🌸 Emily's self-care journal

Another thing that goes into self-care is avoiding things that are known to spoil my mood. Like “I won’t go to Poznan in winter because it’ll be cold and rainy there”.

(It’s not even as much about avoiding a specific thing that makes me feel bad, and more about “I want refused to go to Poznan because self-care”, which in itself would make me feel good.)

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Another another thing I’ve just realized is that I almost never take an outside view on myself. (As in “inside view vs outside view”.)

For example, the inside view tells me that I don’t have many friends because I am doing things X Y Z wrong / just something is wrong with me / etc. the outside view tells me that it’s because I keep moving between countries all the time and naturally it makes it harder to have long-lasting relationships.

So another self-care thing could be “taking the outside view more often”.

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weekly update

Long time no post.

I’ve been sleepy a lot in the past week, and work hasn’t been easy.

I like that I’ve noticed that and started adopting a more… left-wing approach? Smth like “I have neurodiversity / adhd / whatever, it’s also winter, work is going to be uneven”. As opposed to “everyone, including me, has to be competent and professional at all times”.

(It also helped that I went to a neurodiversity webinar at work recently.)


Another thing – “I know that it’s harder for me to do anything if I don’t make a daily todo list in the notebook”, so now I remember about it more often and make a daily todo list in the notebook.


Lowering my expectations from life a bit? “Might not have the best life, let’s just try to have an ok one.”


Not going to write here, but smth about parents

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weekly update

Still sleepy.


Still lowering / getting used to lower expectations from life. “Just live for a while and that’s enough”. Might change when it’s summer again; would be nice to switch between different sets of expectations depending on which is better for the situation.


Went to the dentist, got a wisdom tooth removed. Definitely just something that I had to do anyway (it had a cavity), but also definitely self-care.


Still no smoking and (almost) no drinking. It doesn’t feel like much, because I don’t remember the days of feeling sick after smoking / having headaches after cocktails, but objectively it’s probably one of the biggest things on the list so far – especially if you count long-term as well.


Trying to get back to getting up early, it’s much nicer to start the day at 8am than at 10am or 11am.


Healthier attitude to work. “I will go out in the middle of the workday because I want to see the sun.”


Feeling somewhat burned out with routines and tasks. Stopped studying chess tactics in Anki because I wasn’t enjoying them.

Also feeling sick of opening Reddit / news / Discord / YouTube all the time, which got much worse in the last few days. But… it will probably get better again later. I just forgot that things can get better on their own.

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weekly update

The tired phase continues.

Reflection: am I being gentle/compassionate towards myself regarding being in a tired phase?

Not exactly. I say that it’s a “phase” but I still don’t fully believe it or feel like it will “definitely” end. So I feel disappointed with myself.

However, saying that it’s a phase is still kinder, even if I can’t fully believe it.

Reflection: is there anything else I can do?

  • Write about it: yes, already doing.
  • Eat more often (energy!): it would be good to order enough groceries that I don’t run out of food in case I don’t want to go out at all during a particularly low-energy day. So that’s an idea for [next salary].
  • Going out when it’s sunny: already doing sometimes.

Started reading another anxiety book and it seems to be working better than whatever I was reading before. It happened somewhat accidentally – I had an anxiety-related tab open and a month later I randomly decided to “handle” the tab and downloaded the book.

Also, made a private channel (a while ago) where I’m blogging about anxiety and my sister is reading it. A very low-effort social / “not being alone with it” thing.


More often buying sweets with the explicit goal of “treat for myself / mood improvement”.


Reflection/prompt: what else can I do for myself that doesn’t require money, energy, or stepping out of the comfort zone?

  • Not thinking about the future. I feel like it’s possible to do, and would reduce stress/anxiety.
  • I don’t know what else. I asked ChatGPT and it didn’t come up with anything I could use.
  • Googled “self-care reflection prompts” and remembered that a gratitude journal section like “what am I grateful to myself for?” could be good.
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weekly update

The anxiety book is working and I’m happy about it.

Ordered groceries, have low-effort food now (gazpacho!!!).

