyone else to?

A woman who is truly comfortable in her own skin radiates an inner beauty regardless of whether she conforms to cultural norms of beauty. When someone is genuinely joyful and at ease with herself we gravitate towards her – and feel better about ourselves for being in her presence.

In my twenties I was quite consistently in the public eye. I remember doing one particular photoshoot for the cover of a magazine and being completely focused on, and distracted by, the fact that I felt fat. It wasn’t so much that things weren’t fitting, which has happened, too, on many occasions – in fact, one time I ended up wearing a tarpaulin over my shoulders because nothing else was working – but on this day I just felt unattractive in myself, and I remember turning inwards and being uncommunicative and allowing my negative thoughts to essentially ruin my (and maybe for all I know other peoples’) experience of that shoot. Now the pictures that were created that day expose not a hint of my inner turmoil – many over the years have been more revealing. Today, what I see when I look at those photographs is a very young, fresh-faced, beautiful young woman who had no sense or appreciation of how lucky she was in so many ways.

GA

Hormones

For many of us the onset of puberty marks the beginning of a monthly hormonal rollercoaster. Menstruation affects each of us differently, but mood swings, pain and changes in weight and libido can leave us feeling scattered and crazy each month. In fact, half of all women’s suicide attempts are made during the four days just prior to menstruation, or during the first four days of menstruation.⁵

A few pioneering companies have introduced a ‘period policy’, so that their employees can take sick leave if they need it, but most of us have learned to just ‘deal with it’. This may mean going to work when we’re in pain, rushing around doing chores rather than resting or feeling guilty for being bad-tempered. During your next cycle, consider listening to your body more carefully and responding to yourself with more compassion and kindness.

Pregnancy, miscarriage, oral contraception and fertility treatments can also create hormonal chaos in our lives and then, as we get older, there is another journey that we all end up taking as women and that’s the menopause.

The menopause

It’s astounding what a taboo topic the menopause – the cessation of periods – continues to be when it affects 50 per cent of the population. Women commonly experience the menopause between the ages of 48 and 55. Each woman’s experience will be unique, but common symptoms include hot flushes, night sweats, difficulty sleeping, reduced sex drive, memory and concentration problems, vaginal dryness and pain, itching or discomfort during sex, headaches, mood changes, palpitations, joint stiffness, reduced muscle mass and recurrent urinary tract infections. The symptoms often arrive several months or years before the menopause itself, during the perimenopause, and can continue to affect women for up to 12 years after their last bleed.

For me the perimenopause was a sudden inability to cope with anything when I had been seemingly able to cope with everything simultaneously for years without many hitches. It came in the form of sudden uncontrollable emotionality and hysteria and feeling like someone else’s brain had replaced mine. I honestly think I have been in gradual perimenopause since my thirties, and when I finally identified and acknowledged what was going on for me – or I guess when it finally got so bad that I needed to seek out a solution: bio-identical hormones – I could not remember when my brain had felt that ‘normal’. I started to realize how long I had been living with some of the symptoms.

When I began discussing it with my female friends I was amazed by two things. One, how many women had been through it, but it had never been a part of our conversation. I felt like we were whispering in covens, discussing the best witchdoctor to go to in order not to turn into a toad. And two, how many women had no idea it was coming or that some of their ‘symptoms’ might be related to it. If someone had told me sooner, if the subject had been less taboo and I had understood earlier what to expect and what lifestyle choices could make it worse, I might have saved myself years of emotional turmoil.

How great would it be if we as women didn’t feel embarrassed talking about the menopause and perimenopause? If we embraced this transition as one of the natural rites of passage of being a woman? How wonderful it would be if we were able to immediately identify the signs because we had been educated about them, know that we are not alone, and could seek early help?

GA

There are a range of natural remedies, dietary changes and hormone replacement therapies out there, but unless we know we need help we can’t access them. Too many women suffer either in ignorance or shame.

We should no longer feel obliged to just ‘deal with it’ or educate our daughters to do the same. If women started to speak about it more openly, we would embrace our hormonal experiences with curiosity and fearlessness as another example of what joins us together.

Reflection

‘When a woman becomes her own best friend life is easier.’

DIANE VON FURSTENBERG

I used to think that it was selfish to take care of myself. I wanted others to love me so I spent my time caring for them. I abandoned myself in pursuit of my quest for love and acceptance. Now I know that the relationship I need to foster, especially if I’m feeling low, is with myself. The longer I spend developing a relationship with myself, the more rewarding and fulfilling are the relationships I have with others. When I treat myself kindly I’m able to relate to others from a place of wholeness rather than a place of need.

Action: I will notice my needs and attend to them.

Affirmation: I love and care for myself.