Your Emergency Self-care Plan

I started this podcast to show the gulf between self-care professionals' ideal and actual self-care.When life hits you with unexpected challenges, how do you maintain your wellbeing? In this episode of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast, trauma-informed therapist Eve Menezes Cunningham shares practical strategies for creating an emergency self-care plan using emojis - perfect for those with ADHD and trauma backgrounds.Drawing from real-life experience during a family crisis, Eve breaks down her Feel-Love-Heal framework into manageable emergency practices:✨ FEEL: Active self-care that regulates your nervous system (even when time is limited) 💝 LOVE: Self-compassion practices and giving yourself grace during tough times🌱 HEAL: Finding meaning and potential growth, even in crisisKey takeaways include paring down your self-care routine to essentials, maintaining flexibility in your schedule and creating visual emoji reminders for when your executive functioning is even more compromised than the usual trauma recovery and ADHD brain challenges.If you’re navigating difficult times or wanting to prepare an emergency self-care toolkit for the future, I hope you’ll find this useful. Feel free to share with someone who might benefit.🎧 More resources at thefeelbettereverydaypodcast.com 📚 Book: "365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing"Feel Better Every Day! Learn from the self and Self* care practices the professionals depend on. With a mixture of solo and interview episodes, your host, Eve Menezes Cunningham (author of 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing) shares trauma-informed and VAST / ADHD-friendly self and Self* care ideas to help you:• Feel Better (regulate your nervous system and do the things that help you create a life you don’t need to retreat from)• Be Better (accept yourself completely with love, compassion and kindness – you don’t need to do a thing) and• Do Better (turn what hurts your heart into action to support your family, organisations, communities and the world at large)Thanks for watching/listening. New episodes come out every Tuesday morning (Ireland time) and if you subscribe (via your favourite podcasting app or by joining the Sole to Soul Circle), you’ll be notified about each new episode. Sole to Soul Circle members get deeper dives each Wednesday morning.WANT TO WORK WITH ME? • There’s the book – 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing – and all the book bonus videos. • All the free resources (for trauma, ADHD, menopause, solopreneurs, anxiety, sleep, confidence, resilience, finding purpose, meaning and joy and more) across my platforms and the library of self-care ideas and practices at https://selfcarecoaching.net • You can join the Sole to Soul Circle on Substack (https://evemc.substack.com ) and get bonus interviews and content specially designed to help you dive deeper into each week’s theme. • If you want to support my work but don’t want to commit to a membership, even for a month, you can choose any amount at https://ko-fi.com/evemc • While my private practice for one to one work (trauma-informed and ADHD-friendly therapies, Self care coaching, clinical supervision and supervisor’s supervision) is almost always at capacity, if you’re based in Ireland or the UK, it’s still worth completing the short form at https://selfcarecoaching.net/contact to book your free telephone consultation in the hope that we can find a mutually convenient time to work together.WANT TO CONNECT WITH ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA? 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CHAPTERS(0:02 – 0:55) Introduction to the podcast and episode(0:56 – 1:46) Why emergency self-care matters(1:47 – 2:48) ADHD, trauma and crisis mode focus(2:49 – 3:45) Navigating uncertainty with self-care(3:46 – 4:28) Executive function struggles in emergencies(4:29 – 5:50) The power of short practices(9:31 – 10:32) Letting go of non-essentials and pressure(10:33 – 11:12) Self-talk and nervous system care(11:13 – 11:53) Being human and allowing emotion(11:54 – 12:33) Thinking ahead with compassion(12:34 – 12:54) Closing thoughts and next episode previewDISCLAIMERThe content I share is not a replacement for one to one trauma therapy (etc). While you can do an enormous amount to support yourself, please always seek appropriate medical advice.Thanks for watching. Please subscribe / follow and share with someone who you think will benefit from this episode.FULL TRANSCRIPTHi, I'm Eve Menezes Cunningham and you're listening to the Feel Better Every Day Podcast. Every Tuesday I share trauma-informed and ADHD-friendly self-care ideas to help you take better care of yourself and your Self with that uppercase S, that highest, wisest, truest, wildest, most joyful, brilliant and miraculous part of yourself.This is episode 67 and the idea is that it will help you create a life you don't need to retreat from. You can find out more about the podcast at thefeelbettereverydaypodcast.com. You can also get deeper dives by joining the Sole to Soul Circle for bonus interviews, practices, rituals and access to a rich archive including the entire Love Your Whole Self chakra journey.You can also find out more about the book 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing, I forgot the title of my own book there, and other resources at selfcarecoaching.net.And today's episode is basically… I started this podcast thinking that there's a huge gulf between what we as self-care professionals know we want to be doing in an ideal world and what we actually do.Today, it's World Emoji Day and I'm going to have you use emojis to create an emergency self-care plan for yourself for trauma and ADHD.I have a loved one in hospital at the moment (at time of recording) which means that things are different to my normal life. I've massively pared back on my normal daily self-care but I've also really focused on it. I know that I'm no good to anyone if I'm not taking care of myself.Especially with trauma and ADHD we can be really good in a crisis. I think, on the Friday when we had to call the ambulance it was just very, very focused. We don't have to worry about different priorities, it's just like OK. The emergency takes all the focus.Then, as things progress there's more to navigate. We get more and more tired, potentially, if we're not taking good care of ourselves.There are always going to be things that are out of your control but I want you to think about how you navigate uncertainty and how you navigate emergencies and what you can do whether you're dealing with a tough time now or whether you want to put something in place as an emergency self-care kit. It's really important.I really noticed my executive functions worsen. Things like paying for the hospital parking ticket and putting it in the specific pocket in my bag so that I wouldn't lose it and of course losing it. And then I couldn't even turn the steering wheel on the car, I couldn't get the key in the car and I even wondered is this my car because it had been so full-on had I accidentally got into someone else's car. No. I'd locked the steering wheel but I'd never done that before. It's just having lots of extra patience with yourself when you're dealing with it.I'm skipping ahead a bit because it's really about you thinking about what you want to have in place for any emergencies that you might think of. And it's not like you have to think, I'm not encouraging you to ruminate or catastrophise or anything like that, just thinking I've been asking all my guests what is your ideal self-care, your ideal daily practices and weekly and what would be your essentials. If you're ill, if you're travelling, if there's some sort of emergency.Feel better…For the Feel better part, it's very much about regulation, it's very much about the active self-care. I've been swimming practically every day and I swam twice yesterday (at time of recording) because I knew I'm far better for other people if I'm at my best, if I'm peaceful, if I'm calm.And to be honest the second heated pool swim was on the way back from the hospital because I didn't know how I was going to have the energy to stand up in the shower at home.The idea of going for a heated pool swim and then sitting in the steam room and then having a luxurious shower there is nicer than my shower at home. I thought, I'll do that and then just five, ten minutes of swimming, really lovely, that's me. Think about for yourself, think about what is your essential. I'm also thinking my daily yoga nidras. They're essential for me.I'm about to start ADHD medication (have started! More to follow in Episode 69!) but I've been using the daily yoga nidras now for I think more than two years. It's really essential for me but today, it's like so much to do, not going to have time for one of the longer ones that I've got accustomed to.I did a shorter one and it was amazing and it's like so often we think, “Oh but if I can't do the full practice, the full thing, what's the point?” Doing one or two