Self-care is a word I will never tire of. It's essential. It's vital. It's a need. I don't think I heard that message as clearly as I did in 2020. The importance of self-care was already buzzing around in the form of various sound bytes filling the social media realm like fluffy white clouds in the sky. Messages of pouring into self were everywhere I turned. And on the opposite side of that spectrum was the push for productivity, the hustle, and the grind. The messages seemed to conflict back then. But I wouldn't learn until a cabin weekend away, unplugged with nature in the fall of 2019, that rest was not the antithesis of productivity; it was the key.
From that moment, I prioritized wellness and self-care. To keep it all the way a buck, that lesson got a little lost in the wake of how 2020 played out. It would peek out in the most random spurts, holding me still until I was myself again, but for much of the year, self-care wouldn't come into play as much as I knew I needed it. Life got in the way. Forget thriving, surviving got in the way. And as a result, my mental health completely suffered. For the first time in my life, I had to navigate a series of depressive episodes back-to-back. And though I feel blessed that the pain of that year was also met with elements of sheer pleasure, and didn't have the depth a lot of people experienced through loss, I found myself in holes sometimes that felt difficult to get out of at the time.
In the process of finding my way back to a life that didn't lack color, I reencountered the power of self-care. I was reminded of the fact that when it comes to the tool, don't sleep. What I also learned in that process was the fact that there are different self-care strokes for different folks, and depending on which of the types of self-care resonate with you, the more of an impact self-care will have on your overall well-being. Knowing the self-care types and which one works best for you will transform your world for the better. Keep reading to learn more.
What Are The 6 Types Of Self-Care?
- Physical Self-Care
- Emotional Self-Care
- Spiritual Self-Care
- Intellectual Self-Care
- Social Self-Care
- Mental Self-Care
What Is Physical Self-Care?
Getty Images
When it comes to the bodies that we live in, they are temples and should be honored as such. If you're wondering what is physical self-care, you guessed it, physical self-care has everything to do with acts rooted in physical well-being. While physical self-care can consist of exercise, physical fitness is not the end all be all when it comes to this type of self-care. It can include yoga and going for a walk or bike ride, but physical self-care can also include rituals like adopting a mindful skincare routine, keeping up with doctors' appointments, prioritizing sexual health, and maintaining a healthy diet that makes you feel good inside and out.
What Is Emotional Self-Care?
Getty Images
As a person who connects to the world and life deeply through emotions, emotional self-care is a form of self-care that resonates most with me. Emotional self-care entails becoming one with your emotional self. You check-in with yourself, and you put in work to understand any feelings, emotions or triggers you might be navigating through. It is not about replacing negative emotions with positive emotions as much as it's about acknowledging how you feel and why you might feel that way. Center yourself through emotional self-care acts like journaling and/or morning pages, meditation, or implementing a mindfulness routine.
What Is Spiritual Self-Care?
Getty Images
When it comes to the types of self-care I most readily gravitate towards, spiritual self-care is a really close second. Due to my love for spiritual maintenance, this form of self-care feels almost effortless. When you think of the word "spiritual", "religion" might come to mind, but religion isn't the only way to connect to your spirituality (though your relationship with faith can play a role in how you practice spiritual self-care). The purpose is to feed your soul as you tap into means to achieve inner peace. This can look like church or prayer, yes, but it can also look like meditating, reciting positive affirmations, and taking a walk in nature.
What Is Intellectual Self-Care?
Getty Images
Developing the mind is the name of the game with intellectual self-care. There is personal growth on the other side of learning and investing in personal development. Life is about love, but it is also about pushing yourself to learn as much as possible. Along with that knowledge, it is about opening yourself up to new experiences and thereby unlocking a mindset of abundance. Expand your mind by gaining new skills. Do so by reading books, listening to podcasts that expand your worldview, or watching documentaries.
What Is Social Self-Care?
Getty Images
Human beings are inherently social creatures. We thrive off of feelings of connectedness and tend to prioritize the relationships we have in our lives, be it familial, platonic, or romantic. Regardless of if you are an extrovert, an introvert, or an ambivert, quality time with people we love and who make us feel understood and less alone makes us feel cared for. Social self-care looks like calling a friend or loved one or spending time with friends or family members. You can also get your social self-care fix through establishing new connections with strangers in order to build and deepen relationships.
What Is Mental Self-Care?
