Self-Care When You're Struggling

[00:18] Greer: 
Hi, this is Greer, your host for Femammal, the podcast that holds space for women to explore what it means to live well in our bodies and celebrates moving through this world as female mammals.

[00:36] Greer: 
Shalah Bottoms is a self care coach and founder of Shalah B Coaching. She earned a Master's degree in Social Work from the University of Kentucky and has over nine years of experience supporting other women as they create visions of their best selves and work toward making it a reality. As a coach, Shayla empowers women who do it all to prioritize the peace, joy and structure they need to thrive. In this interview, Shalah dismantles the commercial trappings of self care and returns us to the foundational interior resources that help women to tend to their health holistically.

[01:22] Greer: 
Welcome, Shalah. As we heard in the introduction, one of your roles is coaching women and helping women develop self care practices that can sustain them. Can you share about your own background and how you came to this work?

[01:36] Shalah: 
Sure. So when I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do in my career, even going all the way back to when I started college, I wasn't quite sure of what I wanted to do. But I knew I wanted to help people, and I decided to go into a career of social work. So I got my master's degree in social work and I soon after that started a job as a case manager at a nonprofit. And there I coordinated different educational programs for women and also coordinated a support group for new moms and did one on one case management to help people set and achieve financial goals and personal goals. And it was when I was doing the one on one case management that I got really interested in coaching. It took me a while to really nail down all the techniques that I wanted to learn, but I knew I didn't want to be a case manager who just simply told clients what they should be doing and how they should be doing it. I wanted them to know that it was their life and they were in the driver's seat and I was just there to support them. So I learned a lot about coaching and I also learned a lot about self care in the process of that because it was a lot of encouraging my clients to really follow through with what made them happy and what made them feel like their best selves. So that sparked a lot of my interest. I discovered that I had some strengths in assessing people and being able to just support people along their journey. So fast forward to November 2021 and I started thinking I could probably do this on my own and start my own business. And in May of 2022, that's when I opened up Shalah B coaching.

[03:59] Greer: 
I love that focus on self determination that you really bring to the work and I also love that you've got this background in working with clients from a variety of socioeconomic situations with a variety of different life goals, different cultural backgrounds. So I feel like some listeners might have seen today's topic and kind of felt a sense of trepidation listening to a podcast where we're focusing on self care because it's become so commercialized and it's sort of become this thing that's looked upon as something you do if you've got privilege and affluence. How would you define self care and how do you see it as a more egalitarian concept?

[04:46] Shalah: 
Yeah, so there are so many definitions of self care out there and that was one of the things I set to do when I wanted to go into this work is how do I define self care? And one of the definitions that really resonated with me in this moment was an individual taking mindful action to protect and enhance their holistic well being. But kind of simply put, I look at self care as a person doing the things that really help them to be their best self. And self care is something that is for everyone. And I think you're right, we see a lot of ads that depict self care as being for young women or just stressed out mothers and women and oftentimes with abundant resources like the people who can pay to take those luxury vacations and sit at a spa all day. But self care is really for everyone. All genders, all ages, cultures, all socioeconomic statuses. And it is a right that people have. Self care isn't a pleasure. It's not just based off of something that you have to earn. Right? We have to look at self care as kind of like a basic right that everyone should have in their lives every day.

[06:21] Greer: 
Oh, I love that. And how do you think we as individuals can resist the way that self care has sort of become a marketing technique? How can we look into our interior resources for self care?

[06:38] Shalah: 
So that's a great question and I think it starts with really doing a self assessment. So you have to understand what are your personal needs? Asking yourself questions like what do I want more of in life? And what do I want less of? How am I feeling today? How do I want to feel? It's really easy to get drawn into, like I said, that idea that I'm going to go get a mani-pedi when I'm feeling stressed. But if we only rely on those pampering techniques, we're really missing the point. And the point is to take care of your whole well being. And self care has all these different dimensions or categories. And if you do a search on Google, you'll find that there's all kinds of categories now that people are classifying as part of self care. But some of the most typical ones you'll find are physical self care, social self care, emotional, mental. And I think the trick is really trying to balance out those different categories and that will help you to focus on things that are going to support your whole self rather than just looking to those pampering or indulgent type of activities. And don't get me wrong, sometimes those are self care. It feels great to go and sit at a spa and get a massage. I'm the first one to sign up for a massage when it's offered to me. But that can't be your only self care practice.

