8 Ways to Upgrade Your Self-Care Routine in 2022

8 Ways to Upgrade Your Self-Care Routine in 2022

Does the new year get you in the mood to make some changes? The idea of a fresh start is enticing, and the end of the year can be the perfect time to evaluate what’s working for you in your life and what you want to change in the year to come. Of course, not everyone likes making big changes at the new year (or sometimes people feel pressured to change by advertising and social media), so the idea of making a change now doesn’t sit right with everyone. If that’s the case, feel free to read over these suggestions and save them for a time when you are making a change. 

One impactful way to make a change is to reconsider and upgrade your self-care routine. The last two years have thrown a lot at us, and in turn it’s helpful to amp up the way we care for ourselves in these difficult times. 

Upgrading your self care routine can be as quick as putting reminders in your calendar to pick up your prescriptions or scheduling an appointment with a therapist. It can also mean reconsidering how you currently take care of yourself and letting go of practices that no longer serve you. 

Everyone is different, so everyone’s self-care practices and preferences will look different. It’s easy to get into the comparison game these days with everyone else’s highlight reel literally a click away, but try to focus on what you’re doing for you, not on what everyone else is doing. Even if someone’s life seems perfect, they undoubtedly have some stuff they’re dealing with behind the scenes. Your self-care routine should give you space to rest, relax, and rejuvenate, as well as feel creatively and emotionally fulfilled. 

As it happens, we have a ton of ideas for how to upgrade your self-care routine in the new year. Each suggestion leads to a more in-depth post on the topic so you can dive deep if you want to. Here they are:

Stop Comparing Yourself to Others

“When you’re constantly putting yourself up against someone else–out of either admiration or jealousy–you’re not seeing the other person as a full person. You’re only seeing the one thing that is provoking an emotional reaction out of you (a picture of their vacation, a post about their promotion, etc.). It can lead to jealousy, even resentment in your relationships.

Another way comparison can cause harm is the way it leads you to over evaluate yourself. While self awareness is good, like all things it needs moderation. Excessive self awareness and self evaluation will get you stuck in your head, overthinking, and preventing you from actually meaningfully engaging in the present.”

Work on Being Nicer to Yourself

“Self-compassion is being nice to yourself. The idea of self-compassion is drawn from Buddhism. Being kind to yourself might sound really simplistic, but it can be a lot harder than it sounds. Many of us have a voice in our heads that chimes in when we mess up. That voice is called the Inner Critic, and it can be hard to notice it sometimes. 

There are times when we’re so immersed in beating ourselves up that we don’t even consider that there’s another option. However, there is always another option. Being kind, gentle, and understanding to yourself is always a choice you can make, it just takes practice to remember that that’s an option.”

Get to Know Yourself Better

“Do you have to get to know yourself? It’s not required, but understanding yourself on a deeper level can increase your overall happiness, reduce the sense of inner conflict you feel, and help you feel more empowered. The better you know yourself, the better decisions you can make. 

You know what your boundaries are and what your needs are. You’ll be able to resist peer pressure or comparing yourself to others, because you’re confident that the path you’re on is right for you (and if you’re not on the right path, you’ll have a map to it when you understand yourself on a deeper level). Not only will it be easier to make decisions and exercise self-control when you get to know yourself better, but you’ll also feel more understanding toward others.”

Dedicate Time to Being Creative Regularly

“Creativity in any form helps us to express our feelings. Whether that’s through writing, singing, dancing, painting, sculpting, etc., creativity gives us an outlet to be freely vulnerable and authentic. 

Through art, music, movement, or other forms of expression we can start to unpack and understand our feelings, and what those feelings are telling us about ourselves, our needs, and our desires.”

Start Using Affirmations

“Research shows that using affirmations can essentially reprogram your mind. Instead of sticking with your old patterns of negative thinking and self-talk, affirmations teach your brain to make new connections. Getting into the habit of using affirmations can also help you get more familiar with the patterns in your day to day thoughts. When you notice what’s going on, you can do something to change it. 

Another great thing about affirmations is that you get to choose them. There are so many things about life that we can’t control and can’t change. One thing we can control is how we think. If you find negative thoughts and assumptions creeping in, you can choose to engage with them or not. You can decide to think about positive things to try to shift that negativity.”

Reparent Your Inner Child

“If growing up you didn’t feel safe and loved and listened to, then because of your inner child, there is still a part of you holding onto that fear. And that fear has likely affected your life as an adult–even though the experience was so long ago. As the adult you are now, you are able to identify what in your inner child needs healing, and then provide them with it. This is how you work as both parent and child within yourself. You are the child, hurting. And you are the parent, helping them heal. 

When you start building a life that makes your inner child feel safe and loved and listened to, you are able to let go of those coping mechanisms you used when you didn’t feel safe and loved and listened to. In this way, inner child work helps you reach the future you want by healing your past wounds.”

Tap Into Your Intuition

“Past experiences are all stored in our brains, and while we may not be actively thinking about them, our brain can access them when it needs to. It uses those past experiences and cues from our environment and our sense of self and all comes together to give us those gut feelings we call intuition. 