Getty Images
Mental self-care is a form of self-care that emphasizes mindfulness and the act of being present. A lot of time our worries, anxieties, and feelings of self-doubt stem from living too far in the past or too ahead in the future. However, by being present, you empower your mind and care for yourself in the process by nourishing your mental well-being. Some ways to access that nowness through mental self-care include practicing mindfulness, engaging in positive self-talk, and going to therapy.
For more inspiration, self-care, and wellness tips, check out xoNecole's Wellness section here.
Originally published on Sheriden Chanel
Featured image by Getty Images
- The Ultimate Self-Care Checklist, Take Care Of You - xoNecole ... ›
- When Self-Care Becomes Problematic - xoNecole: Women's Interest ... ›
- 6 Self-Care Practices For Black Men - xoNecole: Women's Interest ... ›
RELATED
Ding. Ding. DING.
A life coach by the name of Thomas Leonard once said that “Clarity affords focus” and, believe you me, when it comes to dealing with other human beings, if you don’t get clear on where you stand when it comes to your interactions with them, you can very easily find yourself “focusing too much” on those who don’t deserve it and too little on those who absolutely do. And y’all, this lil’ PSA couldn’t be more relevant than when it comes to what I call “casual friendships.”
Let’s dig — and for some of us, dig our way out of — what it means to have a casual friend, so that you can get clear on if you really need those in your life…and if so…why?
Article continues after the video.
It Can’t Be Said Enough: Always Remember What “Casual” Means
GiphyThere’s a reason why I decided to share two videos by mental health coach Isaiah Frizzle at the top and bottom of this article. It’s because a lot of what he shares in both of them complements a piece that I wrote for the platform last year entitled, “This Is Just What Purposeful Relationships Look Like.”
It’s the author M. Scott Peck who once said, “Until you value yourself, you won't value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it” and please believe that the older (and hopefully more mature) you get, the more you tend to see just how valuable — and fleeting — time is; and that is what plays a huge role in motivating you want to only involve yourself with people, places, things and ideas that will honor your time — and when something is casual? In my opinion, it’s highly debatable that it’s worth much of your months, days, hours, or even too many of your minutes.
The main reason why is addressed in an article that I wrote back in the day entitled, “We Should Really Rethink The Term 'Casual Sex.'” The gist? When it comes to relationships, “casual” is certainly not a favorite word of mine because I know what it means. Have mercy — why would you want to invest your time, energy, and emotions into something that is, by definition, apathetic, indifferent, careless, lacking emotional intimacy, and/or is without purpose?
I don’t know about y’all but that sounds like a complete and total crap shoot to me — especially if you are going to go so far as to consider this type of dynamic a true friendship (check out “Ever Wonder If A Friend Is Just...Not That Into You?,” “6 Signs You're About To Make A Huge Mistake In Making Them A Close Friend,” “5 Signs Of A Toxic Friendship That Is Secretly Poisoning Your Life,” “12 Friend Facts That Might Cause You To Rethink (Some Of) Your Own,” and “Less & Less Of Us Have Close Friends These Days. Why Is That?” ).
To me, when you decide to call someone “friend,” it means that they are loyal, reliable, consistent, trustworthy and willing to be there to support you to the very best of their ability — even if it’s inconvenient to do so sometimes (check out “Life Taught Me That True Friendships Are 'Inconvenient'”). How in the world can you expect that from something that has the word “casual” in it?
And you know what? That actually segues into my next point about casual friendships pretty darn well.
Ponder the Purpose “Casual Friends” Serve in Your Life
GiphyA couple of years ago, Verywell Mind published an article entitled, “How the 4 Types of Friendship Fit Into Your Life.” The four that it listed were acquaintances (which I actually don’t consider to be friends; check out “6 Differences Between A Close Acquaintance And An Actual Friend”), casual friends, close friends, and lifelong friends. After reading the piece, I think they consider casual friends to be the “pleasure” friends that I mentioned in the article, “According To Aristotle, We Need ‘Utility’, ‘Pleasure’ & ‘Good’ Friends.”
And although I certainly get that, I think my “cause for pause” is calling those people “friends” when they probably should be called something like an associate or possibly even a buddy instead. Why do I feel this way? Well, I’ve shared in other articles that I think social media has jacked up vocabulary words and their true meaning on a billion different levels.
Take “friend,” for example. Facebook had us out here calling everyone we connected to on their platform “friends” when some of them, we’ve never even spoken to before — and I personally think that influenced, affected and perhaps even infected our psyche to the point where we will call folks, both online and off, “friend” even when they haven’t earned it and/or who possibly don’t deserve it.