[08:36] Greer: 
Yeah, great. So just diving into that a little bit more. We've been talking all season about learning to listen to our bodies and I imagine that identifying what self care practices you need as an individual is also an exercise in learning to listen to your body and letting your body have a voice in that. So what's your advice for how we approach listening to our bodies to identify holistically what self care practices best sustain us as individuals?

[09:09] Shalah: 
Well, our bodies tell us a lot about the things that we're doing. So I'm someone who tends to get up in the morning and I have a whole list of things I want to accomplish and I go go all day to try to get them done, but my body will start to tell me when I'm doing a little too much. Our body tells us by giving us signals or signs like body aches and headaches and we might have trouble sleeping or even after a full night's rest, you wake up and you're still tired. And that's our body trying to tell us that we need to slow down a little bit. Not even just our physical wellness or our physical self is impacted, but our emotional selves are impacted. So our bodies are so interconnected and it's always so interesting to me to realize how your health in one area really impacts your health in another. So our mental health has a huge impact on our physical health and vice versa. And it's important to also pay attention to our emotions just as much as it is to pay attention to our physical self care. Because emotions of being really anxious or sad or overwhelmed, those are signs just like the physical signs of headaches and trouble sleeping, things of that sort.

[10:51] Greer: 
Yeah, absolutely. I think for some women, it feels really empowering to hear you say things like, you have a right to self care and you should reflect on how you're actually feeling and how you want to feel. Because it can be really hard for ourselves to have the experience of, oh, I'm really tired today, and then actually give ourselves permission to step back and get some rest because we have so many obligations and responsibilities and this sense of drive. So throughout the season we've heard from women with a variety of challenging diagnoses which can really fill their calendars with healthcare appointments and demand a huge amount of time, energy and money. I mean, I can attest to this personally. There have been like three to six month periods of my life where I've had two healthcare appointments a week, and it's just all I can do. So for women who are in that kind of season, where medical interventions have become their primary focus, how can they recover a sense of agency and caring for themselves holistically?

[12:01] Shalah: 
Yeah, well, I first want to acknowledge that I can't even imagine how difficult it must be to have a serious medical diagnosis that uproots your entire life. That's really stressful and overwhelming. I would say part of caring yourself is being honest about how you feel. We tend to want to keep going with our normal routines, even when our body might be telling us not to, or even when we really need to take a moment to step back. But giving yourself permission to slow down and just do less is so important. I'd say being in denial about your health is not going to make your situation any better. So if someone can really be honest with themselves about acknowledging their true level of comfort, where they're at, how their body is feeling, allowing themselves to feel all the feelings that come with it, physical and emotional at the same time, that's the first step to really being able to empower yourself and take some action that will help your physical wellness. And I think we should look at accessing our medical interventions and following through with treatment that our doctor has recommended as self care. I mean, that really is self care when you are putting the treatment in action. So many of us may go to see a medical professional, but we go home and we don't actually follow through with the plan. So going to the doctor's visit is one half of the process, but it really is about when you get home, how are you actually following through with that? So that in itself is self care. I think it's also important to talk about just managing and coping with the emotional stress of having some sort of serious medical diagnosis. All kinds of emotions can arise from that might be feelings of grief over the loss of the life you once had, especially if, like you said, someone's going to the doctor multiple times a week and their routines are looking a lot different. I can imagine that it might be really difficult to have to have a whole new life in that moment, and your focus and priorities are totally different than what they were weeks or even months ago. And then there may be some feelings about body image, depending on what that medical diagnosis is. It may have a lot of impact on your physical body and how your body looks. And then when we talk about just feelings of being alone, right, feelings of I'm in this by myself because no one really understands how I'm feeling. Those are all things that can arise and self care can help that person really address those feelings and manage them and cope through those challenges.

[15:49] Greer: 
Yeah, I'm so glad you are addressing that emotional side of it because a lot of women we spoke with this season really have felt like their mental health was impacted by the medical challenges they've faced. And kind of ironically, when our mental health is suffering, that's often the hardest time to treat ourselves with self compassion and take care of ourselves. There might be days when it's hard to get out of bed or it's hard to want to shower or eat or you might just have a lot of feelings internally or negative self talk around worthlessness. So what are some techniques that we can use to be faithful to the self care practices that help us when our mental health challenges are actually undermining our desire and our energy to even want to care for ourselves?

