Self-Care:A Framework
Imagine this: You’re on the path to creating the life you always planned for yourself. You’re checking off goals, maybe moving toward or already working your dream job, and even achieving the material things you once hoped for. From the outside, it looks like everything’s falling into place. But on the inside? You’re tired. Unmotivated. Drained in a way that can’t seem to be resolved. BUT! You also intuitively know that you are capable of feeling energized, motivated, and aligned.
So where do you start? At the beginning! Lets explore the essential framework for cultivating meaningful self-care that can replenish and restore your energy.
Your Tank: Understanding Your Energy Reservoir
I love the metaphor that each of us has a tank—your personal energy reservoir. In my view, the structure of this tank is built from the foundational needs in Maslow’s Hierarchy, while the contents are filled by our daily needs and experiences. To keep our energy levels up, we need both a solid, sturdy tank and regular replenishment.
Tank foundations
Let’s start by looking at Maslow’s Hierarchy of Motivation (Maslow, 1943). This theory suggests that human motivation follows a progression through five levels. Our most basic needs form the base of the pyramid, while higher-level ones sit at the top:
Physiological needs – The essentials for survival: food, water, air, and sleep.
Safety & Security – Physical and psychological safety, stable employment, health, and access to resources.
Love and Belonging – Deep, meaningful connections with others and a sense of community.
Esteem needs – Confidence, self-respect, recognition, and feeling valued by others.
Self-actualization – The drive to realize our full potential and pursue personal growth.
According to Maslow, we must first meet the needs at the lower levels before we can fully focus on the higher ones. For instance, someone who is chronically hungry will naturally focus on finding food, rather than on building relationships or achieving personal growth. That said, this progression isn’t always linear or fixed. You might typically operate in the higher levels of the hierarchy, but a sudden illness, car accident, or the loss of a loved one can pull your focus back down to those foundational needs.
The two lower levels—physiological needs and safety—represent the foundation and walls of the tank. Fulfilling these needs creates the tank structure. The upper levels reinforce and fortify the tank, so fulfilling these will support a strong and robust tank that will enable high energy levels.
Filling the tank
Each day, we need to actively fill our tank with the essentials:
Sleep – What are your unique sleep needs? Most of us need at least 7–9 hours of quality sleep. How’s your sleep hygiene?
Nutritious Food – Not just anything that fills you up, but food that is rich in nutrients, meets your macro and micronutrient needs, and brings you enjoyment.
Water – Aim for the optimal amount for your body weight (roughly 0.5 oz per pound of body weight).
Exercise – Movement of any kind—this doesn’t need to be intense, just consistent and enjoyable.
Connection – Genuine and deep connection with yourself, with others (including your pets!), and with nature.
Joy – What sparks joy for you? Include it daily, even in small ways.
When all of these needs are being met, your tank stays full—meaning you easily tap into energy, clarity, emotional regulation, and resilience. But if these needs go neglected, the tank runs dry. That’s when we start feeling irritable, reactive, and overwhelmed. We take things personally and struggle to manage stress. Over time, this can lead to burnout.
But what if the tank itself is compromised? Maybe you find yourself stuck in relationships that leave you feeling small or undervalued, you’re grieving a major loss, or you're managing a chronic illness. These kinds of stressors impact the foundational levels of Maslow’s Hierarchy—and they can create cracks in your tank. Even positive life changes can be unexpectedly draining: the birth of a child, starting a new job, or graduating from college. While exciting, these transitions still demand a lot of emotional energy and adjustment, and can weaken your tank if you're not mindful. Even if you’re doing all the right things to refill your tank daily, those cracks and weaknesses in the tank can cause it to drain. Over time, it becomes harder and harder to stay full.
