Self-Care A-Z: Autumn Self-Care - Simply Slowing Down, Gently Letting Go, Reflectively Taking Stock
by Erlene Grise-Owens, EdD, LCSW, MSW, MRE, lead co-editor of The A-to-Z Self-Care Handbook for Social Workers and Other Helping Professionals
Effective self-care evolves, depending on personal preferences, varying circumstances, lifestyle adjustments, and deepening awareness. As I’ve written previously, self-care needs to be adapted for changing seasons.
Dallas Hartwig’s The 4 Season Solution articulates a model for well-being through attention to seasonal cycles. Using interdisciplinary perspectives - from history to psychology and neuroscience to nutrition - Hartwig describes how each season has a role in human wellness. He discusses four interlocking “anchors” of well-being, i.e., movement, diet, sleep, and connection. For optimal wellness, these anchors need seasonal variation.
Hartwig says summer emphasizes “adrenaline, action, and engagement” (p. 13). However, Western culture is stuck in “chronic summer,” which leaves one “feeling overstimulated, fatigued, beat down, and a bit unmoored.” Chronic summer living results in “circadian rhythm dysregulation, dietary imbalances, dysfunctional movement patterns, and a lack of meaningful social connections and self-awareness” (p. 154). Sound familiar?
Self-care can be accentuated through intentional focus in this autumn season.
Simply Slowing Down
Hartwig’s model emphasizes autumn as a season to slow down. He associates this season with serotonin, the neurotransmitter of meaning, gratitude, contentment (p. 14). Hartwig warns, “the pivot to fall is the hardest shift, as it entails a big directional change away from…exciting adrenaline and dopamine-fueled summer” (p. 158). Fall is a time for “deceleration, energetic contraction, simplification, self-examination, and interpersonal reconnection” (p. 155).
For some, the COVID crisis exacerbates “chronic summer” living’s frenetic, full schedules. However, for others, this time brings a slower pace. Many want to retain this simpler pace, post-COVID. Some hypothesize that this slowing down contributed to the anti-racism uprising; reflective space allows for clarity and conviction to surface in compelling ways.
In your autumnal self-care, how can you focus more intentionally to slow down and simplify? What SMART strategies can you implement that fit your lifestyle and circumstances, while deepening your self-care commitment?
Gently Letting Go
Like the falling leaves, a crucial aspect of autumnal self-care is letting go. My previous post offers a guided reflection on letting go.
Many common views of self-care are embedded in summer-time mode, whereby, self-care is viewed (exclusively) as acquisition of products or adding activities. Hartwig describes chronic summer as consumptive yearning for “more, more, more” (p. 173). In contrast, autumn is a time of embracing the adequacy of “enoughness” - engaging gratitude, purpose, and presence. Because chronic summer mode distracts with addictive energy, this fall phase can be disorienting.
As Hartwig writes, “…fall provides an opportunity to embrace a more philosophical and introspective mode.” Fall is a time of “stripping away… and this letting-go process can invoke…grief, sadness, discomfort” (pp. 174-176). Hartwig describes his autumnal releasing of superficial or unhealthy relationships, as well as processing grief and loss of his divorce and father’s death. Through “gently letting go,” he freed energy to reconnect more deeply with himself, others, and purpose.
Wholistic self-care includes accepting the range of human-ness, including grief and other experiences often avoided. Self-care incorporates resources and supports (including therapy, as needed) to navigate these experiences. Hartwig emphasizes that, though difficult, introspective autumn, “catalyzes self-discovery, and enhanced feelings of purpose and contribution, and even wonder and awe” (p. 176).
Reflectively Taking Stock
Letting go, slowing down, and simplifying requires an iterative process of taking stock. This reflective taking stock includes striving to be clear and honest with ourselves (and others) about what we need and want.
Autumn self-care includes recalibrating anchors of diet, movement, connections, and sleep. Hartwig advises a diet that, as closely as possible, follows seasonal availability of foods. He emphasizes movement - as contrasted with regimented exercise, exclusively. He promotes incidental movement, i.e., engaging one’s body routinely. He clarifies that connections include spirituality, self, others, and nature. Autumn is an ideal time to (re)connect with nature, which can include outings with loved ones and/or solitary explorations. Hartwig identifies sleep as an especially neglected aspect of “chronic summer,” and autumn is a time to welcome waning daylight to prioritize sleep.
Through intentionally slowing down our pace; simplifying calendars, closets, and commitments; letting go in order to have fulfilling, connective enough-ness, we open more space. As we take stock, individually, in this autumnal season of self-care, may we restore ourselves, reprioritize purpose, reinforce meaning, and re-commit to collective justice and joy.
Peace, Love, & Self-Care, Erlene
Dr. Erlene Grise-Owens, EdD, LCSW, MSW, MRE, is a Partner in The Wellness Group, ETC. This LLC provides evaluation, training, and consultation for organizational wellness and practitioner well-being. Dr. Grise-Owens is lead editor of The A-to-Z Self-Care Handbook for Social Workers and Other Helping Professionals. As a former faculty member and graduate program director, she and a small (but mighty!) group of colleagues implemented an initiative to promote self-care as part of the social work education curriculum. Previously, she served in clinical and administrative roles. She has experience with navigating toxicity and dysfunction, up-close and personal! Likewise, as an educator, she saw students enter the field and quickly burn out. As a dedicated social worker, she believes the well-being of practitioners is a matter of social justice and human rights. Thus, she is on a mission to promote self-care and wellness!