When you’re tired, sleep.
When you’re hungry, eat.
When you need to pee, go.
My therapist told me that once. He said: it’s that simple.
He said we have an “animal body”, and it has needs!
I have trouble listening to my body
I seem to ignore what it’s trying to tell me. Until I’m starving or dozing off.
Previously it seemed like I was punishing my body. Not allowing it food or rest, due to other compulsive behaviours I was “busy” with – like work.
Or thinking I’m an inconvenience to others just because I’ve to go to the loo. (trait of Codependency)
I am my body
But now I’ve learnt I AM my body.
My body needs me. To feed it well, let it receive quality sleep, not hold pee in unnecessarily!
Listening to my body is also practicing self-care, which is so important and something I’m still learning to do.
Your body is talking, are you listening?
One’s body also carries messages of how one is feeling.
Tightness in chest, stomach, tears, pace of our breathing. And other physical manifestations like pain…
One of the symptoms of Depression is random aches.
A CoDA mate told me she learnt about various stressors “appearing” in different parts of our body are signs of our inner turmoil like worry about money will result in lower back pain
Our body has so much to tell us. I want to learn to listen to it better. Listening to our body also helps us be present with ourselves.
We should learn to take care of our body instead of ignore it
We are one with our bodies, so it’s only right that we learn to treat it better.
It’s after all our vessel in this journey of Life.
How many times a day have you deprived your body of physical needs like water, food and rest?
Do you think you’re a bad person or weak if you get thirsty, hungry or tired?
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@our.system I went to research what bujo-ing entails. I’m a bit daunted TBH. Though I can def see how I can benefit from the organisation it encourages… I will give it some more thought! ? (Though in the process of this, I’ve decided to utilise my google calendar and also a table organiser with big squares, spacious enough to plan my week.) I guess bullet journaling is what one makes of it – but the tutorial straight from bulletjournal.com is a bit too much for me atm ?
@girlintherapy yep it’s us with the bujo account from what you describe it sounds like bullet journaling may be a good thing for you! It largely revolves around to-do’s and list making and just tracking other information that might be useful for you to track in the long run So we track a lot of health things mostly along with our daily activities and what we have to do. It’s like a portable calendar that’s personal to you
@our.system Hehe, glad I could “help”? ?? Yeah, multiple alarms could be a thing… And bullet journaling… Hmm I saw your post or other account (was it you who set up a bujo account?) but I’ve not really looked into it. Maybe I should. Something I’ve learnt about myself, I used to have everything in my head and bad big picture ideas, but realised that didn’t help me at all, cos everything would just swirl around in my mind (kinda like your lush bombs ) so I now write down everything I have to do and make these multiple lists (categorised into different major sections) and micro-manage in a way, so that I don’t miss anything out! There tends to be loads to do but not enough time in a day ?
@girlintherapy Yep same here! It’s part of why we started up Bullet journaling though, helps us actually know what the hell we do and take note of achievements. Weirdly since you made this post, even though we haven’t worked on a schedule, we’ve done loads more with our time and spent less time watching tv or sitting around on the laptop! Maybe set multiple alarms on your phone through the day? We may start setting FitBit alarms when we set up our schedule so we know when to finish up doing certain things and move on to the next
Your feed ?
@our.system That’s a good idea!! Being reflective of my day’s activities has never been my strong suit. Maybe it’s time to start. Now I wish I had a timer though… And categorised according to my preset allotment of time (1hr lunch, 9hr work, etc)… Maybe someone would invent something like that in the future
This is so true!!
@girlintherapy so proud of you for making a schedule like that! Maybe get a planner or something so you can note down what you did during the day 🙂 yesterday we dug out the big calendar we got to get more organised but never even put up. We’ve got a section on there for what days to do certain things on (a big issue we have is there’s no cleaning schedule so.. we do very little cleaning in the end)
@our.system Yeah – I definitely agree! I’ve come up with a rough schedule: Sleep (8hrs), rouse from sleep (1hr), time taken to sleep (1hr) work (9hours), lunch and dinner (2hrs), shower (half hour), the rest of the time is miscellaneous and leisure… Now the only thing is how to monitor myself – how many hours have I worked, if I’m not simply sitting there, and if I’m out and about, etc ? Hmm…
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@girlintherapy I think setting up a routine for yourself might be the best thing! I know we keep meaning to have some kind of routine as well, we’re always told that not having one is the worst thing we can do for our mental health but we’ve never actually set up a routine (or at least never one since we started recovery, old ones were very ED driven and focused on exercise and food intake). Maybe both of us should try to come up with some sort of schedule that we can stick to, get more organised with our life and time and maybe that could help 🙂
This is brilliant. It’s often how I am too. I’ll knowingly ignore that I’m starting to feel hungry if I’m busy and then I’ll only go and make something to eat when I’m shaking with hunger. So ridiculous. Thanks for reminding me that I’m not alone.x
@our.system I thought of an idea when struggling to sleep last night though – to come up with an overview of my day. How many hours it takes to do what. And then I’ll try my best to stick to it. Don’t know why I never thought of it before!! I’ve been self-employed for a few years now but don’t have a schedule/routine at all. And I’ve realised this destabilises me, but not done anything about it per se. Ive made attempts, yes, but not being disciplined about things at all. I mean, we all only have 24 hours a day, like it or not. I used to hate it and thought I don’t have enough time to do everything I want. But now I’m going to learn to respect it, and accept reality and work w/in what I am given – 24 hours. Stop thinking I’m super woman and wanting to do it all, or less-than woman where I keep doing to compensate for what I think is my inadequacy. So bad for my health!!! Mental, emotional, physical… (Recently wrote on my blog about this actually – my New Years resolutions) Am gonna wash up, get some food in my and start my day. Even though it’s nearly evening. Change is in order! And in progress…
@our.system Oh man. This sounds like me too! I have trouble putting my phone down in bed – I keep wanting to read more and more – that’s why I thought the fidget cube might help me! And eating “soon” is SO me. Gosh, it’s happening right now Though there are times my tummy would growl really loudly or I’ll feel extremely famished, that is what pushes me to look for food
@studentswithfood @artofselflove @workmanlawfirm Thanks!!
Great advice
thank you for this. We struggle a lot to listen to our body so often. Especially on eating and sleeping. We always stay awake because we’re too busy doing meaningless things (like tumblr or something that we could easily just keep scrolling through in the morning). And as for food, it’s not even a conscious decision most of the time any more, just a “I’ll eat soon” but then “soon” is never as soon as it should be. We need to start listening to our body more so we can feel better than we do
Nice!