When The Well Runs Dry

This is a great article that I cam across today!  It is kind of long, but well worth the read...

When The Well Runs Dry

Selfish or self-care?

By Joanne Cortes,

Licensed Clinical Social Worker

As a local psychotherapist specializing in women’s issues and wellness, I’ve been witness to many of my clients’ stories and struggles during therapy sessions.  I have also been an observer and participant in the complex journeys of my female friends, family members—and myself.  Some common themes emerge across all socioeconomic and cultural lines.  This is the case regardless of whether a woman is single, married/partnered, or divorced.  They occur for students, working mothers and stay-at-home moms.  From these themes I have been able to develop the following suggestions on how to combat emotional psychological burnout.  These are some way sot challenge the nagging cycles of stress, depression and anxiety in your life.

Step 1: Take inventory of how you spend your time.

A repeated concern I hear from women is the recurring feeling of being overwhelmed.  “I just have too much on my plate…I’m not sure why I do all that I do…I’m busy all the time but feel like I never really get anything done.”  These are among the most common phrases I hear in my practice.  But I propose that maybe only half of what we do is actually necessary.  The other half is, at best, simply irrelevant to our well-being.  At worst, it can be downright unhealthy.  Try this exercise.  ON a blank piece of paper list your basic, core values at the top of the sheet (e.g., “Nurturing my important relationships” or “Improving or maintaining my physical health,” etc.)  Draw a line under that list.  Then, for about a week write down ALL of your activities underneath your core values.  At the end of the week, sit down and review each item on your list.  See if you can draw a line from each activity to one of your core values.  If you can’t, then perhaps that activity can be eliminated from your life.  This will also help you determine if you’re truly living in accordance to your values, and where you might be off balance.  You may find yourself asking why you’re spending time on some of those excess activities.  It may be due to a desire to maintain a particular image or an excessive need for approval.  It could also be a symptom of a deeper problem such as addiction or clinical depression.

Step 2: Prioritize some time for solitude.

Carol Gilligan, author of In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development (1983), describes how women see “…a world comprised of relationships rather than of people standing alone, a world that coheres through human connection…”  It seems that women in particular are wired to connect, nurture and care for the needs of others.  There is nothing wrong with that.  Women are often celebrated for being the nurturers and caretakers of our families and organizations.  However, it is this very quality that makes it more challenging to actively carve out time for ourselves.  It may even feel unnatural and/or selfish to assert this as a priority.  It is during this time that a woman can practice being in (and enjoying) her own company, claiming a psychological space without meeting the demands of others.  This is critical to her well-being.  If this feels daunting, start out with smaller increments of time, like fifteen to twenty minutes per day.  It doesn’t have to be anything extreme like retreating to a secluded forest to meditate.  It can be as simple as soaking in the bathtub with the door locked to ensure your privacy, or taking a leisurely walk around the neighborhood.

Step 3: Strengthen your identity outside of your primary relationships.

Women have no problem identifying themselves in relation to the roles that they play: wife, girlfriend, mother, working mom, stay-at-home mom, etc.  Women tend to have a much harder time defining who they are outside of these relationships.  Claire* was such a case.  I remember during our initial session, she spent the first 30 minutes of our time together sharing details about her children and husband.  I then stopped Claire and asked her to do an exercise: In the course of one minute I asked her to write down as many things as she could think of that she either enjoyed doing or that brought her joy.  She struggled for a few seconds and then looked at me.  Claire put the pen down and began sobbing.  It was clear to the both of us what was going on.  She was at a loss when it came to identifying things that brought her joy or personal satisfaction.  That was a painful thing to realize.

A good way to start building or rebuilding your identity is to start with the basics.  Reflect on what you used to enjoy as a child and find a way to reconnect with some of these things.  Or start with a list of your “favorites”: favorite music, foods, colors, books, movies, etc.  I practice a certain type of therapy called Dialectical Behavior Therapy, which teaches clients how to “self-soothe” using their five senses.  In other words, the client explores what soothes her through sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch.  Writing these things down gives us important clues to who we are and where to begin when we need to reconnect with ourselves.

Step 4: Challenge Perfectionism.

I’m all in favor of self improvement or enhancing our lives, and certainly do not endorse complacency.  However, I do believe that women are more likely to be plagued by perfectionism than men.  There seems to be a sneaky, pervasive, unspoken rule that we must have a perfectly clean and orderly house—with the smell of freshly baked cookies wafting through the air.  We should have a happy husband and well-adjusted children with whom we do arts and crafts, while maintaining rewarding careers and looking gorgeous and s*xy ALL at the same time.  Okay, that might be a bit of an exaggeration…or maybe not.  After all, that doesn’t sound half bad!  We all have fantasies of doing it all and having it all.  And on most days, we probably could.  But there are days where this road to trying to have it all causes us more problems than it’s worth.  Ask yourself this question, “Am I trying to appear okay at the expense of actually feeling okay?”  Sometimes our bodies need rest more than the fleeting sense of pride that comes from baking cookies from scratch.  We need to pick and choose our battles carefully, conserving our precious energy and sometimes forgoing looking good in order to actually feel good.