That said, do I think that we all could use lighthearted interactions that don’t go very deep and are filled with not much more than fun? Sure. However, if we were to move this over into a sexual thing — those types of people would probably be called a sneaky link, and there is nothing significant or substantial about ‘em. In fact, if anything pretty much automatically comes with an expiration date, sneaky links would have to be it.
And that’s kind of the point that I’m trying to make about a casual friend — so long as you know that the word “casual” is being used to describe them, while you may enjoy the people who fit that bill, they aren’t really anything that you can or even should fully rely on. Instead, take them for what they are and don’t really expect much more than that. Otherwise, you could be in for some profound levels of disappointment. And who wants that?
Final point.
How a Casual Friend Can Become a Huge Red Flag
GiphyI’m telling you, y’all gonna quit clowning Tubi. LOL. To me, the best way to describe it is it’s the Cricket of current streaming apps. What I mean by that is, back when Cricket (the cell phone service) first came out, people, like me, who used it service got incessantly clowned because it was seen as a bootleg provider. Now it’s owned by AT&T, and as someone who has rocked with them since I was in my 20s, I don’t have one regret for doing so. Cricket has always been good to me, chile.
And Tubi? Well, when you get a chance, check out CNBC’s article, “CEO at 33, Tubi’s Anjali Sud on success hacks she learned at Amazon, IAC on way to top of Fox streaming” — take note of the moves the streaming app is making and the quality of programming that is transpiring in real time.
Anyway, I find myself bringing up Tubi more and more in my content because it helps to amplify some of the points that I like to make. This time, it’s a movie that’s (currently) on there calledRight Man, Wrong Woman. If you haven’t seen it before, I don’t want to give too much of the film away. What I will say is that the main female character, she had a casual friend and then she had a close friend.
That casual friend—the one who liked to kick it all of the time—was a lot of fun; however, dealing with her came with a ton of semi-unforeseen consequences. Meanwhile, the close friend? She’s what the Aristotle article (that I mentioned earlier) would call the “good friend” because she tried her best to hold her friend accountable.
And really, it shouldn’t be a shock that the casual friend turned out to be a plum trip because if someone is loads of entertainment and pleasure and yet they are indifferent towards you, they make careless decisions around you and/or they don’t really make known the purpose for you being in their life other than to pass some time — where really do you and that person have to go past drinks after work or dinner on a rooftop restaurant from time to time? And if that is all that the two of you are doing, again, why are they deserving of the word “friend”?
Hmph and don’t get me started on the lack of reciprocity that typically transpires when it comes to dealing with people like this because, while they won’t mind you spending your coins on them, taking their calls in the middle of the night or listening to all of their issues — when it comes time for them to show up for you, they very well may gaslight you into thinking that you are being dramatic, clingy or “doing the most.” Why? Well, it’s mostly because the two of you never really established what the hell the both of you are to one another.
And so, while you’re somewhere taking them seriously, they are out here seeing you casually, and as much as it might hurt to hear, that doesn’t automatically or necessarily make them a bad person. You shouldn’t expect much where no clarity is involved. After all, casual is just that: CASUAL.
____
I’m hoping that you can now see why I entitled this piece in the way that I did. It’s because a red flag is pretty much a warning, and to me, a casual friend is about as big of an oxymoron (again, to me) as casual sex is. Friends and sex are both too intimate to be seen or treated casually. Oh, but if you step out and take that risk, you could find yourself getting far more involved than the other individual ever wanted to go, because casual is how things have always been. “Friend” was simply to get you more mentally and emotionally invested. SMDH.
American columnist Walter Winchell once said, “A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.” A wise person once said, “One good friendship will outlive forty average loves." Former President Ulysses S. Grant once said, “The friend in my adversity I shall always cherish most. I can better trust those who helped to relieve the gloom of my dark hours than those who are so ready to enjoy with me the sunshine of my prosperity.” Does any of this sound casual to you? Yeah, me neither.
Again, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have people in your life who aren’t on deep levels. I’m just saying that you might want to consider putting them into another category than friend, because what friends do for people? There ain’t nothin’ even remotely casual about it, sis. Not even a lil’ bit.
Let’s make things inbox official! Sign up for the xoNecole newsletter for love, wellness, career, and exclusive content delivered straight to your inbox.
Featured image by Shutterstock