Was sick yesterday, told work “I won’t be working today” even though I have no idea how to get an official sick day [because reasons].

Noticed that smells annoy me a lot. Made a note in my couchsurfing profile that “if you’re a heavy smoker, I won’t be able to host you”.

Shifting even more towards “finding a therapist would be good”. Googled for a bit now but no obvious candidates yet. Maybe English | Dialog Therapy Centre. Idk.

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weekly update

Going to sleep better now that I’m hosting a couchsurfer. Eating better, too. Generally feeling better so far.

Recognizing things like “I feel anxious when people tell me thanks” and “given this, it’s normal to not want to tell people thanks because I’m afraid to also make them anxious” – this is good for my self-view. Much better than blaming myself.

Having better attitude towards work would remove a lot of stress. Not being anxious about “I’m not working as professionally as I’ve been hired to work”. Or “I’m not doing impactful things”. Etc. This all is in the anxiety domain.

Constantly checking my appearance, too. Having tiny flashes of anxiety whenever I talk to anyone.

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Removed some todos that I wasn’t planning to do anyway and was using the todo app as a way of forcing myself.

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weekly update

  • Recognized that I burned out, booked a 3-day vacation.
  • “I will go out today because self-care”
  • “I will order a pizza because self-care”
  • “I will take a headache pill because self-care”

Also continuing to explore “having anxiety”. Wrote a coming-out post on Facebook describing my anxiety. Wrote a tiny post in an internal chat room at work as well.

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weekly update

  1. I don’t like that I only write here once a week. I don’t do that much reflection and instead just feel like “ok idk what to write here”. When I was doing the insomnia journal daily, it worked better, I think.

    • I also don’t like that it’s unclear how to track progress. “Did I have insomnia? Y/N” works. But with self-care idk.
  2. I think I did more good things for myself during the vacation. Made a huge pot of tiramisu w/ kids from school, bought a coloring shampoo, read, hung out in a new coffee shop. However, I still haven’t done particularly much.

  3. Let’s list some of the struggles.

    • Sleep deprivation. Figuring out what makes me sleepy and how to stop it. I’m not doing that. I think in the past five days (work-less) I’ve been sleep deprived more than usual.

    • Regular meals. I’m not even trying. I just remember “oh I should find something to eat” every once in a while. Maybe this once-in-a-while is improving, but I don’t have the energy right now to even start tracking it properly, and “maybe it’s a bit better now” doesn’t feel good enough.

    • Life improvements. No plan, just occasional small things. Eg. finding a therapist would be helpful but nah.

  4. On the other hand, some big things (like eventually finding a book about anxiety that seems to be working for me) do come out of a general “increased focus on self-care”, which in turn is maintained by things like this thread.

    • So I wouldn’t want to abandon the thread.
  5. However, I still want to have a better purpose for the thread, just because right now it’s unsatisfying.

I suppose we can split three more-well-defined groups out of “self-care”, and do updates on those groups.

group 1: food

I won’t be doing anything about it right now because I’m sleepy.

group 2: sleep

I set up one sec for distracting sites today and hopefully I’ll be spending less time on distracting sites, which in turn will give me more sleep hours.

group 3: anxiety

Nothing in particular is going on, just learning to tolerate the feeling of anxiety.

I still feel anxious a lot – sort of a persistent state in background – but I started doing two things:

  • I remember that “anxiety doesn’t mean I’m in danger” and this means I can keep feeling the feeling without also having to think about [whatever anxious thoughts], and
  • I check whether I am HALT (hungry angry lonely tired) and at least for hungry I can go and find food.
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food

I started marking meals in the daily notebook and it makes it easier to figure out that “oh I haven’t had three meals yet I’ll go eat something”. Eg. right now I’m en route to a burger place.

sleep

Sleep is probably getting better thanks to app-blocking. I’m not watching YouTube or solving nonograms at night anymore rn.

anxiety

No change in anxiety, I think. I am feeling less stressed about work because everything’s gone to shit (layoffs, etc). Which makes me stop caring.

other

  • First time ever I was given march 8 flowers and surprisingly I was happier about them than I thought I would!

