Embracing Hobbies As a Form of Self Care
The topic of self care is huge on social media these days, and for good reason. However, when we talk about self care, it’s often in the form of eating healthy, meditation, and personal therapy work.
But not enough is said about the role that our personal hobbies and interests play in the act of caring for oneself. Inner child work is an integral part of healing, and when it comes to managing mental health, learning to lean on your hobbies is a wonderful way to take a step back from stressful thoughts and experiences and ground yourself through the act of “play”.
This is because carving time out of your day to engage in something you enjoy can be a much-needed mental refresher in the face of a distressing experience or trauma trigger. As adults, however, it is easy to let our hobbies and interests fall by the wayside in lieu of socially-expected demands and personal responsibility (like work or caring for family and loved ones), or simply because engaging in them may not feel safe.
However, it’s important to note that hobbies can be really supportive in the healing process, whether they are interests you have developed in recent years, or have carried with you from childhood into adulthood. Finding ways to explore intentional “play”, or purposeful activity, can help boost mood, lower stress, and improve symptoms of depression.
This applies even if you are in a place in your life where it might be time to find or develop a new hobby, but don’t know where to start. In order to avoid the pitfalls of self judgement that people often face when trying new things, try taking a couple of different approaches — lean into something you already love, or think back about what interests (whether active or passive) that brought you a lot of joy when you were younger.
In either case, this can be anything from crafting, to cooking, to tinkering with cars or electronics — you name it. Use some time to meditate on whatever this hobby might be for you, even if it takes a few tries to really hone in on something that really resonates and brings a familiar sense of joy you may not have realized was already present.
One of the most wonderful things about hobbies as a form of self care is the sense of community that comes bundled, if you decide to look for it. Within their circles, Hobbyists are proud of what they love, and usually really want to share that love with the people around them. Connecting with people who also love the same things you do can do wonders for relationship building and developing self confidence.
Some great starting points include:
Writing groups or book clubs
Food festivals and recipe clubs
Civil War reenactments
Board games and jigsaw puzzles
Seamwork, such as sewing
The best part is, you don’t even need a car to travel very far in order to accomplish this. Plenty of online communities are readily accessible just a search engine or hashtag away, whether in the form of social media groups, forums, self-directed learning spaces, or meet ups in person or over livestream.
Embracing what you already love to do is a form of self care. Our hobbies, in essence, are an extension of who we already are. — but it is all too easy to forget that and let what we love fall by the wayside as other responsibilities demand our attention throughout the day. In moments of stress and hardship, it’s important to remember what brings us joy, and make time for it.
Your mind and body will thank you for it.