[16:42] Shalah: 
It can be really difficult to keep up with a self care routine. It's easy to see all these things on social media. I know I do this myself. I'll look at all of the journaling prompts and all the meditations and all the books that I want to read and I'm going to do all these things and I will keep them in my brain. But I don't always necessarily put a plan in place and that is, I think a really important step is to actually develop a plan. And just like with any other goal, it's going to be a lot more helpful. If you are writing out a plan of action for self care, it kind of makes it more concrete. It puts it into the universe that you have this intention to do these practices and then putting it up somewhere where you can see it every day. It might be in your kitchen, on your refrigerator or your bathroom mirror, but being able to see what your intentions are will really help you kind of stay invested in what you want it to do. And even it doesn't have to be any formal self care plan. Although you can do a Google search and find some really good layouts online if you're the type of person who really likes to have something more formal printed, hard copy document. But you could just take a post-it note and put down a couple of things that you want to focus on and it could be something that you want to focus on that day or something you want to focus on for a week or even longer than that. Just as long as you have it written down somewhere so you could keep it fresh in your brain. I think another technique that I love, and I do quite often is vision boarding. And it's a little different than goal setting because vision boarding is more just putting together a lot of different pictures and words and statements that help inspire you to practice your self care. I'm a very visual learner, so if other people are visual learners, this might be really helpful and it's kind of fun to do. So it's twofold for me. It's like the act of putting together a vision board in self care, but then also having the vision board to look at on a regular basis and remind me of who I want to be, what I want to be, how I want to feel. That's also a way to keep me motivated and invested in doing the self care practices. And one thing that I really need to mention is to have an accountability partner. And sometimes that sounds a little rigid like having a boot camp instructor, but that's not at all what an accountability partner is. It's more of somebody who is there to know what you want to accomplish and just check in with you to see how you're doing with it and not necessarily give you advice, but just be there to say, hey, how are you doing with that healthy eating plan that you try to put together and be there to support you, be your cheerleader. Essentially, having an accountability partner can really help people stay focused on what it is that they want to accomplish.

[20:42] Greer: 
I love those ideas. I'm thinking back to the self care plan you said we could put on the refrigerator or on the mirror or some of the vision boarding ideas. Are there some categories that are sort of fundamental to anyone's self care plan or is it really individual what someone would want to address?

[21:05] Shalah: 
That's a great question and I love that there are different categories of self care that we can all take time to focus on, but I will say it's very individual. Some of the ones that I mentioned earlier, like physical, emotional, social, spiritual, those are kind of some basics when we talk about self care categories and it is a good idea to balance those out. But I think we can be more intentional and focus on those categories that we see are lacking the most. So for example, for someone who has a serious medical diagnosis, they may really want to focus on the physical self care pieces, emotional self care and social self care. I think that's a huge one for those who maybe are dealing with some sort of illness and really trying to stay positive and keep looking to what they can do to enhance their well being. Having a social support system is going to be one of the key factors in staying motivated. Like I said, that plays into the accountability partner piece, but also just helping you to stay hopeful. Sometimes I can imagine it would be really difficult and you get trapped in some negative thinking and having people that you love around you to remind you that there's going to be some silver lining to any situation or just to tell you that they love you. And even if things are extremely difficult and you may be going through this diagnosis without someone else having that same diagnosis to talk to or rely on, we're here for you. We may not know exactly how you feel, but I'm still here to try and listen to you, be there for you whenever possible.

[23:33] Greer: 
I'm so glad you're highlighting that social aspect to self care because another thing that kind of happens right now is people get focused on self care as like a highly individual undertaking. But really we are social beings and there is a fundamental social aspect to it. And I can think back to times in my life where I was really struggling, especially if it was something to do with my health. And I really benefited from having a sense of community, especially community with other women, maybe other women who have gone through something like what I've gone through. But it's the hardest thing to try to establish new friendships when you're already struggling or maybe to try to find that community of people who have some similar struggles. And I'm wondering if you had any advice for reaching outside our comfort zone and finding that community when we're already having a hard time.

[24:31] Shalah: 
Yeah, I say meeting new people can be kind of a daunting task in general. So especially if there's something significant going on in your life that's very personal and you feel a little uncomfortable with opening up to other people about it, it can be a real challenge. But finding a support group I think is a really great way to go about meeting people, especially if you are dealing with some sort of very specific medical diagnosis. So finding other people who are going through similar challenges and can also share kind of joys and triumphs. I think it's more than just trying to find people who are going through the same difficulties, but being able to kind of have some peer learning and peer engagement so that you can learn from someone else and hear them say, oh, I found that this worked really well for me. That could be a game changer for someone who maybe doesn't really even know where to begin with treatment or self care when it comes to this specific thing. So finding a support group is one I think, really great piece of advice I would offer.