  • Coworking at work is good. I’ve been working for ~10mo already and I finally feel like work is becoming more social

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I mentioned that eating more often might be getting fixed thanks to the dailies. Here’s an example, though in Russian. Stars = self-care, red numbers in square brackets = meals.

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Thank god for having sections.

food

I think I’ve been eating at least three times a day for the last week.

This is good, but it turns out it doesn’t exactly fix malnourishment, because some meals are either too small or spaced too far apart.

Especially when I don’t have work / am not in office.

Ok. This remains unresolved, although maybe slightly improved.

Todo: buy ikea meatballs? I like meatballs.

sleep

The 8am alarm is back, which I suppose is good. Some YouTube-in-bed is also back, but not much. Sadly I don’t remember what my sleep was like beyond the last two days, and in the last two days it was meh.

As we can see, I don’t have the energy right now to actually write anything constructive here. Just want to write anything.

“Tolerating anxiety” could also be applied to “tolerating insomnia”.

anxiety

No change.

I assumed there were no anxiety medications apart from benzos, but then I read up on Zoloft and people on Reddit report very good effects. Wikipedia says Zoloft has higher effect sizes than exposure therapy, but regresses when you stop taking it (unlike exposure therapy). At any rate, my psychiatrist isn’t helping me find therapy so it’s not like it’s a choice between Zoloft and therapy. I want a different psychiatrist.

other

Took a day off (it was yesterday). I don’t feel like it’s a vacation, more like a long weekend. I suppose I should take three days off again. Yes, it eats into my day off budget, but this is a year of self-care and not a year of “go travel somewhere which you don’t have the money to do anyway”

Perhaps “ADHD flare-ups” are a thing. Not “routines broke and sleep broke etc”, but just a flare-up that I can try to mitigate to the extent that it’s mitigable at all (which might not be much).

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food

Still mostly ok but some days I’m hungry

sleep

Came up with the idea of exposure therapy for sleep (because going to sleep is uncomfortable), tried it today, fell asleep.

anxiety

A friend came to visit and I’ve been asking more questions to her on purpose

other

Idk Monday will be a documentation day I hope it will be good for me

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food

So mostly I’m eating three times a day, but sometimes not (if I don’t have energy or smth happens to the routines). Ok.

sleep

Sleep is better.

anxiety

I noticed that a lot of things I previously categorized as “blood boiling” were also anxiety, so now it’s easier to tolerate them as well. Ok.

other

Took another mini-vacation.

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food

Idk. No specific attempts to improve the situation for now

sleep

Haven’t had insomnia recently.

Hugging the BlĂĽhaj is nice.

More awareness now of “eh fuck it I want to sleep and sleep feels good so that’s what I’ll do, whatever”.

anxiety

I came up with the idea of creating tiny group chats (for me + the other person) with subtopics, and this made writing to people much easier. Because in my mind group chats aren’t scary.

Also generally idk I’m happy with my progress re/ anxiety for now

other

Switching to coffee instead of caffeine tabs has been good for me

Going to events with people has been good for me

Smoked with a friend recently but then asked her not to let me smoke w/ her in the future (because I don’t want to be smoking)

Switching to “keeping a task backlog + doing tasks in order” lets me get things done that I wouldn’t have done otherwise and would’ve kept feeling bad about. That’s nice

Writing in the gratitude journal sometimes

Have colorful pens and stickers at work

Got a perfume and it is nice to have also

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food

Started cooking at home more due to running out of money temporarily. It’s good because it made me try things I didn’t cook before.

Resumed recording how many times I eat per day. It’s still “three, but barely”; however, when I don’t record, I think it’s less than three. So that’s also good.

More aware of “oh, I should have some protein”.

Overall idk still vaguely malnourished I’d say

sleep

Sleep has gotten worse with Ritalin.

anxiety

I think I recognize anxiety better. I also started purposefully avoiding things that cause anxiety/spirals, like “going to the movies alone”. Better at abandoning social events that make me feel not-so-good. Better at telling people “sorry, I changed my mind, I’ll go home”.