Balancing Self-Care and Productivity: How to Break the Cycle and Find Compassion

Introduction: Self-Care or Productivity

This blog post is so timely for me, as I’m supposed to be planning self care to do later this evening, but instead I literally just started thinking about how much work I might be able to get done if I focused more on that than on me.

Here’s my truth; I really do place a lot of my worth in my productivity. It’s a pattern that I’ve experienced ever since I was young. When I was younger, it was more centered around achievement and validation from others (I wanted all the validation I could get). Now, it more centered around my fear for the future.

My automatic impulse to use any moment I have to either be productive or think about how I should be more productive is really rooted in the burdens that I carry.

The pressure we put on ourselves to produce and improve, the pressure that makes it hard to actually relax into some self care, isn’t a bad thing… it comes from a part of you that might need some deeper attention. Let’s get curious about it.

Getting Curious About Yourself

So here’s a few questions I have for you in order to help you begin opening up some curiosity around this part of you; the part of you that puts on the pressure, that wants you to be productive, and that makes it hard to self-care:

What do you value?

What’s really, really important to you?

What worries you about slowing down to do self care?

What do you think people will think of you if you’re not improving or working on yourself?

What do you think of yourself when you’re not being productive in some way?

And instead of having a deeper conversation about any one of these questions in your head, can you start to get curious about what happens in the body instead? Maybe reviewing each questions, you start to turn more and more attention towards the body, noticing any sensations that arise or noticing any emotions that might need to be expressed.

I understand this might feel a little challenging at first, and that’s totally normal! In fact, for many of us, even trying to open up curiosity about emotion can feel threatening. And there might be a part of you that wants to suppress it, ignore it, avoid it, make light of it… I understand. This is why opening up compassion is really important too. Let’s talk about that next.

Igniting Self Compassion

Take a moment to think about something or someone that represents the embodiment of compassion. Can you think about maybe a character or a celebrity? It could be someone (not that you know personally) that’s given you warm, safe, cozy vibes. Personally, the compassionate character I hold in my mind’s eye is the Fairy Godmother from Cinderella. Be creative as you begin to identify yours.

If you’re not sure, that’s ok! Instead you can start to build a compassionate character in your mind. Perhaps you start to envision what they might look like, how they might speak, their facial expression, their tone of voice, the way they breathe, the way they dress… and when you’re ready, you can even start to picture this character in a place that fills you with a sense of calm and safety.

Once you have this compassionate character in mind, you can spend time observing it just existing there within you, and you might even start to notice how that feels for your breath and your body.

And this is the point where things get a lot deeper in the therapy room with my clients. But for educational purposes only right now, here’s what you might start to do next with this curiosity and with this compassion.

• You might begin holding this compassionate character in mind during times of stress and inner struggle; when your facing the inner battle between the voice that says “work/be productive” and the voice that says “chill”

• You might start connecting with this compassionate character more regularly, even when you don’t “need” to, just so that you can gain familiarity with what compassion feels like in the body; this info may help you to embody compassion when you need it to surround anxious feelings in the body

• You might open up curiosity for the triggered parts of you (the perfectionist part, the productive part, the procrastinator part, the people pleaser part, and the exhausted/dissociated part) and then you might invite communication between the compassion within you and the triggered parts of you

• Perhaps you even create visualizations that represent these triggered parts of you; maybe even facilitating interaction between triggered parts and your compassion in the mind’s eye

Making The Self Care Happen

Have you ever found yourself caught up in that perfectionism-procrastination trap? You want your self care to be perfect, and so even making self care happen feels stressful, overwhelming, and causes you even more burnout? It might be because you’re struggling with conflicting parts of yourself; parts of you that are also burdened (just like mine are!).

The good news is that YOUR body holds the wisdom; it literally knows how to help you navigate the stuckness you might be feeling in your life. The trick is… coming into yourself with curiosity and compassion. The energy of curiosity and compassion is disarming; it literally helps disarm the alarm system in the brain that tricks you into staying in go-go-go mode (even if you’re just go-go-go-ing in your head).

If we want to make the self care happen, we need to notice, slow down, connect to curiosity and compassion, and provide compassion to ALL parts. So this means creatively finding a way to meet the needs of your conflicting parts while also not operating from the ways in which they’re burdened.

You got this.

But if you want to go deeper and you’re looking for a therapist in California, you can schedule your free 15 minute consultation call here.