Self Care & The Sims

Self-care is a popular buzz word these days. As more people are starting to prioritise their emotional wellbeing, self-care is becoming more important to people – and companies; business is booming!

But what exactly is self-care? Bubble baths with candles springs to mind often when I hear the word, but self-care is so much more than that. Sure, a nice bath with candles and music is one way of taking care of yourself, but what if I told you that self-care is a holistic approach to personal wellness that incorporates multiple dimensions?

There are eight different dimensions to our emotional wellbeing, that all need attention, because if you ignore one, it will start to adversely affect the others over time. Therefore, it doesn’t have to be equal, as we are all different and therefore require different wellness needs.

Before I dig in to these eight dimensions, I would like you to consider the game ‘The Sims.’ In this game you create a character that you then live a virtual life for – you build a house, get a job, make friends etc. and you also care for their biological and emotional needs.

This image shows the basic Sims needs that we must manage on a daily basis in game. If one bar goes down too far, the others start to suffer (if you let your sims bladder go down too far, your sim will have an accident and this will then adversely affect their hygiene, comfort, environment, and fun bars).

Think for a moment about your own ‘bars.’ What do you need right now? Currently my hunger bar is full, my comfort bar is quite high (I am writing this in a comfortable chair with my feet up), my environment bar is high – it is sunny and warm in this room. However, my social bar is starting to fall, my energy is low as I am still catching up after having Covid this past week, and my bladder bar is dropping fast from the copious amounts of tea I drank this morning! I find this is a really simple and effective way of managing my basic needs on a daily basis. What do I need right now? Which bar is low and how can I fill it up?

Now let’s apply these ‘bars’ to the eight dimensions of emotional wellbeing. These eight dimensions are as follows:

As you can see, these dimensions are a little more in depth than the Sims bars, but we can use these dimensions in the same way and the Sims bars all slot into these dimensions. One way of doing this is to fill out a weekly wellness / life balance wheel. As I said earlier, these will look different for each of us. Some weeks we may need to invest more time into our financial dimension (especially with the cost of living right now!), others may feel their spiritual dimension needs some attention. For me, my physical and emotional dimensions are my main focus, with my social and environmental dimensions taking a back seat (though the mountain of washing building up is fast threatening my environmental dimension – which I am aware will start to affect my emotional dimension if I neglect it for too long!).

In an ideal world, we would have all of our bars full all of the time. Life is not ideal though. We go through different struggles week by week and sometimes we manage just fine, but sometimes things get a bit too much and we find all our bars almost completely depleted. Whether this is because life has absolutely wiped the floor with us, or whether we have been neglecting our bars for too long, we CAN recover and start to replenish our dimensions, it just takes a little time.

Reach out to a friend, a family member, a counsellor (social). Pick up a dirty dish and put it in the kitchen (environmental). Play some of your favourite music (emotional). One small step means that that particular bar stops depleting and starts to move in the opposite direction. Baby steps are still steps, even if you are crawling, you are still moving – don’t let your inner critic (I call mine my ‘inner bitch’) tell you that you aren’t doing enough, you are doing the best you can with what you have.

Give it a go. You can find free life balance wheels online to print off, or you can just sketch one out if you want. First colour in the sections by how low your ‘bar’ is, then you can identify which areas are most in need of attention. And remember, just because one dimension is low, doesn’t necessarily mean it needs your full attention, it just might not be a high priority for you at this time.

If you feel like Sims therapy is something you would like to incorporate into your life/counselling journey, please reach out - I am able to offer this as part of our work together.