I’m popping in here with a little reminder to practice self-care over the remainder of this holiday season and springboard that care into the new year.
“I have had no time for self-care with everything going on!”, you may protest, but then, what do you imagine self-care to be?
If you believe commercials, it’s drinking red wine in the bathtub, eating ice cream from the container, using a face mask and getting your nails done at a salon. All while chanting, “BECAUSE I’M WORTH IT!”
In general, anyone who is perpetuating that type of “self-care” is trying to sell you something.
Journaling is an effective form of self-care and doesn’t require an expensive journal or pen, no matter what someone tries to sell you. (Photo by Sixteen Miles Out on Unsplash)
Here are less expensive options that I feel align more closely with the true meaning of self-care: * pausing during the day to take a few mindful breaths; * noticing where you are (“Right now, I am in the kitchen doing the dishes, feeling the warm water and slipperiness of the soap on my hands”) to help calm racing thoughts; * making a decision to choose a more nourishing food, eating slowly, savoring each bite; * decreasing/eliminating alcohol — substitute a drink that looks festive (sprig of rosemary or a skewered piece of fruit added to sparkling water); * staying consistent with exercise, or if time is squeezed, sticking in extra movement whereever you can (like doing 5 squats every time you go to the bathroom or a short yoga session right before bed); *practicing gratitude, and if that’s hard, just finding something to appreciate.
And of course, taking time for a brief meditation whenever you can.
I think you get the idea.
Holiday self-care is not about buying things. It’s not about practicing an Instagram or TikTok version of indulgence. There are no photos to post and you don’t need a manual for it to be beneficial.
It is taking a break to drop down out of your thoughts and into the present moment. Be kind to your body and mind, get enough sleep and exercise to make yourself feel good. And importantly: release expectations of what you think the holiday should look like, how people should act, what you should be able to accomplish, even how you should feel about it. Find appreciation for whatever is going well.
A couple of months ago I received an amazing invitation: to teach yoga to cancer survivors at our local Cancer Survivors Day event on June 1st.
What an amazing opportunity! The sole reason that I had gone through yoga teacher training and registered with the Yoga Alliance was to eventually teach cancer survivors. To have this invitation fall into my lap was serendipity at its very finest!
It was also terrifying.
Ever been offered an amazing opportunity and felt like you’re still a little too ‘green’ to handle it? (Photo by Nagara Oyodo on Unsplash)
My first impulse was to run and hide under the most solid object that I could find. You know, sometimes you have great goals, but you don’t consider what you will do if you actually manage to achieve them. I didn’t feel confident that I was ready for something that had always seemed several years away.
But I still had enought time to prepare for this class. I had taken a specialty 5-hour training on teaching cancer survivors, I had 16 years of maintaining a personal trainer certification with a clinical/academic focus and, importantly, I was a cancer survivor myself. I kinda knew what’s what.
At the same time, I felt a nagging doubt. What if I created a yoga class that people hated? What if someone got injured? What if I couldn’t memorize the sequence, kept stumbling over words or blanked out in the middle of it?
The more I practiced the sequence with friends and family, the more opportunities I had to beat myself up over every time I said “right” instead of “left”. Or said “arm” instead of “hand”. Or anything else that seemed less than perfect. The possibility of looking like a bad teacher and shaming myself opened the door for anxiety to flood my mind.
Nothing quite like thinking you’re not good enough and then proving yourself wrong! (Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash)
Eventually, I recognized that I was driving myself nuts with unrealistic expectations. I also realized that this is a bad habit that I’ve fallen into on other occasions too. So I took some time to sit quietly and reflect on what was happening.
I am an imperfect yoga teacher. While I try to mirror movements for my students, I mess up once in a while (mirroring can be really hard!). I might not always use the right word to describe a body part. I might forget to mention a cue and then have to stick the instruction in later. I might even forget whether I forgot to say something!
But when the day came to teach to this amazing group of people, my students followed along without a problem. And you know what? After class, they clapped for me. My heart was so full!