Your body and your brain can interpret your environment faster than you can, so when you get a “bad feeling” it doesn’t mean you’re overreacting or being “crazy”–it means that there is something there, some element of your environment that triggered that knowledge in the back recesses of your brain before you could piece it together yourself.”

Explore Spirituality

“At its core, spirituality is about connecting with your world. It’s about finding your values, and finding ways to live your life with them in mind. It’s about finding your purpose, your connection to others, your connection to the world around you. Spirituality, whatever form it shows up in, is how we make sense of the time we’re given in this world.

Spiritual wellness just means that you are asking yourself the question “What does it mean for me to be spiritually fulfilled?” and then doing your best to incorporate practices that help you achieve that fulfilment.”

What are you looking forward to in 2022? If you’re looking for more support as you shift your routines in the new year, talking with a therapist can help.

Listening to Your Intuition After Trauma

Trusting your intuition after something traumatic has happened to you can be extremely difficult. 

Oftentimes after trauma, we don’t trust ourselves at all. We feel a false sense of responsibility for what happened to us–like if only we had been on the lookout for warning signs, we could have prevented it. This sort of thinking can make us what is known as hypervigilant.

Okay, what is hypervigilance? And how does it impact our intuition? 

Hypervigilance is a state of extreme alertness, and often a symptom of PTSD. When you are hypervigilant it means you are constantly evaluating your environment for potential threats–and frequently responding to threats you perceive that may not really be there. In this state of extreme alertness, normal things that are not actual threats to your safety (physical, emotional, mental) are interpreted as threats, even if all they are is minor discomforts. 

This of course has a huge impact on your day to day experience. Experiencing this sort of endless hypervigilance can:

• heighten your anxiety

• make you feel physically more tense/sore/achy

• affect your sleeping habits

• affect your appetite 

So it is hard to live in a state of hypervigilance. It is basically like living, constantly in fight, flight or freeze mode. Recognizing that is an important beginning step as you heal: What you are doing takes so much strength, and even if others can’t see it, you deserve to have that acknowledged. Be kind to yourself through this process of healing, even if it doesn’t go as quickly as you would like it to. Anything you’re feeling is okay; whether you’re disheartened or frustrated or angry or sad. There is no wrong way to feel, but remember this is only temporary.

So, the first step to healing your relationship to your intuition after trauma is to promise to be gentle with yourself.

It will likely be a slow process, that will happen gradually as you work through what happened to you and do other healing work in therapy. Being hypervigilant will not disappear overnight, but you can begin to pay attention to your body's cues, to learn them and start to distinguish between fear and hypervigilance and your intuition or “gut feelings” again.

Getting in tune with your intuition again: 

Don’t rush it!  

After experiencing trauma there’s often an internal sense of “I should just get over it” or “it wasn’t that bad” or “I’m overreacting” or “I should be over it by now.” But none of these thoughts are true or helpful!  There is no timeline on healing, so there is no wrong amount of time for you to “get over” something. And it is always better to heal slowly than to sweep over something and leave the wound ignored or dealt with insufficiently. 

Change your goal.

The goal isn’t going to be figuring out what is fear and what is intuition at first. While eventually you want to be able to know when you’re being triggered so you can self soothe or get some support in the moment rather than react to every perceived threat (when there may not be one), to start that’s not realistic! It’s too many steps at once. 

Instead start by not focusing on whether your  feelings are rational or not or whether the danger you're feeling is "real" or "valid"–but noticing when those feelings pop up at all. It’s actually okay to protect yourself more than “necessary”–this is something many people struggle with. It is not your responsibility to live as though you haven’t experienced a trauma when you have. It’s just your job to notice your feelings thoughtfully and explore what they mean for you–and to keep yourself safe as you do so.  

The feelings you’re experiencing do have a real impact on you, so responding to that fear is perfectly normal. These extreme responses will come up more often than before but they will slow and settle as you heal. The point isn't to shut those reactions off but to learn to tune in and notice what you're feeling when you feel it

Notice what you’re feeling!

When instances like this(feeling triggered, responding to a perceived threat, etc.) come up, don’t try to shove your feelings away because they’re “irrational.” Instead, ask yourself: 

• What am I feeling?

• Where did this feeling come from?

• Was there something in my surroundings that triggered it?

• Where in my body do I feel this feeling?

Get familiar with your responses.

Eventually you will be able to distinguish between your intuition or “gut” telling you something, and your past trauma being triggered and putting you on high alert. Getting in tune with your emotional responses, and taking time to notice will help to facilitate this. 

Many people, even those who haven’t experienced something traumatic, struggle to tell the difference between their fear and their intuition. It takes time and practice to be able to recognize which one is speaking to you. A general rule of thumb is that if it is your intuition, it will provide a feeling of calm groundedness, whereas fear and hypervigilance feel emotionally charged, urgant, and focused on uncontrollable what if’s. 

If you’re looking for more support as you heal your relationship to your intuition after experiencing a trauma, one of our therapists can help support you. Contact us today!

How to Tap Into and Listen to Your Intuition

What is Intuition?

Intuition sounds like a complex, magical thing. When we think about intuitive people there’s an air of fortune-telling or mysticism that comes along with the word, but all intuition really is is your feelings. Intuition is your gut instinct in any situation. 

