Rachel’s Room🛋️Winter/Holiday Self-Care

Hello. Hello? Happy Wednesday, Cadre. Oh wait, it's Thursday. Happy Thursday. I'm so used to being here on Wednesday, but that's just where my brain goes. If you didn't see my note in the community section of the app, I had to reschedule my Live from yesterday to today because I was a mediator yesterday for a livestream on YouTube with Harvard talking about suicide prevention and suicide awareness, specifically when it comes to talking about it online. So that's why I am doing my Live today instead of yesterday.

And I am very grateful that you are here and I hope that you all had a lovely, lovely Wednesday. So today I wanted to talk a little bit about winter slash winter slash holiday self care. I just, there should be some static videos on my page right now that kind of talk a lot about navigating this season. Whether it's navigating seasonal depression, navigating being single during the holidays, navigating eating disorders during the holidays. You know, I think whether it's the holiday or it's this time of year, December particularly can be very, very challenging for all people.

And especially for folks that struggle with their mental health or for folks who are grieving, it can be a really overwhelming emotional time of year for a lot of different reasons. So I just wanted to talk today about a few things that I do to take care of myself this time of year. So just some sort of like self care practices that I particularly like to include this time of year to just to extra care of myself. So one of those things is finding some kind of a project or a craft that I can do at home.

So I often find that during the winter what I really struggle with is how to, how to fill my evening hours. It gets dark really early. So a lot of things that I would normally do in the evening I no longer do because I what I normally like to do when it's still sunny outside after dinner is I go take my dog for a long walk. I might go sit at the beach and read or a park. I'm not going to do that by myself in the dark. Which means that there are a lot of hours in the day from like 4 till 10 o'clock where I'm sitting at home.

And that can be really like incredibly isolating. And it can be very hard on the brain and the mind to be sort of stuck in thoughts all the time. It's a quick way to go down a lot of rabbit holes in our brains or to feel like I'm not doing enough and create some narratives around productivity Et cetera. So I find that having some kind of a craft or a project that I can do at home because that makes it more affordable. Of course, if you have places like a studio, you can go, you know, wonderful, but that I can do at home.

So I feel like I have something that I'm working on or enjoying that also gets me out of my head, keeps my hands busy. So right now I'm working on a scarf. I'm knitting a scarf. And it's been really lovely to have that in the evenings as something to do and something I can pick up. And it kind of is almost like a mindfulness activity as well, because I have to pay attention to what I'm doing. And so it creates a nice little mindful routine as well. So you can do all kinds of things. You know, like there's adult paint by numbers, which I purchased in the past that come with a full kit.

It's like a canvas with little like numbers and outlines and it comes with paint number. And then you just like fill in the paint where it tells you to doing things like beading. If you have like, you know, a not sculpture, like a clay studio in your neighborhood, you can go throw pots and be around other people. So these are kind of some ways to just fill those evening hours, which I find can be particularly challenging for me. Hi, Speak wonder. Thank you so much for being here and for sharing yourself with us.

Hello. Hello. Hi, Russell. Hi, Donna. Oh, hello. Seeing people pop in. So the other thing that I like to do. So in the past, I have sort of like, treated this time of year like I kind of went into like a Grinch mode where I was like, I hate the holidays, I hate the winter. Everyone's so happy and spending so much money. And like, I was a curmudgeon about it. And I didn't want to do anything holiday related. Like, I didn't want to go to tree lightings or pumpkin patches or anything that was like, festive.

I was like, boycotting. Now I've taken this approach of, like, why not just lean in and find a little joy? Like tap into my inner child a little bit and let myself play, let myself go to these festive things and lean in. And I find the more I allow myself to lean in, the more joy I get to experience. The more I get out of my house, the more I interact with other human beings, the more I'm trying novel new things, which is really good for our brains and doesn't mean that I have to love this time of year or change My mindset completely.

But by leaning in and practicing willingness. In dialectical behavior therapy, there's this concept of willfulness versus willingness. And willfulness is where we kind of. We oppose anything that feels outside of our idea of the world, or we resist change, or we're stubborn. And this is a very protective mechanism that we adopt for a lot of different reasons. And it can feel like a way for us to keep our sense of power or control. So oftentimes, this can be a trauma response, because it's a way for us to feel like we still have control, maybe because we didn't have a lot of power or control in certain scenarios.

And being willing can feel like we're letting go of our power. It can feel like we're letting go of control. And so it's very scary to be willing to try new things or willing to have this idea that maybe something could be enjoyable. And the reality is, when we allow ourselves to have a sense of willingness, we lean into this notion of letting go. We open ourselves up to possibilities, and that creates a lot of flexibility. It creates a lot of openness. It creates a sense of acceptance. And this is really good for.

It's really good for us to do this. So this is a great time of year for me to practice some willingness. Like, I'm gonna go to a holiday market tonight, Even though that might not be my jam, like, it's gonna get me out of the house. I can feel like I'm engaging in something that is where there's other people. And even if it's not, like, my favorite thing in the world, like, I'm trying something new, I'm willing. And so I find that doing that this time of year is also really, really helpful for my mental health.

And again, like, the same way, with a project like you're practicing, you're essentially practicing mindfulness, which is a really great therapeutic activity. Practicing willingness is a really great therapeutic activity. So we kind of have these opportunities to actually practice some skills that benefit us in general in the long run. And then the third thing I make sure I do is I find as many ways as possible to be in community. So being around friends, going to my gym, being around the people at my gym, making sure that if I'm writing or working on something that I could do at home, I go to a coffee shop and I do it there.

Making sure that I'm around other human beings as much as possible, and spending time in communal spaces, whether it's with people that I know or not, I'm making sure I'm around other people because again, this can because of the weather, you know, and also because a lot of people this time of year may be traveling. You know, it can be incredibly lonely and isolating. So making sure I'm really intentional about being around people, being connected and being in community is incredibly helpful. I hope that was in some ways helpful.

And as always, I'd love to hear your comments about hijewels, about how you handle this time of year in your self care. Like I said at the beginning of this video, there are like, you know, some static videos on my page that talk about navigating all different kinds of things this season. So please feel free to check those out and leave some comments. And I will see you next week at my regular time, Wednesday at 2pM PST. I hope you all have a lovely Thursday and a beautiful weekend.