Hey today I am going to give you a framework through which you can begin to view self care
and I believe this framework will help you make more empowered decisions about how to
take care of yourself in the optimal way because none of us need any more information, right?
Like there is so much information out there and there's even information about how to
implement. Although implementation is the harder piece, but there's so many things that
get in between the information and the implementation and so much of this is about priorities and
I have a framework for you that I think will be really helpful
for those of you who are new to my channel, my name is Barbara Heffernan and I am a psychotherapist,
a life coach. I'm a Buddhist, I'm a mindfulness meditation teacher and I bring all of that
together in this YouTube channel to try to bring information to more people that will
help you live a more joyful life. So if you support what I'm doing, please do me a favor
and subscribe to the channel and give this video a like that helps a lot. And let's get
into the information and I want to reiterate right here that I am providing this framework
because I really want to empower you to make better decisions about your self care and
I think this framework will help. So I'm going to take a few minutes to explain Maslow's
hierarchy of needs and then give you some examples, some of which might surprise you
about how you can use this to analyze where you're doing a great job with your self care
and where you might be falling short. And it also can address those very tricky
questions of when am I doing too much for someone else? When am I neglecting my own
self care and not doing something for somebody else? And is it selfish or is it needed and
[inaudible]. Anyway, I think this framework can help you with that. Today we're going
to talk about self care within the framework of Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And
Abraham Maslow was a psychologist who lived in the early part of the 20th century. He
passed away in 1970 and he came up with this framework, which basically talked about psychological
health and sort of the optimal psychological health of a human being based on certain needs,
getting met prior to other needs. So as you can see, Maslow's hierarchy of needs is depicted
as a pyramid where the physiological needs of a human are at the bottom and the largest
base. And basically physiological needs need to
be met prior to other needs. So physiological needs are water, food, clothing, shelter,
sleep, having enough time to sleep. These are all basic physical, physiological needs
that need to be satisfied for humans to live a decent life. And then the next rung of the
pyramid is our safety and security needs. So these are the needs to feel safe, to have
a safe environment, to feel secure in terms of the physiological needs getting met. So
having adequate resources, adequate income to satisfy the physiological needs, but basically
the safety and security would need to be met next. And the third rung is love and belonging.
Friendship, sense of connection, intimacy. That would be the next tier of needs in Maslow's
hierarchy and above. Love and belonging comes esteem, both self-esteem, having some, having
esteem for oneself and receiving esteem from others, being recognized by others, feeling
a sense of respect, both suffer, respect and respect by society.
And then the top tier of Maslow's hierarchy is self-actualization, fulfilling one's true
purpose in life and or living up to one's full potential. So as you look at this chart
on the hierarchy of needs comment below, which need do you focus on the most? In which area
are you terrific and where do you fall short? Let me know in the comments below. So unfortunately
we live on a planet in a world where many, many people do not have their basic physiological
needs met and they do not have their need for safety and security met. And that's really
a crime. And I really encourage everybody who can to do what you can to help that situation.
I do have a video called triple bottom line and it does talk about how you can give back
and how you can view your work and your purpose in life in a broader scale in order to help
others as well. So why am I talking about helping others in
a video on self care? I'm going come back to that point as well, but just to quickly
say that part of self care actually is helping others. So we'll talk about that a little
bit more. But for many people watching this video, not everybody, but many people, your
basic physiological needs are met. Safety and security is another issue. I do think
that there are people who do not live in safe homes and do not have a sense of security
all up and down the socioeconomic spectrum within the United States and within other
countries. And that is a major issue as well. But one thing for you to look at within your
own means, are you able to really take care of your basic physiological needs, your need
for clean water, your need for food, your need for adequate sleep?
And then are you able to provide for your personal safety within reason? Right? So there's
sort of a phrase like I'm safe enough, like none of us is perfectly safe because we're
human and we're vulnerable, but to have a basic sense of safety and security in life.
So those are very important sort of basic core needs. So it might be interesting for
you to look at this hierarchy of needs and see where you fall on this hierarchy and what
might need to be worked on. And for many people, if you're working on the esteem level or the
self actualization level, it's also interesting to see whether you work at that level while
sacrificing some of the other needs. So I'm going to give you a couple of examples here.