You know that saying “you know more than you think you do”? That’s where intuition comes in. We have so much knowledge stored in our brains that we don’t access on a daily basis, so sometimes we forget it’s there. Your gut feelings, your intuition, is that knowledge coming back up. 

Past experiences are all stored in our brains, and while we may not be actively thinking about them, our brain can access them when it needs to. It uses those past experiences and cues from our environment and our sense of self and all comes together to give us those gut feelings we call intuition. 

Your body and your brain can interpret your environment faster than you can, so when you get a “bad feeling” it doesn’t mean you’re overreacting or being “crazy”–it means that there is something there, some element of your environment that triggered that knowledge in the back recesses of your brain before you could piece it together yourself. 

Our intuition doesn’t yell at us. It’s like a whisper in the back of our minds. Sometimes we can’t even explain what it’s trying to say–it’s just a feeling that something is off, that something needs closer attention, something drawing us in a particular direction. This is also why our intuition is so often ignored. If you aren’t intentional about listening to your intuition it can seem like a silly feeling, something you just need to shake off. 

Signs You Aren’t Listening to Your Intuition:

1. There’s constant discomfort in your stomach

   Yes! Turns out your gut feelings can actually have a physical effect on your actual gut. The mind-body connection is extremely powerful; our bodies know when something in our mind has been left unattended. And when we have ignored our feelings or anxieties, our body tries to force us to address them. These feelings manifest in physical symptoms, which in this case is most commonly stomach ache or distress. 

2. You feel like you’re lying

   When someone asks you how you are and you respond “Great!” because you can’t point to anything technically wrong in your life, does it actually feel great? If you’re looking for reasons why that “great” might be a lie, chances are you have missed something your intuition has been trying to tell you. Even if things are going well, there is a gut feeling there that you need to make a change, and when you ignore that feeling, what should feel great starts to feel off. 

3. You feel out of place socially

   Our intuition can play a huge role in our social lives if we let it. When we listen to our intuition socially, we’re able to find our place better, find the people we can really bond with. But often, we’re looking for the people who are right for us on paper, rather than in our guts. Maybe you spend time with your coworkers because you want to fit in at work, maybe you feel like you’re constantly adjusting yourself to fit into your social group, etc. Instead of making changes within yourself that aren’t true to who you are, listen to what your intuition is telling you about your social situation. Tap into that gut feeling when meeting new people. Do you click? Does it feel right? Or do you feel out of place?

How You Can Tap Into Your Intuition:

Learning to listen to our intuition can be an incredible turning point. It might be a big adjustment (especially if you’re a person who likes to make pro/con lists before making every decision) but tapping into the powerful knowledge we already have about ourselves can do wonders for our mental health. It helps us: 

• Feel more confident in our decisions

• Feel more confident in ourselves

• Feel more at ease in our social circles

• Feel more at peace in our day to day lives

• Improve health & sleep overall

So how can you start to tap into your intuition?

1. Practice Mindfulness

   when you make mindfulness a regular part of your routine, your intuition (and your ability to hear and heed your intuition) grows stronger. Find a few moments each day to commit to mindfulness. Whether it’s on your drive to work, while you’re brushing your teeth, just before you go to bed, etc. Whatever it is you decide to do mindfully, commit to that one activity entirely. Think about what you’re doing, what you’re feeling, the environment around you. When you actively practice noticing the present moment, it is easier to recognize your intuition when it tries to speak with you. 

2. Make low-risk gut decisions

   Not sure how reliable your intuition is? Test it out a bit while you grow comfortable with it. When low-pressure decisions come up (where are you going to eat, what should you wear, what book should you start next) make the decision based purely on whatever gut feeling you get. This can help you start to trust your own intuition, and allow you to rely on it when bigger decisions come along. 

3. Keep a dream journal

   Our dreams are often huge methods of communication for our intuition. Do you ever wake from a dream and feel like it was important? What were the feelings you got from the dream, what were the big things that stood out? Keep a paper journal or use the voice memo app to record what it was that stood out about those dreams. Then take some time to reflect on what these dreams could be trying to tell you. Not every dream is a secret message, but learning to pay attention to what our mind is trying to tell us as it processes the day’s events can help us hone our intuition! 

4. Pay attention to your energy

   When does your energy feel depleted? When does it feel recharged? Do you feel anxious in specific situations? Do certain people have the same effect on your energy every time you see them? This can be your intuitions way of telling you what is good for you to keep in your life and what needs to be reevaluated. 

Do you need some extra support in learning how to tap into and trust your intuition? We can help. Contact us today!

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therapist in falls church, mclean, tysons corner, merrifield, arlington and vienna, va

Hope+Wellness is a psychotherapy practice serving the Falls Church, McLean, Great Falls, Vienna, Arlington, Alexandria, and the greater Washington DC region. We provide individual therapy to children, teens, and adults with stress, anxiety, and depression. Our practice is in-network with BCBS and provides Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), mindfulness and acceptance based therapies, and other top, premier evidence-based treatments. Call, email, or schedule an appointment with us online today. We’re happy to help!