I may be an imperfect yoga teacher but maybe that’s okay.
Apologies because this might sound like a rant but this topic has been on my mind a lot lately.
When you’re diagnosed with cancer, you learn about the many side effects of treatments.
You will be informed about the physical and even psychological effects that cancer patients deal with, but there are also considerable financial repercussions. Patients may struggle with hospital bills: some lose their insurance coverage, others might never have had any to begin with, those who have coverage may find that it’s insufficient. It’s not uncommon to hear how cancer has driven survivors and their families into bankruptcy.
On top of that, cancer can do a number on your career aspirations for years to come.
Money issues are one of the side effects of cancer that don’t get a lot of airtime…but really should. (Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash)
In case you think that it’s uncool to complain about one’s career in the face of having survived cancer, let me get this out of the way: being a cancer survivor is a privilege. I’ve written before about how acutely aware I am that I have lasted longer than many cancer patients.
But as the effectiveness of cancer treatments improves, the number of cancer survivors increases and long-term repercussions become a more and more serious consideration, particularly how they affect ongoing quality of life.
For people who are still working out their careers, cancer can derail progress because it plants a huge stop sign in their path.
Think of going into the chemo infusion room: the days leading up to it entail appointments, port placement, purchasing supplies (anti-emetics, anyone?) and in general prepping for being out of commission about a week.
It’s not the time to focus on stressful work deadlines (and most sincere condolences to any patient who has to do that!).
Ironically, as much as I feared infusions, they actually gave me an excuse to focus on myself instead of worrying about everyone else. I posted about that here somewhat sadly that chemo allowed me to rest without feeling guilty.
It was at that point that I’d realized I’d been pushing myself, always expecting more and not feeling like I was measuring up. Chemo gave me a break from that. Which was good…kind of…
But after chemo and radiation came endocrine therapy, so just as I was winding down from one set of side effects, up popped another.
And all those plans I’d had for myself were put off again and again. Career goals seemed more out of reach because my timeline had shifted.
Well, I’m not stupid, so I changed my career goals. Makes sense, right? Cancer provided a different perspective on things and motivated me in another direction.
But in the wake of cancer treatment, I feel like I’m walking in cement shoes…if it’s not one thing it’s another. I got off aromatase inhibitors (early) and then realized that I was having memory and focus issues. Whether Cancer Related Cognitive Impairment (CRCI) or menopause-driven brain fog, all of a sudden I’m dealing with something else.
It feels as though the train to prosperity has left the station and I was just a little too late to catch it.
Great.
Right now I’m looking at sky-rocketing costs-of-living in a part of the country that literally got expensive around me. Instead of moving up in the world, my family and I are desperately searching for less pricey housing which will put us in worse conditions and a longer commute to work.
And at age 57, when most of my friends are looking at enjoying retirement in the years to come, planning for what they’ll do in their golden years, I’m trying to reeducate myself, shifting into a career that doesn’t make much use of previous work experience.
And it feel exhausting. Sometimes I want to cry.
I want to believe this, I really do. But I don’t think that there’s a reward for surviving cancer beyond simply surviving cancer. (Photo by Nik on Unsplash)
Yes, I’m happy to be alive. But no, this was not the way I thought things would go. When initially I was told that I had a decent chance of surviving for five years, that was all I could think about. In fact, that was all that mattered.
I wasn’t thinking about the fact that if I managed to live through this, I’d still need to find a way to make a living. And the interruption that was cancer could do a number on that.
At this point, I need to stress that my intention is *not* to try to scare cancer patients into dreading survivorship. Goodness knows, there are enough things to navigate within the cancer experience as relate to the usual treatments that will take your energy and attention.
I wish nothing less for you than 100% remission and many years ahead to enjoy your “survivor” label.
At the same time, I encourage you to remain present and mindful of the fact that you might have to pivot if you’re not already well-established in your career. If things start to change in a direction that’s southward of what you expected, be patient and readjust your expectations. Nuture acceptance and keep an eye on how you can put yourself in a good position to meet the future. And be kind to yourself.
