What stops you from doing self care?

Nicki Hayes Unlimited / The Helpful Clinic

Everyone knows the importance of self-care, right? The World Health Organisation (WHO) even published its own Guideline on Self-Care Interventions for Well-being last year, steering governments towards building policies around self-driven healthcare. Yet, why are so many of us so bad at it? Why does it take ill health or worse to wake us up to its vital place in our lives? And what can we do about it? Such questions will be the focus of a free webinar hosted by Thor A Rain (They / Them) and Nicki Hayes (She / Her) on Self Care, Sunday 19 November, 11:00 a.m - 12:30 p.m. Participants can expect to come away having “Sherlocked” their personal situations, feeling styles, and “Why bother?”. Their loved ones can expect them to come out of the webinar ready to start - and able to keep - doing their self-care…

November 13 - 19 marks National Self-Care Week in the UK, an annual national awareness week that focuses on embedding support for self-care across communities, families and generations. This year’s theme is “Mind and Body”. Few people are as well informed by personal and professional experience about the mind-body connection’s impact on self-care as health activist and author Thor A Rain.

Supported by Nicki Hayes, Thor has recently written a manual called First Aid for Feelings: The Essential Manual for Self-Care Skills and Good Health. Its central message is that all feelings are information and that in order to feel better (physically, mentally, and socially), you need to understand the information your feelings are giving you. And it is not until you understand this and the information that your feelings are giving you that you can do effective self-care.

This surprisingly simple message is something that took Thor 20 years of life-threatening lived experience and 10 years supporting others through complex health issues to hone. Indeed, when they first came up with the idea for a First Aid for Feelings method 20 years ago, they were not feeling great. In fact, they were recovering from ME/CFS (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) and Fibromyalgia, as well as recovering from Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD).

“Dealing with the intensity of these experiences, in addition to the associated complexities of being queer, transgender, and non-binary, was, at times, life-threatening. If I was going to survive, I knew I needed something practical and quick working to support me as I worked through the ‘bigger stuff’, which would inevitably take longer,” said Thor.

There was no such resource, and so Thor went about researching approaches with which to support themselves. Alongside medical support, they turned to, studied and qualified in clinical hypnotherapy, Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) and coaching. They found their own way to recovery developing the core principles of the First Aid for Feelings method along the way.

“We’ve been practising and teaching First Aid for Feelings for over ten years now, and, to date, via one-to-one sessions, workshops and our Insight TImer channel, more than 5000 people have benefitted. Now, with this manual, many more can too.”

Due for publication in December, the manual is already receiving rave reviews from healthcare professionals and first readers, including Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) Founding Master Sue Bear, who writes in its foreword: “Two decades searching for a palatable and practical book to help explain the mind-body connection has finally come to an end. Thor and Nicki have absolutely nailed it”.

With this year’s Self-Care Week focusing attention on the mind-body connection, the content of this new manual is very relevant, and the free webinar offers a practical experience of some of the manual’s content. To find out more and register for a place on the webinar, click here. To reserve a copy of First Aid for Feelings: The Essential Manual for Self-Care Skills and Good Health, pledge to gift copies to libraries and healthcare professionals and students, or even get your name in the First Edition as a Helpful Advocate, head on over to Thor’s crowdfunding campaign.

*Sherlocking is the purposeful process of following the clues your feelings are giving you to help you understand the information they contain and make a helpful choice.

Notes to editors

For photos, sample chapters, early reader copies, and interviews, please contact:

Thor A Rain MA Hons

Health activist | First Aid for Feelings trainer | Pain and fatigue specialist

T: +44 (0)7525 832 411 | E: thora@isithelpful.com

W: www.firstaidforfeelings.com