At Retreat Yourself we have always focussed on a holistic wellness approach and we love nothing more than collaborating with women who align with us.
So we recently asked Chelsea Morgan, a qualified and registered counsellor, to give us her perspective on self-care and wellness.
"When I found out about Retreat Yourself, it instantly sparked excitement within me.
I am an absolute advocate of self-care and, I believe, this is one of the foundational driving forces behind why Retreat Yourself started originally.
My name is Chelsea Morgan and I am a qualified and registered counsellor with Headquarters Counselling Services, a private counselling and consultancy company in Perth, Western Australia.
In the years I have been working as a counsellor, I have delivered many workshops on different topics around self-care, empowerment, relationships, building resilience and awareness.
I have a passion for helping people build the courage to take control of their lives and transform themselves into who and where they want to be. Whether it be via one on one counselling, workshops or in a group therapy environment.
I am a strong believer that knowledge creates empowerment - you cannot change what you are not aware of! My passion is delivering workshops in an engaging and informal way, with the aim of increasing awareness and perspective.
The workshop I most often begin with is Self-care. So, in alignment with Retreat Yourself, I’d like to focus on that.
When self-care is left unmanaged and you neglect your personal health and wellbeing, the result is generally one of total burn out. And haven’t we all felt that!
Sometimes when it comes to our health and wellbeing we can be our own worst enemy. Long working hours without adequate rest; keeping up with demanding workloads; increased stress and burning the candle at both ends comes at the expense of self-care.
But the harsh reality is that, while ok in the short term, left unmanaged it won’t be sustainable.
The ‘go, go,go’ and ‘do,do,do’ focus, along with the ‘energy out’ attitude to life, does not have longevity if you do not take the time too ‘fill the cup back up’. There needs to be a balance of energy in and energy out.
And this is where proactive self-care comes in.
So what is it? What does that look like?
The truth is that it looks different to everyone but generally the bottom line is you MUST put your mental, physical and emotional needs first before anything else.
It works like a ‘ripple effect’. If you don’t put your mental (thoughts, stimulation), physical (sleep, exercise and food) and emotional (dealing with your baggage/issues) wellbeing first, then all the other areas of your life can, and almost always do, suffer!
If you were to put all of these key factors first, can you imagine how much healthier and more enhanced all the areas of your life would be? It would make all the balls we have to juggle much more manageable.
So, the question we have is, how do we juggle the mother/ father ball, the husband/wife ball, career ball and best friend ball? The answer is balance. And yes, you have probably heard this before. But the truth is, it is about ‘checking’ in regularly with yourself to see where your priorities are. At Headquarters, we say that there is a priority list; where self-care must come first in order for all others to be able to follow adequately.
It’s like running a car - you need to fill it back up with fuel in order for it to run smoothly. Your car can’t run on empty and neither can you.
So we need to ask ourselves some foundational questions such as; Am I eating and sleeping ok? Do I feel sluggish and therefore need to exercise? (Whatever that may look like for the individual - some like running, others like yoga) Am I stimulated enough? What are some hobbies I can get into so I actually feel excited about life? Is my life too mundane and monotonous? Am I bored? Do I need to make some exciting plans like travel or concert tickets? Can I do something differently? When was the last time I sat and just relaxed - have a bath, read a book, wrote a to-do list for my happiness? These are some of the ‘checking in’ self-care questions to make sure we are running smoothly - like a well fuelled car.
Everyone has a ‘story’, past hurts/pain and a negative voice in their head (I like to call it our Roommate) that we all need to manage at some point. One of the most important parts of self-care is to acknowledge these so that you can live a more peaceful life.
Letting your issues sit and fester or avoiding them is a dying game. They only get bigger as you feed them more power. It’s much more liberating to book the consult with a counsellor and start dealing with your ‘stuff’, or as we like to say - ‘check up from the neck up’.
If you hurt yourself badly you wouldn’t just let it ‘heal itself’ and if you are sick you would go to a doctor. So your mental health should be treated just the same way.
Suppression is depression, what you avoid you give more power to. Don’t do that to yourself; take the reins in YOUR life and book a consult with us at Headquarters. Don’t live a life looking through ‘grey goggles’, I have seen the most incredible transformations happen when we find the courage to look back.
I believe in you.
Take care,
Chelsea x"