If you’ve read my last couple of posts (here and here), you’ll know that I’ve been dealing with the frustrations of water leaks, never-ending renovations and unfortunate coincidences.
Hopefully, this will be the third and last installment of the trials and tribulations concerning this situation. But just to catch you up, the cabinets which were supposed to be installed Thursday, not in time for our houseguest’s arrival on Wednesday, but just a day late…were not.
Yet again, there were dashed expectations: one of the cabinets arrived with a crushed side and was unable to be used. So the innards of these cabinets are still piled up on and under the dining table and the place looks disheveled.
When things start blowing up, sometimes all you can do is sit back and enjoy the show.
And due to the completely unrelated construction taking place outside, which will prevent daytime access to our unit for several days, there will be no cabinet installation for at least another week, regardless of when the new cabinets come in.
But you know what? It’s okay.
I had wanted to have everything put together for our guest. That was not possible, so–admittedly after much jaw clenching–I completely let go. The crushed cabinet, the disruptive construction, I’m simply accepting it and that feels so good.
It really doesn’t matter when the cabinets are put up or what other monkey wrenches are thrown into the mix. We’ll get to closure when we get there.
Which is a good thing because on Saturday evening, I discovered another leak in the walls that soaked the new (still unpainted) drywall and flooded out the unit below us. And I’m totally serious. The inside of our hall closet sounded like a rainstorm.
Well, we needed rain…
I guess I could have been more stressed about it, but with everything that had already taken place, I shrugged. We notified out unit owner, we called the plumber, we waited for the leak to be fixed.
Another day, another leak, another disruption, another hole in the drywall. Still okay.
These are still problems that need to be dealt with. But whether it’s skillful mindfulness (probably not) or simply emotional exhaustion (more likely), it’s not getting to me and it feels amazing to stay calm under such circumstances.
I know I cannot avoid stressors in my life. So I’m trying to remember what this feels like. If I can draw on this experience the next time an upheaval occurs, perhaps I can slip into gentle acceptance and let reactive anxiety pass me by?
This is a follow up of my last post, where I described the unending saga of unfinished repairs following a leak in our apartment, something that left me feeling helpless.
Before I posted last week, I removed a section that I’d written about fears of kitchen cabinets not arriving on schedule, and that they’d be hung after our upcoming houseguest had arrived and the place would still be torn apart. I cut it out because I thought, “Come on you’re catastrophizing, no one needs to read about that.”
I know how you feel, little buddy.
Except that that’s exactly what happened. I got a call that there was another delay. All the expectations I’d had came crashing down in one big pile of disappointment. That is, disappointment mixed with shame, self-judgment, embarrassment, depression, etc. because I’d mixed so many feelings of self-worth into having our apartment be fixed up prior to our guest’s arrival.
This was something so biting for me as a middle-aged women who, despite being an employed “professional”, was still locked into the idea that whatever else I accomplished didn’t matter if my home wasn’t in guest-ready condition.
I tried to do a meditation on imagining what it would feel like if everything that had happened was the way it was meant to be, but I couldn’t even muster that feeling of acceptance.
Again it was the expectation, the need that I had to have things be different. I tried sitting with my disappointment but the feelings were sticky and pulled me down even more.
So then I thought, if it’s the unrealized expectation that I had, the one that had built up over the last two-plus months of restoration agony in which I had no control and was at the mercy of the HOA, our landlord and anyone else…how do I soften that expectation to make this better?
Oh, how differently things look when you drop down into a situation without prior expectations.
I regrouped and tried meditating again, but this time I was dropping straight into the situation, vertically, without those weeks of built up frustration and need. As if I were sitting on the tip of a plumb line, called into action and ready to problem-solve.
What would it feel like to come into this situation right now? If I were to start out by knowing that I’d have to deal with the kitchen being in boxes in the living room area where our guest is supposed to sleep and then move forward from there.
