If you've been on the internet and have a chronic illness or mental health difficulties (or even if you don't) you've probably seen people talk about self care. There are all these lists of things you can do to take care of yourself and help yourself fell better over time. And they're good suggestions and they do work, but here's the big issue: you have to be motivated enough to do the things. When you have a chronic illness and you're having a low energy day or when you have mental health issues and you're lacking motivation it's really hard to actually do those things on the lists. Real life example: yesterday my depression was pretty bad and my anxiety was really bad. In my head I knew that self care would help me but I also lacked the motivation to do any of those things, such as make myself a cup of tea, do a face mask, turn on my favorite music, so I didn't do any of it. The other huge problem is that when you're really depressed you might feel like you don't actually deserve to feel better so you just won't do anything that might help you feel better. For these situations I have come up with a sort of self care cheat sheet. This is a list of the easiest possible things I could think of that can help you feel just a little bit better. It's great for low-energy days or days where you're lacking motivation. I am personally going to try to do at least one of these things every day. Some days you might be able to do every single one since they're things that don't require a lot of energy or motivation, and none of them cost any money! So here it is, my list of small ways to feel a little bit better every day:
Drink water, go outside if even for just a minute (if you can't bring yourself to go outside, look out a window at outside for even just a minute), do something nice for someone else (even if it's just sharing someone's post online with your friends), take deep breaths when it gets difficult, rest when you need to. If you didn't do so well today try again tomorrow. Remember you're not alone.
Read more mental health blog posts like this one at my new blog: https://www.honeybeealley.com/blog
