Don’t mind me, I’m locked in the bathroom
Shortly after becoming a manager for a non-profit program, I had a series of meetings about a particular funding stream. Now I don’t remember who was in the meetings, but these were people who were going to make decisions about whether or not they should pay us a lot of money to do the work we were doing. It was important. They were important. And I was confused. There were forms they were expecting, there were arrangements they had made I didn’t know about, I felt like I had already screwed up beyond repair. I started crying. In the meeting. In front of “the very important people.”
After the meeting, I was relaying this story to a close colleague, telling her how embarrassed I felt about crying in the meeting. (“Why couldn’t I just keep it together?”) She reassured me that it would be ok, that I hadn’t jeopardized our funding, and then she asked me, “what if you had just left? What if you had … excused yourself to go to the bathroom, given yourself a chance to breathe, and returned to the meeting when you felt ready?”
Since that day, I have excused myself to go to the bathroom on many occasions. What my colleague gave me was the option to not have to keep it together, but instead to take a moment to pull it together. The option to leave for a moment. Just for a moment. Nothing magical, I wouldn’t have suddenly had the answers or known what forms they were talking about, but taking that breather could have given me a chance to find a question - maybe just one - that would slow the process down, that would slow me down, that would help me be more regulated, and help everyone in the meeting get to a better place together.
If your newsfeed is anything like mine, you are bombarded with articles and ads and information about self-care. From manicures to bath salts, from exercise to alcohol, from socializing to leaning into one’s anti-social tendencies, there is no dearth of media around the importance of finding time to really take care of ourselves. And the parenting arena is no stranger to a good self-care tip.
I’m not here to tell you anything different - you do need to take care of yourself - and I’m certainly not here to tell you the best way to do it - I bet you have a pretty good idea of what you need to do.
And an idea that I think should be talked about as much as self-care is the idea of finding self-sustaining practices.
There is a lot of overlap between self-care and self-sustaining -- enough that some people might not see the need to differentiate them. But to me, self-care carries a connotation of something added, something planned, something set aside. “I will arrange for someone else to supervise my children while I…. go for a walk, take a long bath, visit my friends across the country.” Or “when I am away from work, I will turn off my e-mail notifications, I will leave work at work.”
A self-sustaining practice, on the other hand, refers to the less glamorous but equally important acts that you must make time for in the moment because you need something urgently. They are the fast food meal, the candy bar or, as my sister calls it, the emergency fountain soda, as opposed to the well-planned, carefully sourced, expertly prepared gourmet meal. “I am flipping out, I’m on my own, my kids are pulling my hair, I have oatmeal all over my shirt, it’s only 6am and daycare drop off isn’t until 9:30.” Can’t schedule a massage, might not even be able to squeeze in a shower. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll find a clean shirt. Or, “I am in between back to back meetings, important ones. And someone just announced they’re quitting. More work for me.” Don’t have time for a lunch break and can’t turn off the e-mail notifications right now, but I guess there’s time to smile at a silly picture of my kid. (I don’t endorse skipping lunch, but let’s be real: it happens.)
Look, we may aim for the gourmet meal, but when you’re hungry, you need to eat. The same is true for your emotional functioning: when you are starved for calm, when you can’t even find space for a breath -- when you are dysregulated, you cannot function effectively, much less help anyone else stay regulated. That is why you put the oxygen mask on yourself first: if you can’t breathe, good luck figuring out how to put the oxygen mask on someone else.
When you do not have the option to leave and things feel dire, the sense of impending doom is topped by the trapped feeling and together they make it impossible to calm down, impossible to find a way out. So you can drag yourself along in this overwhelmed state and maybe get through, but risk doing so in a way that is potentially detrimental (unsafe, unhealthy, unsustainable). Or you can STEP AWAY. Just for a moment. Take a few deep breaths. Not for self-care, not because this is going to make you feel great, but because this is going to let you get through. You are not climbing a mountain or running a marathon here, you are getting yourself out of a hole in the ground so you can keep walking at a slow pace.
Here are some of the self-sustaining practices I use. Some work at home, some work at work, some work with 10 seconds, some work with 3 minutes. They work because they get me out of my head: they help me feel less trapped in the situation, they give me time to reset, to think about what I’ll do next.
Locking myself in the bathroom
Taking 3 or 5 deep breaths
Repeating a question, maybe twice, maybe three times
Texting a friend or sending a Snapchat
Making a cup of tea
Doodling
Starting to whistle like a clown in the circus instead of using words
Clapping
Inviting my children to do one or all of these things with me
What self-sustaining practices have you found work for you? Let me know.