I imagined myself arriving without baggage and it felt so much better. Suddenly, my focus was on dealing with the situation instead of lamenting about how things could have been. This was more productive and less agonizing. Yes, potentially still frustrating, but it took me out of the magnified disappointment that didn’t even make sense from this perspective.
It was such a small shift but it made a significant and immediate difference. That emotional wall that I’d been hitting fell away and I could see solutions. And now things didn’t look that bad. Yes, things looked different but given that I felt so much better and more in-control, this was the best outcome that I could have expected, given the situation.
Again, perspective came to the rescue and I was reminded that there is always a path out of every situation if we give ourselves space to consider it.
As I sit at home waiting for the stormy remnants of what used to be Hurricane Hilary to pass by, a bit of reflecting…
There is a saying attributed to Buddha: “The root of all suffering is attachment.”
While there is much that can be and has been written about this, I’d like to bring it down to something very concrete in my life.
It seems so simple, this letting go of our expectations. But we humans are hard-wired not to do that!
One of the wonderful attributes that we as humans have is the ability to plan. Yes, that’s been evidenced in very clever animals, but humans take it to a whole new level.
Where that incredible gift fails us is that in the process of planning, our goals and expectations become very real in our minds, and if they don’t play out as we had anticipated…well, sometimes we don’t deal with the disappointment well.
For instance, in such situations I experience stress and anxiety. Others may react with anger and frustration.
Regardless of the outlet (whether handwringing or yelling), it’s safe to say that the outcome is not pleasant for anyone. And yet letting go is hard when we are really counting on the expectation being realized. Or perhaps even worse, when we get lost in thoughts of how things could have been.
Consider this scenario: let’s say that following a leak in our apartment and subsequent slow repair process, two months later our water-damaged kitchen cabinets haven’t yet been replaced.
But wait, I get word that the cabinets are coming finally coming in this Friday, August 25th and will be installed the following Monday (28th)! Expectation established! And it’s not a small one because most of our kitchen and the entire dining room have been sitting in the living room area for over eight weeks.
Oh, how difficult it is to sit with what’s happening in the present moment — we’re always looking to see what’s up ahead or somewhere in the past. The greatest peace I’ve ever felt is to simply be here.
WOW, do I want this to get fixed! We have a house guest arriving on Wednesday the 30th who is supposed to sleep in the living room. Weeks ago, when she arranged to visit, I was sure that all the repairs to our apartment would have been done long ago. But now, between the cabinet installation and her arrival, I don’t have a lot of time to clear out the mess and get everything back in its place.
I cannot let go of the need for everything to go smoothly. But while I’m struggling with the burden of that need, I’m simultaneously living through the stress of, “oh no, what if it doesn’t work out that way???”
So there you go, a double-whammy. All this because although I know better, I latch on to how I want/need things to be. Either expecting perfect success or total disaster.
Letting go will never be as easy to do as it is to talk about. But in my brightest moments, I am able to step outside the confines of my thinking, move out of myself and get perspective on the present situation, accepting that I cannot predict and shouldn’t expect too deeply. That’s when I experience the highest level of calmness.
And then, as will happen, I forget and sink back into my small, highly personal mind, where I once again cling to having things be a certain way.
As the saga of our building’s leaky pipes continues, this experience reminds me of some of the best advice I received for getting through my cancer treatment.
How could cancer relate to a plumbing emergency? In how I perceived the news and possible outcomes. My cancer diagnosis was terrifying because I had grown up understanding that the disease meant difficult treatment and a real possibility of death. Now that I was dealing with cancer, I was jumping to conclusions, driven by FEAR.
And the leak in our unit? That meant a huge disruption in our lives as workmen enter and our belongings are piled together. But even more so, FEAR of the future, as we didn’t know the extent of the damage and whether we’d be able to to keep living here.
Getting a first glimpse of restoration. Lost some ceiling, light fixtures and a lot of kitchen cabinets.
The thought of moving brought anxiety about higher rental rates, dealing with belongings after nine years in the same apartment, even simply fear of change and uncertainty.
But that best bit of advice that I mentioned above? I found that it applied well to this situation also. And it goes like this: don’t try to tackle everything at once; take it bit by bit.