In therapy, one of our goals is to assess how full and how strong your tank is. While this is something you can explore on your own, therapy offers a genuine, safe connection—one of our basic daily needs—and an outside perspective that can guide you to insight that you may not arrive at your own. Together, we identify what drains you, what fills you, what cracks in your tank may exist, and how to repair and strengthen the tank itself—taking you from surviving to thriving. If you are curious what this work would look like, use the link below to schedule your free 20-minute consultation with me!
References:
Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50(4), 370–396. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0054346
3 Quick Tips for Decreasing Stress Now
It all begins with an idea.
My clients often come to me wanting to address their anxiety and decrease their stress. What we label as anxiety and stress is what I consider the tip of the iceberg: we feel that familiar feeling of a tightness in our chest or bellies, shallow breathing, maybe we feel restless inside or our thoughts are racing & ruminating. Whatever it may be, physiologically speaking, the feeling comes from the activation of our central nervous system.
Our nervous system serves to protect us. When something in our environment triggers it to turn on, our sympathetic system jumps to action in order to save our lives. In an environment where predators are present, we may automatically prepare to fight, flight, or freeze if something triggers us to do so. Once the stressor is gone, our parasympathetic system activates, which serves to help us rest, relax, and recoup. In today’s world, these clear moments certainly exist, but most of our stressors often arrive in the form of a nearly constant, lower-level drip. These stressors are things that won’t kill us, but definitely erode our sense of well-being, which keeps us in a state of near constant sympathetic arousal, or feeling stressed or anxious.
While taking a deep dive into examining and healing our past & determining the most impactful way of changing our environment is certainly a long term way to constructively address our stressors, I want to provide you with three of my favorite tips to reset the nervous system.
The Double Inhale.
In this technique, you will take two consecutive breaths in. First, take a deep breath in through your nose, and at the top of the breath take another quick breath in. Then exhale with a long sigh. If you feel good after this (not light headed) you can do this one to two more times. During the inhale, we activate our nervous system, and during the exhale we relax our nervous system. This technique is incredibly effective, fast, and does not require much physical movement, so if I’m particularly stressed, this is usually my first go-to, especially if I have limited time or space. After doing this, you will have a greater sense of calm and ease. If you’d like to look further into this technique, or are a physiology nerd, check out Andrew Huberman’s example and some more information on why we breath.
The Dance Party.
This is one of my favorite techniques to reset my nervous system, and I first encountered it in a yoga class, where we call it shaking meditation. You can choose to listen to music if you’d like — I love using rhythmic drumming, or whatever my current favorite song is. Start with wiggling your fingers, then shake out your hands, then your arms and shoulders. Next, you’ll shake out your legs, first one at a time, then plant your feet on the ground and shake your knees and hips. Once your whole body is being used, I also like to incorporate gentle head rolls and movement as well. When you get to the knees, hips, shoulders, and neck you will see why I call it a dance party, because you’re basically dancing. The goal is to move all parts of your body, and to shake out whatever is continuing to activate your nervous system. People often feel a sense of catharsis during this exercise, and a new sense of calm, having just “shaken out” the stress-causing issue.
The Walk.
If it’s available to you, get outside and go for a walk. I almost always feel refreshed mentally and physically after a walk, especially if I go to a greenbelt, walking path, or park. Getting out into the natural world optimal, because we often feel a greater sense of connection to the world around us in nature. However, during our day to day, this often isn’t an option for many so using a a hallway or staircase, treadmill or walking pad, or walking in your office will also achieve some benefit. We intuitively know that walking is good for us, but when looking through a therapy lens, we see that walking includes the rhythmic, bilateral movement of both our arms and legs. Bilateral stimulation increases our parasympathetic arousal (rest & digest side of our nervous system), thereby decreasing our stress. This exercises creates a sense of connection and ease, and often provides opportunities and space to understand your stress-inducing issues in new ways.
So, there you have it, my 3 favorite tips for de-stressing fast! If you are interested in some of the longer term ways to address the stressor in your life through therapy, please make sure to get in touch with me for a complimentary consultation call.