Training the Ego: The need for Self-Care

Self-care means looking after yourself in many different ways because you are a complex person made of body, mind, and feelings. To take good care of yourself, you need to focus on several things: caring for yourself, coping with your surroundings, staying present in the moment, feeling well physically and mentally, setting limits, and staying positive.

Self-care is multidimensional, because we humans care for ourselves in many ways. For this course, our chosen dimensions of focus are Caring for the Self, Coping with the Environment around Us, Keeping Engaged in the Now Moment, Physically and Mentally Thriving, Keeping Boundaries and Staying Positive, with the following identified human needs:

The Need to Care

Your body and mind need your love and attention to stay healthy. Showing yourself care means paying attention to what you need and being honest with yourself about it. It’s important to keep promises to yourself and respect your limits. For example, don’t push yourself too hard or feel you must hide your feelings to avoid embarrassment. Talking kindly to yourself, like a good friend would, helps you stay strong and balanced.

Our focus will be on the need to show the organism your willingness to care and love it: By paying both it and you attention, while at the same time, trying to make sure that this caring attention, is as authentic and true, as possible.

This Includes treat oneself and others with  honour; keeping promises, enforcing boundaries on its behalf, not pushing it to overwhelm or burnout, etc.

We will show how to create a strong, friendly and trusting relationship with your true-self.

The Need for Boundaries

Boundaries are like invisible fences that protect you from harm. They help stop you from hurting yourself by saying “no” when something is too much. Setting and keeping boundaries is very important because it keeps you feeling safe and cared for. You can decide what is okay for you and what is not, and gently but firmly keep to those limits.

Maintaining these boundaries, minimise any self-inflicted pain. Boundaries are critically important and we will explain how they should be set and enforced

The Need to Cope

Life keeps changing, and sometimes it can feel stressful. Learning how to handle these changes in a healthy way is called coping. Coping means using your boundaries and self-care skills so you don’t get overwhelmed by problems or other people. A good way to practice is to see how you feel in busy places like town, then compare that to how calm you feel in nature. Notice what makes you tense in town and think about ways to handle those feelings better.

We will be explaining how to expand on concepts such as boundaries and honour, so we can become more confident of our ability to cope dynamically with personal and social interactions.

We will also discuss how existing coping patterns can be assessed and improved, in order to increase processing speed. For example, the individual can assess themselves in town, then go to nature and compare their coping load. Then, on the way back from nature into town, they can try to notice triggers that cause coping behaviours to load.

The Need to Be Engaged in the Now Moment

It’s easy to get stuck thinking about bad things that happened in the past or worrying about what might go wrong in the future. But being fully in the “now,” paying attention to what is happening around you right this minute, is important for your happiness and calmness. Focusing on the present helps stop unhappy thoughts from taking over your mind.

The Need to Thrive

Thriving means not just getting by or surviving but feeling your very best and living a full life. It asks you to think about what your best self looks like and to work towards that on purpose. Thriving can mean different things to different people: feeling energetic, learning new things, or enjoying your hobbies and friends. It’s about aiming for more than just getting through the day.

Thriving is a futures thing; thriving is what one’s best-self does. Does this need to thrive need to become an intentional personal embodiment? A vision of ones thriving future? How would that look?

The Need to Feel Positive

Feeling positive can greatly help your health and mood. Things like dancing, trusting others, feeling grateful, and saying kind things to yourself can all make you feel happier inside. We call these the “happy dance” and “trust dance.” Spending time in nature also helps, but the most important is having a special place inside yourself – a happy place where you can feel safe and joyful even on tough days.

Positivity is a significant beneficial support, we will also be looking at gratitude, and positive self-affirmations.