Ouch!--Essential Self-Care
It happens yet again...I do for someone else what they can do for themselves, and it comes back and bites me. All I was trying to do was help! Sound familiar? Perhaps all too familiar! The last time this happened to me for what I told myself was indeed the LAST time, I found a brick and tied a pink ribbon around it. This brick now sits prominently on a table in my dining room as a reminder that a brick to the forehead really hurts.While we may mean well by trying to do well, we may be taking on yet another help mission that stops us from taking care of ourselves and our own needs. I call it essential self-care. It's essential because if we put ourselves last, we are no good to anyone, least of all to ourselves. There will always be someone needing something from us. Certainly no one is an island; we must to work together and help each other. But there are indeed times when we must butt out, step back and allow the other person to take care of their business while we take care of our own.
Speaking of taking care, now I must go swallow a pill for that headache caused by one too many bricks to the forehead...
OMG! Kelly, this sounds TOO familiar. On October 1st I got hit by brick on my forehead. A "so-called" friend has forgotten everything I've done for him in the past year (he sulked and complained about everything going wrong for him). Well, I got burnt badly. I was always there for him, every time he needed my help, a shoulder to cry on, a friendly advice. I even played matchmaker for him since he's uncapable of even doing that by himself. What did I get? A snub and a nasty email. With friends like that, who needs enemies? He's no longer my friend and I am not sad about it. This taught me that I need to take care of myself first and let others take care of themselves. Thank you for this reminder. I needed to validate what I already knew.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your sharing here, Claudia! Yes, people are mirrors and they provide us the opportunity to work on ourselves. The only thing we can do is take care of ourselves for we cannot control someone else's actions or responses. I find this actually gives us MORE control, not less.
ReplyDeleteNo brick moments to speak of here, but I DO really need the reminder to step back and take care of myself once in awhile.
ReplyDeleteThanks for reading, Vicki! Yes, life has a way of reminding us.
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