Responding to Crisis with Exquisite Self-Care

When Things Go Wrong

What do you do when things go wrong? You know, when a relationship for which you had high hopes crashes, or a business opportunity filled with promise falls apart, or your job is eliminated by your employer.

If you answered this question with 

• “I double-down on my self-care. 

• I make sure I get 8 hours of sleep every night, not just most nights.

• I take my ordinary caution about food and ramp it up a couple of notches.

• I increase my exercise routine by 50 percent.

• I up my meditation frequency.

• I hang out with uplifting friends I haven’t seen in too long.

• I make music every day, not just every week.”

then you may stop reading here and move on. Congratulations! You’re already responding to crisis with what I call “exquisite self care”. 

If your answers sound nothing like this, stick with me for a few paragraphs, if you would. 

Over the decades I’ve walked this planet, I’ve suffered these, and many other traumatic events. I’m guessing you have, too. This is what the Buddha meant in one of the first sentences he’s said to have uttered upon his enlightenment: “Suffering happens.” (Or something like that. It was a long time ago, and I wasn’t present when he said it. And, I’m not fluent in ancient Magahi.)

Maladaptive Responses to Crisis

I’ve responded in all sorts of ways. In fact, for longer than I like to remember, the typical pattern for me (and for others I’ve met over the years) was to go in the opposite direction from self-care in the midst of a crisis. I’ve had an extra martini or two. I’ve binge-watched YouTube clips until 2 in the morning. I’ve scrolled in social media until I lost track of time. I’ve called an old girlfriend despite knowing she was really bad for me. The list goes on. I’ve been around a few decades and have practiced lots of maladaptive responses to my personal crises.

I’ve come to learn that these rather common responses to crisis are a desperate attempt to access the juice of life, that very life force which often feels threatened by tough situations. In such moments, we often have the misguided belief that we can get back a taste of that lost life force, or Eros, through these substitutes for the real thing, which teacher-philosopher Marc Gafni calls “pseudo-Eros”. And, sometimes, we think it gives us some relief, at least until the aftertaste. That’s when some part of us, if it is awake at all, knows, “no, that’s not it. That’s not what I need. I want the real deal, not this cheap knock-off trying to pass as my essential life-force.”

There is an alternative, of course.

The Alternative:
Exquisite Self-Care

In the midst of one such crisis some time ago, when I felt I was on the precipice of doom, I heard a voice whisper inside my head, 

“take exquisite self care.” 

Now, I actually knew what self-care meant. I’ve read the literature across the decades. I’ve practiced a wide range of disciplines designed in times ancient and modern to bring about flourishing. I’ve even taught such disciplines in places high and low. 

To be honest, though, for a good chunk of my life, I turned to such disciplines only when times were good, or at least when they were not catastrophic. To hear that voice suggest that I use my sense of doom as an opportunity to take exquisite care of myself was new.

The word “exquisite”, too, was new. What could that voice possibly have meant? 

In that moment and since, I’ve understood it to mean, “more than your ordinary self-care.” In other words, it is not a call to go back to my normal understanding of self-care. No, this is an invitation to find new levels of self-care, even self-love. 

So, if your normal self-care involves 20 minutes of meditation in the morning, you might add another 20 minutes after lunch. If normally you limit your alcohol consumption to Friday-through-Sunday, you might limit it to Friday. If you do yoga every other day, you might up that to 5 days a week. 

Or, you could take it even farther. In one of my worst encounters with possible catastrophe ever, I knew ordinary self-care wasn’t up to the task, and that “exquisite self-care” was in order. All at once, I began eating only plants, stopped drinking alcohol, and began the most intense 3 months of calorie restriction of my life, losing 25 pounds and getting back to a weight I hadn’t seen since the late 1970s. 

No, you don’t have to go that far. But you might. And you might find that you like, or even love, what happens. I do.

Why bother?
Does exquisite self-care change anything?

So, you can reasonably ask, does it help the actual crisis, this exquisite self-care?

I think so. It has for me. The crises have all abated, as crises usually do, and it seems that I’ve functioned better in the storm than I would have without taking such excellent care of myself.

But it’s even better than that. I’ve learned to look at crises as opportunities, invitations from the Universe to take my life to the next step. So, the next time a crisis comes along, I’m more likely to say “hello, crisis! I guess it’s time to up-level my game. Time to figure out what more I can do to love myself outrageously.” 

So, now, crises are more likely to show up as my life-assistants, replete with lessons I’ll appreciate if only I’ll pay attention and take up the invitations they offer.

And, by the way, you might end up having a better life than you had before the crisis because you took this step. In my case, over a year later, I have not resumed drinking, haven’t cheated on my plant-based food choice, and not only haven’t put back on a single pound of those two dozen I lost last year, but have continued to lose weight, gradually and healthfully. I’m in the best health of my life, and haven’t lost an iota of pleasure. Actually, just the opposite. I have greater access to pleasure than I’ve ever had.

As I write this, I’m in the middle of a couple such crises going on simultaneously. No sense going into the content of them -- that misses the point. They’re like those you’ve faced. They’re the stuff of becoming human. I can report that my experience with hearing the invitation to exquisite self care coming out of the mouth of earlier crises has served me well, and my friends and family-members are letting me know that they are amazed at my equanimity, given the magnitude of the issues involved. 

I am, too, am amazed. And ever so grateful.

Gratitude for catastrophe? I had heard about this several decades ago, but hadn’t quite gotten the message. Now I do.

I now can say, truthfully, that I am grateful to all the crises of my life for teaching me a level of self-care I surely would not have known otherwise.

I invite you into this strange world.