Most of us know at least one person who is definitely operating at the self actualization
level and very committed to their art, their poetry, their business, whatever their passion
in life is. And yet they don't drink enough water. They
skip meals. They might stay up night all night working. So it is possible to be involved
in your higher level needs and yet ignoring some of your basic needs. So if that is you,
then looking at this model and saying, okay, even if I want to be really focused on these
self-actualization needs, I need to take basic care of myself. And then the same thing could
fall into the esteem, right? Esteem could be about achieving a certain goal in life,
achieving a certain income level. And there are people who just in our society in the
U S here just drive themselves like mad and sacrifice, sacrifice their relationships with
families, sacrifice their basic health, never go to the doctor, but they're driven and they're
driven for either the esteem needs or the self actualization needs. And while I'm talking
about how these needs don't always actually go in order here, I also want to say that
I believe that the need for love and belonging exists even for people whose physiological
needs aren't being met. So it's not a way to live an optimal life.
But even for those people whose physiological needs aren't being met, love and belonging
is incredibly important. And let me talk about another very common example of where these
needs might get flipped. If you have been a parent and a very involved parent, you have
probably had moments where you had to ignore your basic physiological needs to take care
of your child or your infant. So a client of mine recently, she had a baby who was just
up all night vomiting and she was up all night with the baby and she had to sacrifice her
needs. That's what we do. Now you might say that's not self care, but that actually is
self care. Taking care of the people we love who are in incredible distress is part of
our self care. So when we come down to this question of sort of the people pleasing codependency
question that many people have lot a lot of women but all genders have this issue and
the question becomes am I doing too much for others?
So when you think of it within this framework, if you are sacrificing really basic physiological
needs, so food, water and sleep for somebody else's higher level needs, then that is something
to look at and really think about. Not that we never do it. And again we definitely do
it. If we are caring for an ailing relative or an elderly relative or an infant, we might
have to do that on occasion. But if we're doing it all the time then there is a problem
in terms of our own feelings of self worth. So I'm going to take a second here just to
talk about a controversial subject around food because so many of us think we're not
doing self care if we don't eat absolutely the pinnacle of healthy eating and sure the
pinnacle of healthy eating can go to esteem needs and can go to self actualization needs.
Absolutely. And nothing wrong with that. The esteem needs could be that you feel you get
more esteem from society if you look more healthy, if you are thinner or whatever. Yet
the basic physiological needs are really just simply to have adequate food to fuel your
body. Now not saying anything against healthy eating here at all, I'm just questioning the
self criticism that goes on in our society when we don't eat at a completely optimal
level. And then we'll be like, I'm not taking care of myself. No, you took care of yourself.
Yay. Eat enough calories to fill your day. So just to be clear on where some of these
goals that we have for ourself fall in this hierarchy and some of our goals around exercise
actually fall more into the esteem or self actualization category than they do into basic
needs. And all of that is good. It's just great to know where it falls. And
I also want to make a comment here about the love and belonging section in terms of having
connections with others, family loved ones, intimacy. This can take all shapes, it can
look all different ways. And so many of us have ingrained into our brains this vision
of a perfect family and what that looks like. And we don't fit that perfect family. But
families come in all shapes and sizes. Some of our families we were given at birth and
some of them we choose and some of them we kind of fall into. So we can also have a feeling
of connection and security with an exercise group or a work situation that feels supportive.
But finding support is key to being emotionally healthy.
So one more example about how you can use this hierarchy of needs to look at your own
situation. If you tend to work long, long, long hours, that generally goes to the safety
and security column. So if you need to work two jobs to support your family, then you
need to work two jobs to support your family. So you are working all the time and may not
have the opportunity to spend a lot of time with your family because you are supporting
them. On the other hand, if you are spending all your time working and you really don't
need that, or your belief in your need for security is excessive, that would be something
to look at and then revise. Do I really, really need to work this hard to keep my job? Do
I really, really need to earn this much money to support myself and my loved ones?
So that is a way that you can begin to use this hierarchy to look at your situation and
make some good decisions for yourself. I really hope that this framework is helpful for you
in analyzing your own needs and looking at your self care with a different light that
I hope is empowering. I hope this is empowering you to make better choices for yourself and
your loved ones. And I would love to hear any comments you have about this video and
please, if you'd like to- give me a thumbs up and also subscribe to my channel and I
hope you join me the next time.