Self Care on a shoestring budget
A lot of what our consumer society means when they talk about self care is about buying yourself something. But real self care isn’t about buying anything. Sure, a manicure can feel good, but not everyone has an extra $50 lying around for a mani/pedi splurge. Luckily, I know some tricks to ease anxiety on the cheap! Here are some very DIY forms of self care that are backed up by research to improve your mood.
Water
At the end of a long trying day when you feel exhausted and depleted, take a shower, or a bath, or stick your face in a sink full of cold water. The act of cleansing yourself acts as a way of washing away the day. You can visualize all the stress of your day swirling down the drain as you take a shower. That dumb staff meeting you had to sit in? Imagine everyone and everything in that conference room slipping away down the drain, even the whiteboard with all those objectives and trendy buzzwords on it. Wave bye-bye to the ink from the dry erase markers as it swirls into ribbons of green, red, and blue and then slides down the drain. When you are ready to get out of the shower, turn the dial to run the cold water and stay under for at least 30 seconds. You’ll be surprised how much your mood can improve.
Or take a bath. You don’t need to buy a $25 bath bomb or some fancy schmancy oil, just use epsom salt. Once it dissolves in the water, epsom salt turns into magnesium and sulfate and provides relief for soreness from arthritis, fibromyalgia and lots of other types of chronic pain.
And if you don’t have the time to take a shower or a bath, the quickest and most effective way to change up your mood is by plunging your face into a sink full of cold water. The end of the shower trick mentioned above and this one invokes the mammalian diving reflex, and helps slow down our heart rate, constricts blood vessels, and conserve oxygen. This can also have an immediate calming effect on the body.
Nature
Go touch grass. Seriously. Go for a walk, sit under a tree, or simply listen to birds in a park or your backyard. Listening to birds singing can reduce anxiety, and that’s because our ancient brains have long associated bird songs with tranquility. Birds won’t sing if there are predators around so a very long time ago humans began associating birdsongs with safety and security. And if you’re really into birds, I highly recommend downloading Merlin, a free app from Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology. It helps you identify birds by their songs. As of this writing, there are 1,382 species of birds in the app, but you can help add more by recording your own bird songs and uploading them. Going outside and getting in touch with nature allows you to imagine yourself as part of something amazing and expansive and reminds you of the beauty and wonder of the natural world.
Laugh
This one might be tricky because if you’re deep into your feelings, finding something to laugh about can be challenging. But laughter has been found to activate and relieve your stress response, soothe tension, and improve your immune system. Take it from the Mayo Clinic, they’ve studied this! So go on YouTube and find some “sure thing” clips that make you laugh. Or, just reach out to a friend and share memories that make you both laugh and remember how silly life can be sometimes. While there are so many serious and heavy things we’re asked to carry in life, it’s okay to give yourself permission to take a break from that when you need to and just laugh.
Finally, I highly recommend you read Real Self Care by Dr. Pooja Lakshmin. In it she explains how real self care is, “an internal, self-reflective process that involves making difficult decisions in line with our values, and when we practice it, we shift our relationships, our workplaces, and even our broken systems.” I found this book tremendously helpful in my exploration of what matters most to me, and how I can take care of myself without having the money to spend on the things that most of us are told will make us feel better: vacations, spa getaways, shoes, beauty treatments, and so many other things that, sure, I guess they provide temporary relief, but I’m interested in the real deal. Dr. Lakshmin says real self care has four main goals: setting boundaries and learning how to deal with guilt, developing self compassion and treating yourself kindly, making decisions that align with values you've identified matter most to you, and reclaiming power to allow yourself to live in a way that feels authentic and sustainable. I recommend getting the book from your local public library or from bookshop.org.