S2E10: On Self-Care

As a child, I trained myself to stare right into bright headlights of approaching cars. It hurt, but I thought that was how I would toughen up my eyes and just get used to it. It never worked.

For most of my life, I thought harder was better. Every workout was at maximum intensity, and workouts were every day, without a break, unless I was injured. Which I never was.

Until I was, and then I was depressed and irritated and felt like everything was coming apart. I wasn’t seeing the results I wanted. Clearly 1600 calories a day was too much, my workouts not hard enough. 

My other problems elicited similar responses. Clearly I just wasn’t hitting everything hard enough. So I would hit it harder. It didn’t matter if it was a song, a relationship, or a daily task. Singing, playing the guitar, working out -- you name it. More effort must be better.

Up through my 30s, I just assumed this is how life was: hard. A struggle. Banging on everything as hard as you could. The winners, the successful, the victorious -- they must be on some other level of hitting it harder.

I couldn’t figure out why I hurt all the time physically, mentally, and emotionally.

I thought I was taking care of myself, but all I was doing was breaking myself down.

In the early 2000s, I read about Olympian Dara Torres. Torres is about my age. She is the fastest swimmer in Olympics history. And in the 2008 Olympics, at age 41, she was the oldest person ever to make the swim team.

She won 3 silver medals in 2008, with two of the races separated by only 35 minutes. 

I read about her with interest -- by 40, I was starting to feel the cumulative effects of my constant grind. Here was someone my age, obviously gifted, obviously hard-working, and able to be the best even though she was competing against people decades younger.

Dara’s trainer noted that at 41, they had to change her program. He said that she still went hard occasionally, but most of her workouts were moderate intensity. And for every hour she spent training, she spent an hour in recovery -- resting, stretching, getting a massage, rehabilitating. Not going harder. Taking care of her body.

This blew my mind. How could this be? Was this actually beneficial physically? Was it all psychological? 

I hadn’t had a real massage in at least a decade. I booked one, and a week later found myself face-down on a table. The therapist went to work while I tried not to feel too insecure about my body. I could feel my sore and tense muscles slowly unwinding as they did their best. 

I found myself on the verge of tears for most of the session. Partially because of the tension finally releasing, and partially because of the soreness of my body. But I realized it was also because I was so unused to letting someone touch me and simply care for me in such a direct and hands-on way. 

That night, I slept better than I had in as long as I could remember. I vowed to get regular massages, not as a “reward” for training hard, but as a part of training hard. Like Dara Torres.

I thought maybe I should get a trainer, a coach, like Dara had. So not long after, I found myself a personal trainer. I didn’t see it as an indulgence, I saw it as part of my training program.

In our first session, after watching me work out a bit and talking to me, she said “so, in every workout you do, you go as hard as you can for all of it?” I smiled proudly and said “of course!”. She shook her head. “That’s not how you’re supposed to do it. That’s not good for you.” I would go on to train with her for a long time. The workouts were challenging, but only very rarely the kind of all-out devastation I had been subjecting myself to.

The first two times I took myself to therapy, I was in crisis, and my therapists kept me from completely falling apart. They helped my life get back on track, and helped me deal with some terrible situations. But the most recent two therapists I engaged were less about crisis and more about simply spending some time on me, on getting better. On having a professional listener, who could help me work through some things before they became crises, to help my well-being. It isn’t cheap, and it gives me work I have to do on my own, but I consider it very similar to my physical trainer. 

All of these people -- massage therapist, personal trainer, therapist -- are helping me learn to take care of myself. So are my doctor and my dentist. 

It took me longer than it should to realize taking care of myself doesn’t just mean going hard. It means an equal amount of rest and recovery. It means listening to my body, mind, and spirit, and giving myself time to heal, assimilate, and recharge. That is how you improve. It isn’t the workouts and exertion -- that is the tearing down part. The rest and recovery is where you actually get stronger. They go together. All workouts and no rest is just as bad as all rest and no workouts. Arguably more destructive.

That lesson eventually began to sink in for other parts of my life, too. Even beginning guitar players learn that grabbing the neck too hard will pull the strings sharp, as will picking too hard. Voice teachers will tell you singing too loud and too hard is not good for your voice, makes you go out of tune, and sounds bad as well. Yeah, I have a voice teacher, too.

I had and have so many things I want to do or feel that I need to do. Yet I am learning not to “let myself have a day off”, but to recognize that those days of not doing things are critically important as well. There’s only so much I can put in my head or try to do before the quality falls off, or before life just turns into some grim list of chores.

Taking care of yourself is important. Learning what you need is a critical part of that. Perhaps you’re not going to win 3 silver medals at 41, but it is also pretty clear that if Dara Torres hadn’t practiced some serious self-care, she wouldn’t have won them, either.

This self-care might be physical stuff, like I’m talking about, or it might be mental. What makes you feel good and is actually good for you? Don’t mistake bad indulgences for self-care. The right kind of care makes you healthier, not just sated or wasted. You’ll know it’s the right thing, because afterwards, you are ready to get back to life.

And as important as self-care is, letting other people take care of you is perhaps even more important, but that is a topic for another day.