When I was diagnosed with cancer, the experience was nothing if not overwhelming. So many new terms, treatment options, possible outcomes. It was too much to handle. Someone I worked with suggested that I deal with things on a day to day basis. Not obsessing about the future, only what I needed to get through for today.
This was not easy for me, as being FEARful came naturally to me. But I understood what he was saying, even if I struggled to actually follow this advice at the time.
As with cancer, so with plumbing. My mind had already “gone there”, struggling to afford another unit (this is an older unit with rent lower than other places around us), staying up day and night to pack. Ending up in an even worse situation with inconsiderate neighbors…
But reality was not like that.
Behold, the FORCE AIR 2000EC! This monstrosity is the heart of the asbestos abatement operation. The workmen couldn’t fit it back in their truck so we’re babysitting it for a couple of days. Also, it looks like it was built by orks, but that has nothing to do with anything.
Within a weekend we had moved much of the kitchen and dining area. And really overhauled our possessions — even something as complicated as draining our 20-gallon fishtank and relocating its inhabitants to my husband’s office was not as difficult as anticipated.
I had time. I had time to move things, I had time to reorganize, to declutter, to stop and think about what was next. I had time because it wasn’t all happening at once. Stopping and breathing and noticing all the space around gave me space inside my head.
Discussions with our landlady suggested that we would take it one day at a time. No one was throwing in the towel yet…
…and even if the worst case scenario happened and we had to move, there were other places that were available (all with air conditioning, which we don’t currently have), and the rental cost would have been similar to what we pay now. In some cases the places were newer and most allowed pets (!), which I’ve been longing for.
All of a sudden, things didn’t look that bad. The options seemed promising.
Taking it bit by bit gave back a sense of control. All those fears slowly fell away.
And now, I find myself hovering with acceptance. Not landing on an expectation that THIS or THAT will happen. I don’t know what will happen and I’m finding a comfortable place to simply hang here, not gripping or holding on or needing for anything to be different.
It feels like it wasn’t all that long ago that I had my five-year 3-D mammogram…and here I am with my six-year scan.
I’m writing this prior to the scan and will follow up with the results at the end of this post, but I find it useful to write while I am still experiencing the little uncertainties that come with scans. Like a Schroedinger’s-esque situation, I am both a cancer survivor and a cancer patient right now, since no matter how small a chance that another tumor will be found in my breast, survivor and patient are my only two possible modes of existence.
For this short period of time, I’m both survivor and patient.
For my own sake, I try to release all expectations at this time. I don’t want to relax and tell myself that I’m sure that the scan will be clear, because the drop down from that back into “cancer patient” state would be too fast and steep, so I breath deeply and anticipate nothing. But that’s hard to maintain.
At the same time, just a few weeks after seeing my oncologist who skillfully performed a clinical breast exam and found nothing, it’s very unlikely that a mammogram would bring up anything life-changing for me at this time. In fact, if anything were found, it would be a tumor in its nascent stages that would be much easier to treat than the one I had in 2017. Or so I tell myself.
To be frank, it’s not locating another tumor in the breast that constitutes the scariest scary outcome. No, it’s the not finding a tumor in some other part of the body — perhaps a lone sleeper cell that evaded chemotherapy’s effects and circulated through my body before grabbing onto a vital organ and silently beginning to grow.
That’s the real bad news…but it would not be the news I’d get today.
This brings me back to that situation that all cancer survivors face: accepting that there are no guarantees.
The waiting is the hardest part.
For the next hours before my mammogram I will focus on work, think of nothing to do with cancer and take deep conscious breaths. As I sit in the waiting room I will gently distract myself, submit to the squishing of the scan and hang in the stillness of the present moment until I get my response…and hopefully go on for another year. Maybe.
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So, I’m back now with the outcome that I was both hoping for and (to be honest) expected: All clear for one more year!
