Are you putting your self-care last as you care for others at home or at work?

Until you look after yourself first, you can never properly look after anyone else.

You can try, but at some level the other person will know that you are not fully there for them as there is that small part of you that knows that you are not giving yourself the care that you deserve.

Until you listen to that small part of you that needs that care and listen to what it wants, you are likely to head off on the wrong track in your life.

Then end up somewhere that you don’t really want to be.

I once went for two nights without any sleep when I was in hospital with my sick child. The consultant came round and rather than trying to hold it all together I said ‘You’re going to have to explain how she is really slowly or I’m not going to understand’.

When we get to the point that our battery is so drained from caring for others nothing makes sense and we’re not able to make good decisions for ourselves or for those we love.

In that instance in hospital there was not outside help as my husband needed to care for Bertie, our flatcoated retriever.

But sometimes there is help.

Sometimes there are options.

Sometimes you have to make a stand for your self-care. It’s not anyone else job to do that which is how it got its name!

Self-care challenge

Look for the areas that you are putting yourself last.

Notice the reasons you are telling yourself why it has to be this way.

Decide what self-care looks like for you. Imagine that it is a possibility and map out the contours of that new terrain.

Allow yourself to discover what’s true for you. Your definition of self-care is allowed to be quirky, individual and glorious in its singularity. Choose one thing and do it.

Notice how practising that act of self-care affects how you turn up in the rest of your life.

If you found this helpful, I’d love it if you’d share it.

You are worth the time, effort and energy that self-care takes. There’s only ever one of you and there only ever will be.