I created my own Self-Care Circle

If you just asked yourself, “What’s a self-care circle?” let me explain …

What if we started to see self care as a prescription/recipe for caring for our nervous system? I kind of like that idea. (To give credit, this came from a book I love called “Anchored”.)

Our nervous system needs different things at different times and it’s good to be prepared with different activities so we can be flexible and have a repertoire of activities that are ready for us to use in answer to this question: 

So part of the self-care circle is to give your nervous system what it needs.

We need different responses, or skills, at different times. We never know what life will throw our way, and we need to be able to answer this simple question when things don’t go as planned:

What does my nervous system need now? 

”Anchored” suggests that we don’t “should” ourselves. (That’s kind of the opposite of self-care.) 

We don’t “have to” do any of these activities the second something happens. 

If we do that, we end up defeating the purpose of soothing our nervous system. 

“Shoulds” tend to rev up our sympathetic/fight or flight system. 

So instead of “should-ing” we create a self-care circle now, while we’re calm. And you can do that by asking:

What would be most nourishing for my nervous system? 

Wanted to share this because I thought it was really powerful.