[25:58] Greer: 
Yeah, and there's more and more support groups available online now, especially after the pandemic. It can be a great place to look if you're not immediately aware of anyone already in your life connected to that. So looking back, maybe on your own life, can you share about a challenging time for yourself where self care was no longer a matter of just maintaining those old routines, but you had to approach it in a totally new way or really change up your routines to deal with that challenge at hand? And what did it look like to recalibrate that way when there were extra stressors?

[26:41] Shalah: 
Yeah. So about a year ago, I was working still in the organization where I was first started as a case manager. And as a case manager, when I was coordinating those programs for moms, and support groups, doing one on one case management, I really loved the work I did. And after I was promoted in 2017, which was a great experience for me, I was really excited to get a promotion. But after being promoted to a program manager, I started to realize that a lot of the things that I loved about my work were changing. So I wasn't able to do as many of the pieces of the work that I loved and the reason that I took the job in the first place. And I got to have some new experiences, but I found that more and more stressors were being added to the work almost every day, it felt like. And the pace at which the work was being expected was starting to be more than what I wanted for myself. I was kind of in a place in my life where I was ready to slow down. I've always struggled with anxiety and part of my self care in that time was to try and do less and focus more on being intentional about the work I was doing, but not worried so much about accomplishing so many things. So that work started to be in competition, I'd say, with what I was trying to achieve for my personal life. And it was really difficult time for me because I had been there for quite some time and it was probably my first real professional experience as a social worker. I learned so many things in that job, but it came down to me having to make a decision of whether I wanted to continue at that pace or really prioritize myself. And I was even at a place where I found myself closing my office door at times and crying because I was just so unhappy with how things had changed and where things were going. So I knew I had to take action and do something different. And I did two things. One, I started therapy, which was a really important piece of self care for me. That was something that really helped me to develop a plan for myself. Working with my therapist, I was able to determine what should my everyday look like to help me manage my anxiety, help me reach my personal goals. And then the second thing I did was just really start to be serious about what I wanted every day to look like. I think it's so easy for us to just keep going with our routines even when they're no longer working for us. So it took me a lot of time and effort to really say, what do I want my day to look like and how am I going to get there? So even though it was a really hard decision, I ended up leaving that position and starting a new job and opening my practice and it was really scary, but that was what I needed for myself in that moment. But there's been lots of times when I have recognized I needed changes in my life. And another example is when after grad school, I had gained a lot of weight and I was feeling really unhappy and uncomfortable with my body and I decided that I was going to start exercising regularly and I did. And I do enjoy exercising a lot. But the funny thing is I started exercising to lose weight, but I learned that it was even more helpful in helping me manage my anxiety and my mental health. So I started looking at that physical self care practice, or what was in the beginning intended to be a physical self care practice and applying it to my mental health.

[31:54] Greer: 
Thanks for sharing those stories. I think a lot of people can really relate to what you've gone through and I think it's great insight and it's making me think about all the ways in which women are really expected to take on more than any one person can reasonably do. Whether that's because they're both in the workforce and taking on a lot of caring responsibilities at home, or the sort of cultural expectations we have around women's emotional labor or domestic work or roles in family life, all kinds of things. So it can make self care sometimes feel like yet another task or even a way to blame women for feeling burnt out and exhausted, like, oh, you didn't take care of yourself well enough while you were taking care of all these other people and things. So how do you think we can balance the demands and expectations that our culture or our community imposes on us with our own genuine needs?

[32:59] Shalah: 
I think the first thing is recognizing that it is okay to ask for help. It's really hard to ask for help, I think. But if there are more things that you need done in a day than you can do on your own, you definitely should feel that you have the right to take a moment to delegate things to others who can help you with them or just simply take things off your plate. Also be honest with yourself about how much you truly can accomplish in one day. We're expected to do so much. We work 40 plus hours in a week. Then a lot of people go home and they're trying to balance all of the responsibilities they have there like parenting and cooking, cleaning. There's always so many things on our to do list and we spend so much time trying to just stay afloat that it is a huge challenge to make time just for yourself. So trying to find the balance between doing the things that have to be done because of course, there are things that we have to do to function in life. We're always going to have certain priorities and responsibilities on our to do list. But being able to find a way to balance those and let other people know that you are being intentional about taking care of yourself and balancing the things that you have to do with what you actually need for your personal self.

