ALT A photo of me doing a talk

ALT A screenshot where I've typed Emapthy wrap up, rather than Empathy wrap up

ALT One way to do this is to practice being with yourself empathetically, because then you’re more likely to see, accept, and work with your warning signs early, rather than push through them.

ALT in a world that wants me to never be happy with who I am, that is a radical act.

ALT A screengrab of the buttondown pre-publish checks. The bullet point reads: Your subject is Self care in crisis. Lovely!

ALT So often we want to understand, and then accept. I think, in cases of empathetic communication, accepting can help us understand.

ALT Eventually I got to the centre issue underneath the issue, which is that I don't fully trust myself

ALT The secret here is: getting to know yourself can be joyful. Spending time with yourself, treating yourself to stillness and gentle kindness can be wondrous

ALT Internal warning signs: High sensitivity to noise, mood swings, not wanting to interact with people, high startle reflex or no reflex at all, issues comprehending spoken words. This last one is a sympmtom of dissociation. For me it's like I'm distant from the world, so words come to me muffled

ALT A square image. The left half is a photo of me with a green tint. The left side says 'Looking under the surface' talk, by Gem Hill

ALT It’s a basic list, but these are the foundations of self care for a reason. Feeling less like a lil gremlin is a good first step on feeling better.

ALT A graph of self care plotted against mental and physical health symptoms. For example, if my mental health is fine but my physical health is bad, I'll focus on resting and nourishing my body. If both are sort of middling, I'll go for a walk, or craft, or game. Etc

ALT Sometimes you'll never get answers. Sometimes you'll get answers[...] and it turns out the search for an answer was actually just a way for you to put off accepting and working through your feelings

ALT I was stumped. I’d been really disconnected from these parts of myself and was in survival mode, and hadn’t spend time to really get to know myself.

ALT From a default position of ‘I can do this, but how am I going to do this’ comes a fresh way to look at tasks and how they enable you to move into your ideal self

ALT A square image. The background is a blue to pink gradient, with a faint background pattern of a stylised backpack. The text reads: \n\nSometimes you'll never get answers. Sometimes you'll get answers [...]and it turns out the search for an answer was actually just a way for you to put off accepting and working through your feelings