Episode 143: How Hating Yourself Isn't Actually a Requirement for Loving Your Caregiving Life

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Show Transcript

Caregiving confessions… I can’t stand the concept of New Year's resolutions. I’m all for people wanting to make life changes as long as they don’t get lost in a box full of chocolate on Valentine's day. 

Let’s talk about why hating yourself isn’t a requirement for change. 

Change is hard especially if you aren’t ready for it. 

What I do think is worth a try is taking a look at your life and seeing what has worked over the past 12 months and what happens. Doing a year in review is a great way to see progress, find opportunities and allow yourself to be proud of what you made it through, good or bad. 

There’s always so much talk about New Year's resolutions that you find yourself feeling like it’s something you should do. So you spend time and energy figuring out what you are going to change in yourself based on what you think is bad. 

New Year's resolutions are almost based on what you think is bad in your life. Your weight, the way you dress, the amount of time you spend in a gym. Starting out what should be a positive process with a negative self-image just isn’t going to work. 

I’ve worked in gyms long enough to see this process in real-time. No one shows up at the end of the year because of the holidays. Then too many people who up to the gym in the first week of January. The gym continues to be packed full of people pushing themselves past their limit and if they don’t hurt themselves by Valentine's they’re checking out anyway. By the end of February, everything goes back to normal. 

It might not be the gym but it’s the pile of self-help books and the journals that will stay in that nice-looking stack beside your bed until June. Or maybe it’s the stack of pans that you bought so you could cook more that are maybe still sitting in the box they came in. 

New Year's resolutions don’t work for most people. What happens when they don’t work for you? 

When you can’t accomplish a New Year's resolution at least a small part of you feels like a failure. That’s why you might not have told anyone about your plans this year. You already knew there was a big chance it wouldn’t work because it never works. 

You start a new year off by taking stock of how you suck and then make a goal that, most times, is not realistic and then feel worse two months later when you give up on it. 

Why does that sound like a good idea… ever? Why does your fresh start have to begin in January anyway?

You can’t tell me you made it through a year of caregiving doing some of the most courageous things anyone could do for a loved one but you’ll spend the first week of the year trying to figure out how much you suck as a human and how you can punish yourself into being a better one? 

Or maybe you’ve Quote unquote given up on New Year's resolutions but not in an I’m smarter than that way but in an, I give up on even considering my life can get better way. 

Does the existence of New Year's resolutions work as a reminder that you’ve given up on yourself? When your friend tells you how they joined a new gym and this is the year they take control of their health do you feel bitter? Do you put yourself down when people ask you about your resolution and you answer back with, I don’t do those anymore? 

Not falling into the NYR trap does not mean you give up on yourself. 

First of all, you should never feel there’s a perfect time to care for yourself except the moment you decide to do it. No waiting until Monday because that’s what you consider the start of the week. You don’t have to make any changes in your life in January just because everyone else is talking about it. 

Yes, we should always be open to change, especially if it positive change for you personally. Most likely you deny yourself a lot because of your caregiving. So anything to do for you at any moment, any time of the year is exciting and important. However, that has to come on your own time. Quite frankly, making it through the holidays as overwhelming and emotionally charged as they may be is enough of an accomplishment. January should be a celebration of that as you put the pieces of your life back together and move back into your normal routines. 

Secondly, trying to make changes based on what you think is the worse part of you is not the right approach to take. If everything is based on an alternative that you think is offensive to the world then you’re starting off your journey based on self-hatred.  The things people say to themselves when they’re trying to change their lives based on hate for themselves are heartbreaking. Denying yourself happiness, negative self-talk, and feeling like it’s ok to treat yourself in a way you’d never treat anyone else is not the way to care for yourself. 

You start yourself off with a negative mindset and then place the promise of a better life as your carrot on the stick to get you through and when you “give up” on what was already an unachievable goal you feel worse about yourself than when you started.

Change is not bad. I will never tell you that deciding to go to yoga classes for the first time in January is the wrong thing to do… if it’s coming from a healthy place. 

The reason people fail at New Year's resolutions is their why. 

For example, if you decide you will go from never walking to walking 5 miles a day every day because you can’t stand the way you look in the mirror you probably won’t go on. Many of those walks. If you decide that you used to really like the way going on a walk made you feel if you love being out in nature and want to do things to become healthier so you’ll start taking walks and gradually make them longer… that will work. 

Maybe self-help books are your thing. You’ve seen a lot of books being mentioned on social media and you decide you can be a better person. You feel broken and want to fix yourself because you don’t like who you are right now. This most likely will lead to a pile of books and journals by your bed that will act as a reminder of how much you’ve failed at trying to make yourself a better person. 

If you decide that you’d like to explore ways to spend time learning to love yourself again and in turn bring more love into the world you live in and you’d like to do that by reading and journaling as self-discovery. That will have more of a chance to work for you. Or if you say, I’m going to focus on finding a therapist that is a good fit for me so I can address the issues I feel I need to heal from so I can find more happiness in my life. That is a very valid goal to have. 

Wanting to do something for yourself and focusing on your self-care is important. If January makes you more motivated to do it then great. I just want to remind you that it will be a much better experience if you focus on your intention and the reason for doing it. 

The more positive a reason you have the better able you’ll be at doing it. 

Turning, I have to work out because I hate the way I look to I really want to be healthy enough to care for my husband may seem like a simple change but you’ll find it can prove to be difficult to do. If making yourself a better person includes saying negative things to yourself you’d never say to someone else there’s going to be a problem. 

It may sound ridiculously easy to change your mindset, but if you’ve been seeing what you think are personal shortcomings with self-hatred it might be difficult for you to do. In fact, just saying that this year you’ll work on turning your self-hatred around to self-acceptance and self-love might be the biggest thing you can do for yourself. 

Anytime is a good time to do more for yourself. If January flies by and in February you decide you’d really like to do something more for yourself you don’t wait until next year. If your goal is to take a bubble bath once a week you don’t have to wait for next week to come around. 

We have so many things we’d like to do and some of us put all of them off because we think we’ll be judged by others, feel guilty for wanting to feel joy and happiness, and are just too exhausted at the end of the day. 

What I wish for you is not to give up on yourself. If a self-care activity doesn’t work for you, try something different until you find the thing that feels so right you won’t let anything stop you from making it a priority. 

Your needs matter. You don’t have to find a reason to hate yourself in order to justify doing them. 

You deserve to love your caregiving life.

Thanks for listening.