[34:55] Greer: 
Yeah. And then what kinds of thought processes can we adjust so that we don't turn self care into just more tasks on our already too long to do list?

[35:09] Shalah: 
I think it's so important to really find self care practices that resonate with you and that you just genuinely enjoy. If you are the type of person who doesn't really like hiking, then don't put hiking on your self care plan. I think we can sometimes get wrapped up in trying to do the self care practices that we see on social media or that other people kind of talk a lot about and it seems almost trendy. But self care isn't about just doing the things that everybody else is doing. It's about finding the practices that really resonate with you and that you really enjoy doing. And then it won't feel so much like a chore. If you are looking at self care as I'm taking the time to do this thing that really excites me, that brings me joy, that makes me happy, and then also paying attention to the why. What is your why behind doing the self care practices? Is it because you are really trying to take care of your personal health and wellness? Or maybe you're doing some self care because you want to be able to give your best to the other people around you. I mean, you hear so many times the phrases like you can't pour from an empty cup and they're so true. You're not going to be your best self for the other people around you, for your work, for really anything in your life if you're not taking good care of yourself. So if you really focus on the benefits of self care and why you're doing it in the first place, I think it might lessen the blow of making it feeling like a chore or just another thing on your to do list.

[37:20] Greer: 
I love that perspective. How can we support our friends and our family members, our colleagues or people we supervise to prioritize their own self care and maybe especially when it's at the cost of our own convenience?

[37:37] Shalah: 
Yeah, I love that you're even talking about us supporting other people's self care because self care is seen as such an individual thing and it is. It's something that we do for our individual selves. But I think it's important for us to support other people in their self care practices. And one thing is just to let other people have their own experiences and preferences and personal needs and don't look at self care as something that is one size fits all. If you give people permission to practice self care in their own way, that's really going to help them to feel like they don't have to follow along with the mold. I really think that we need to give people space and let them do what works for them without giving them judgment behind it. We need to ask people what they need from us, not just make assumptions. It's one of those things where we tend to want to treat people how we want to be treated, but you should treat people how they want to be treated. So asking people for what they need and then supporting them in a way that is going to be most beneficial to them is a big piece of this. You can be someone's accountability partner. Accountability partner can be lots of different people, but if you try to be someone's accountability partner, you're really going to be trying to help them reach their goals and cheer them along as they are trying to put in practice whatever self care things that they want to accomplish. I also want to note that I think we all have to really practice what we preach. And the more we normalize self care, the more we as individuals practice self care and normalize self care, that gives other people permission and freedom to feel like they can also practice self care.

[40:03] Greer: 
That's great. Thanks. Last question, it's kind of a big one. What do you think the relationship is between self care and joy?

[40:14] Shalah: 
Well, self care and joy are very much correlated and I think a big part of self care is finding the things that bring you joy and making time to do them every day. I can't say enough how simple that is, but it is the truth. It's really just about what is bringing you joy today and recognizing that what brings you joy today may not be what brings you joy tomorrow, or what brought you joy yesterday may not apply today. So if we're consistently doing self assessments and really reflecting, doing some self reflection on what brings us joy, we're going to be able to make time for it each day. And then another side of this, another piece of this is finding joy in the little things. So if we take time to just look around us and appreciate all the small things that are in our lives, the little small pieces of beauty or peace or love, we will be a lot more satisfied with our lives and be happier for it.

[41:45] Greer: 
I feel like we've come full circle because right at the beginning of the conversation you talked about how self care is a right for everybody and that makes it feel like joy is also a right and something really worthy of us giving our full attention to and cultivating for ourselves.

[42:03] Shalah: 
Yeah, absolutely.

[42:05] Greer: 
Thank you so much for joining me today, Shalah. I really enjoyed this conversation.

[42:10] Shalah: 
Thank you so much for having me. I loved being here with you today.

[42:19] Greer: 
If today's episode resonated with you, I'd love to hear from you. You can email me at femammalpodcast@gmail.com. That's femammalpodcast@gmail.com. You can also follow this podcast on Facebook. Just search for Femammal Podcast and you will find a community of people who are interested in living well in our bodies. And of course, I'd love for you to rate this podcast and leave a review wherever you download your podcasts. Until next time, be well.