27th Feb 2007
Self-nurture, Self-care, and Self-Soothe
I’m pretty sure the reason I get articles of pink fleece as gifts is that someone (my mother, usually) thinks that I need to nurture myself more. Pink fleece is nurturing to her; it makes me want to shed my skin in violent ways. So in hopes of finding non-pink, non-fleece ways to nurture, I’m reading Self-Nurture: Learning to Care for Yourself as Effectively as You Care for Everyone Else. I do care well for others, but not necessarily for myself. For example, if left by myself, I’ll have trouble locating actual food, though I’m actually a decent cook, and can prepare multi-course meals for others. I’m not sure what that’s all about, exactly. However, the author, Alice D. Domar explains this phenomenon well:
Why do some women have so much trouble with self-nurture? The answer can only be found in each of our personal histories. Nevertheless our families and our culture have (sometimes unwittingly) conditioned women to be self-denying, caretaking, appeasing, and people pleasing. The simple but devastating message we’re brought up to believe is that if we nurture ourselves we are being selfish.
I can actually remember saying something similar to a therapist: that coming to therapy was selfish, a misuse of our family’s sparse resources in terms of money and time. Apparently many people think this way. Domar gives examples of our own resistance to self-nurture. See if these statements sound familiar to you:
“Who am I not to help my sibling when he/she so desperately needs me? It would be narcissistic.”“How can I go off and do X when my hsuband gets so little quality time with me? It would be so self-obsessed.”
“Who am I to take a vacation when I’m so strapped for cash? How self-indulgent!”
Oh my. I think I’ve thought all of those! So her advice here is very timely:
These judgments usually sound to us like voices of reason, sharp and sensible echoes of common sense and moral correctness (Editorial note: What a great sentence). In truth, they are harsh rebukes of any rising impulse to treat ourselves with tenderness.
So I’m going to do a series of posts on self-nurturing, self-caring, and self-soothing. Please note that she’s not encouraging nurture with material possessions. That kind of emptiness that can’t be filled with money.