And even though I always play it cool before and during the scan, the difference in my state is really noticible after I get the thumbs-up sign. Those minutes of sitting and waiting for my results [note: as a cancer survivor, I get my answer on the spot, which I really appreciate] are a little uncomfortable — I float, trying to focus on my breathing. But to this day, even when I’m “not expecting bad news”, I cannot shake that tickle of unease.
And that’s just another part of being comfortable with being uncomfortable. Still working on it…
You’ve probably heard this phrase in a commercial somewhere: “If I can do it, so can you!” It’s meant to make difficult goals seem attainable.
Some people may find this very motivating. And it certainly can be. Sometimes all we need is a little spark of hope to push us into achieving great things.
But it can also be used as an instrument to shame people into thinking that they’re not trying hard enough. That there’s something wrong with them.
Just because you’re not getting the results that someone else did does not mean that you lack a good work ethic.
From a marketing standpoint, the idea is that you push responsibility off the item or program or whatever it is you’re selling, and onto the person buying into it. Because obviously, there’s “proof” that it works. I mean, it worked for someone. So if you’re not getting the same results, it’s an issue that you have.
I’ve also seen this used with cancer patients. An exceptional individual who has defied the odds and still accomplished so much under negative circumstances is held up as an example of what is possible. They’re called an inspiration.
And it’s true, what they did was possible. For them. But we know very little about what else was going on in their lives to support their endeavors.
It’s admirable that these people are able to achieve what they have, but it’s unreasonable to expect that from everyone. And sometimes obstacles that no one else can see (emotional pain, underlying fears, mental illnesses) may hinder us, and the best that we can do is get through the day. Or sometimes, just manage to crawl out of bed.
We may know this and yet still hold ourselves to those standards, and as a result, reap disappointment.
Why am I bringing this up now?
Maybe it wasn’t that you didn’t try hard enough. Maybe it’s because the goal was not the right goal for you.
Because as a cancer survivor, I’ve expected things of myself that I simply cannot do anymore and then became frustrated with my inability to fulfill my unrealistic expectations.
And hated myself for it.
So this is a little reminder to consider what is right for you. Definitely, set goals and seek higher heights! But make sure they are your goals and they fit your life and abilities. That they are meaningful for you. This may require you to adjust your expectations in a way that demonstrates respect for yourself.
Because if someone is trying to amaze you with whatever they’ve done that they’re trying to convince you to do, consider that they might be getting far more out of your willingness to try to live up to their standards than you’ll get out if it yourself.
Staying present is key for not letting your thoughts take you on a wild ride.
Maintaining presence, however, takes practice so I’m always on the lookout for new ways to imagine the state of being in the “now”. Some of these are simpler exercises than others, but the upside of a more “complex” technique means that all my mental energy remains on staying present instead of, say, worrying whether I embarrassed myself at a party three nights ago.
The following is a visualization and mental exercise rolled into one:
What if only what you’re touching exists and everything else falls into nothingness?
Seated, close the eyes. Breathing deeply, allow everything that is around you to fall away in your mind, leaving only those points where your body makes contact with the surface beneath you.
Imagine that the soles of your feet sit on top of sole-shaped pieces of support material. Your buttocks and thighs contact like-shaped material, as does any place your back rests against your chair. If you touch your fingers to the side of your chair seat, small oval-shaped pieces of material appear where your fingers make contact.
Everything else disappears against a background of light (or darkness, if that is more calming). The chair and floor and even the room you are in? Gone. The point of this visualization is maintaining focus on only what you are physically experiencing at any given moment.
It is a strange sensation to imagine, floating through the ether but still feeling support from the slightest bits of material that touch you. This is the ultimate in being 100% present and turns the concept of object permanence on its head.
You don’t feel it? It doesn’t exist.
Our brain wants to fill in the parts that we can’t see because the brain has formulated an image of what is out there. However, in this practice we try to do the opposite–let go of what we do not have immediate physical evidence for.
This is a good analogy for dealing with thoughts that our brain fabricates based on the expectations that it has. What if we let go of them, if only for a short while, and simply sit in the stillness of what is happening right now?
Frantic Shanti 