Self-care routines are incredibly important to your mental health. We’ve all heard of self-care, but what does it actually mean? Self-care is any activity that makes you feel better, healthier, or more relaxed. These activities may take different forms, but they are always designed to help increase your feelings of well-being and reduce your feelings of stress.
Self-care is a hot topic these days, and rightfully so. You might hear people talk about “self-care” as a concept, but you might not hear it defined as specific techniques you can use to care for your own needs. Still, it is a hugely important part of the human experience. However, not everyone understands its importance. In fact, this is part of the reason many people have eating disorders: they feel like they can’t take care of themselves, so they turn to food to make up for that.
Different Types of Self-Care
Physical Self-Care
Physical self-care is a huge part of living a healthy lifestyle. While many of us may be aware of the importance of exercise and nutrition, we often neglect our mental needs, which can instantly reflect in our functioning as our bodies don’t lie. For example, we can feel tired even when we do have not much physical labor. This is why physical self-care is an important aspect of living a healthy lifestyle. Apparently, it not only helps us to be productive and energized but is critical for maintaining good mental health.
Social Self-Care
Social self-care is a helpful and enjoyable practice that offers relief to the mind, body, and spirit. It should ideally provide feelings of pleasure and satisfaction while enabling you to be in the best condition possible. When practiced regularly, it can positively affect other areas of your life, such as your work, relationships, emotional health, and self-esteem.
Mental Self-Care
Mental self-care is taking care of your mental health alongside your physical health. Self-care is a practice that unites physical and mental health-it’s the idea that you can’t have one without the other. Being in optimal health means taking care of both your body and mind. It can also include sexual activities to discharge pent-up stress, anxiety, and frustration. Moreover, orgasms could be great for releasing stress-reducing oxytocin hormones in your body that is known to lower cortisol levels. So, indulging in self-pleasure with the help of adult toys, porn and erotic videos (like the one available on Tube v Sex), massager, etc., can help you manage mental health issues. When mental health is a concern, self-care and sexual pleasure could co-depend to some extent.
Spiritual Self-Care
Spiritual Self-Care is a concept that’s gaining a lot of popularity in today’s times. Rather than focusing on what divides us-both politically and religiously-we should focus on what we unite on. And that’s true of both our individual lives and our interpersonal relationships with others.
Emotional Self-Care
Emotional self-care is not a luxury, it’s an essential part of a healthy life. Once you learn how to take a step back and give yourself a break, you’ll realize that working out the kinks in your emotions is the only way to get the most out of life. It can be especially important for those struggling with depression or anxiety.
Sexual Self-Care
Sexual self-care is important because it helps us to stay connected to our bodies and take ownership of our pleasure. It can also help us to explore our desires, boundaries, and needs, which can lead to improved self-esteem. While married folks have their better halves to take care of their sexual health, single individuals can rely on pornographic videos like those found on PornV, or even on sex toys.
Why Is Self-Care Important?
Self-care is so important because we treat ourselves so badly, by depriving ourselves of rest, sleep, and proper nourishment. We binge on junk food, skip meals, run ragged with work, and ignore our relationships. We say we’re busy, and we exhaust ourselves. We tell ourselves we have to be strong for our loved ones, but we neglect our needs in the process.
The truth, however, is that when we take care of ourselves, only then we can take care of others. In case you are struggling with this bit, maybe because you only know how to take care of others and not of yourself, it’s time you seek help. There are endless numbers of resources available online (such as this Glitter for the Soul, for instance) that can be immensely beneficial, should you wish to traverse the journey of self-care.
Develop Your Self-Care Plan
Self-care is very important for everyone, but it can be especially difficult for new mothers. When caring for a new child, it’s common to feel tired, overwhelmed, and as if you’ve lost your identity. But taking care of yourself is possible and it is not at all selfish. It is immensely important to keep your well-being in check so you can continue to provide the care your baby needs. All you need is to develop your self-care plan so you can take care of both yourself and your baby.
Developing self-care is essential because when you’re caring for others, you often forget about your own needs. Though caring for others is important and necessary, you shouldn’t neglect yourself in the process. Even if self care for you looks like sitting in silence for 10 minutes a day, meditating, or something ‘considered’ more radical, like consuming cannabis (sourced from legal dispensaries here), it does not matter. What matters is that you make time for it despite everything that is happening in your life. In fact, maintaining good self-care habits is key to managing your stress and feeling your best. Just as you can’t pour from an empty cup, you can’t give off yourself fully if you’re not taking care of yourself first.
Self-care is the act of taking care of yourself both mentally and physically. This habit can relieve you from stress, improve your mental health, and increase your productivity. Hopefully, these tips will help you build a self-care routine.