Someone suggested gardening as self-care for my next post – even though they hate gardening themselves. The first thing to say – the activity you choose for self-care is very personal, the benefits more universal. In some areas your health professional may be able to prescribe an activity you are interested in trying.
Oxford Languages (via Google) defines it as follows:
noun: self-care
a. the practice of taking action to preserve or improve one’s own health.
b. the practice of taking an active role in protecting one’s own well-being and happiness, in particular during periods of stress.
Self-care and my bipolar depression
Even when depressed, I am not a “stay under the duvet” person and remain quite active. My sister retells how, during my first depression (prior to seeking medical help), I turned up at a Sunday afternoon party, having been to the cinema in the morning and asking people how many films they had seen that week. I have recently returned to cinema as self-care although not quite as intensely. I don’t have the concentration for reading much fiction these days (a professional embarrassment) but an hour and a half of visual escapism works well and will be a good winter activity to avoid rumination and get outdoors during the short hours of December daylight – the cinema is a short walk away so exercise is built-in too, double-bubble.
Rumination is something I try to guard against and when depression revisits, I find my inner world shrinks and I become very self-obsessed. It is not an attractive trait, stops others wanting to spend time with me and a hard place to drag me out of.
Tackling rumination
One strategy is to ensure I have other activities/projects to think about. Currently my list includes:
- Paint garden bench (chipped and rusted but still has life it in)
- Paint gate posts (to extend their life for another decade or two)
- Make edge for garden borders (out of recycled bottles)
- Re-felt shed roof (which local wildlife like to scramble over)
Of these, I have only tackled painting garden furniture before.
These jobs might not be what many people consider to be gardening. They are in a way pastimes in the literal sense of passing the time and giving me something to do. They are also a way to learn new skills and build confidence, which is so helpful in serious mental illness.
Building skills and confidence
They need planning and research, both online but also, more enjoyably, walking down to talk to the people in my local ironmonger/hardware shop for advice about and purchase of materials and tools. This planning part means being thoughtful and organised and keeps me focussed, distracted from internal dialogues.
If you don’t have the ability to take on these sort of jobs yourself, you may be able to volunteer locally where materials and tools will also be laid on, or if you have a Library of Things, that may help.
The growing side of gardening requires similar focus and preparation. The first thing you are told on gardening programmes and read in books is to “know your soil” – almost 25 years where I am now, I still don’t – perhaps it’s bipolar impulsivity but I always used to want to crack on… self-taught via previous generations of my family, I have been a trial and error gardener, perhaps for too long, now.
To be continued…
Further information
- What is social prescribing? – King’s Fund website
- Tackling negative thoughts – Mind (charity) website
- Library of Things – a tool collection for low cost hire