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Self care warm winter clothes

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Mach123

MyPTSD Pro
I realize that I do self harm in lots of tricky ways. Suffering in the cold weather is definitely one of them. But good news! I’m an wearing warm clothes in and out of the house. It’s stupid to try and explain how difficult this was for me to accomplish and how major a shift it is because it seems like it would be so obvious.

I couldn’t buy clothes or I have a terrible time doing it because of my self image. Part of me is trying to dress like a girl which you can see that in the winter coat nightmare I did last year and ended up in a ladies coat which I since gave to my daughter. (They sold it on amazon as men’s lol)

So anyway in the house I’m wearing long Jon’s, I need them especially downstairs where it’s not winterized, putting on socks and slippers, and I got an amazing winter coat for short money after returning about 7 of them. I even wear that in the house it’s like a big puffy sleeping bag. I got a hat and face mask. I can leave the face mask on my neck always it’s actually a “gaiter” that’s stretchy and has a vented front so your glasses don’t fog up. I got a beanie winter hat at Home Depot I’m wearing in the house always and I’m warm.

For years since we moved down here by the beach (freezing in winter) I walk around all winter saying “I’m freezing” and my wife yelling at me to put on some clothes. She was right. I was wearing fall or early winter stuff, it’s cold man!

This ended a lot of suffering for me I have terrible arthritis and really the cold kills me. I’m glad, and so is everyone else, that I’m able to do some actual self care. Like I deserve to have nice warm things to wear when it’s cold.

I think there is a thread like this? What are you doing to be nice to you or self care?

Do something nice for yourself. : )
 
I’m struck with the cold thing. I do that too. Just throw myself in the cold and nah. Freezing and everyone asking if I’m okay, and I say I’m okay. But there is something vivid with the cold when it’s short.

I make coffee and tea and put pillows everywhere. Do an exfoliating mask. From time to time. But I have a v high threshold for discomfort so I generally tend to just get stuck there and do nothing in a uncomfortable position. I don’t have much answers for this. My self-care habits always have been shitty and disorganized.

However since I have a mattress that gives back cancer I really value the goodness of good mattresses. I also like to lighten places in a nice fantasy way. It’s very much about creating environments where I feel good. Past that not much.

See friends.
 
One of the things I did to be nice to myself in the cold last year was that I bought a wireless heating pad in the configuration of a velcro-closure back brace. I waited for the bus or train in downtown Portland at 5-something in the morning to get to work in Hillsboro shortly after 7:00 with one transfer in Beaverton. It was damp and dark and it felt colder than I was used to since the humidity was so high and I am very used to the desert. It helped my pain SO much because, with all that shivering, I was tensing up all my muscles and just making my arthritis and injuries hurt worse. I still use it from time to time, but now I am inside constantly and need it less since I have a better, wired heating pad. We bought an electric blanket late in 2020 which made me feel like an old lady, but I'm all about being warm these days. I may be aging prematurely (I'm 41), but I refuse to be too proud to be comfortable. I also recently bought a heated car seat cushion.

You really hit on something here. It seems most of my recent self-care purchases have had to do with keeping warm. 😆
 
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What else?

Clothes that make you look good
Clothes that are comfortable
Ideally, clothes that do both
Bubble baths, hot showers
Perfume
Shampoo that makes your hair happy
A good sound system
Films you love

On the non-consumerist space

Taking care of your pets
Walking and see animals
Look at flowers and trees
Singing
Wanking/sex
Self-massage
Help friends
Make a cake or cook something
 
I went to breakfast this morning with my wife and an old friend and I ate and enjoyed it without worry about what I should or shouldn’t be eating. It was so nice to see an old friend and spend time And just eat. Masks and all. It was fun And I’m glad we did.
 
So yesterday in the morning it was cold, in the twenties with ice on the car windows. I was all dressed and even put my driving gloves in the car that have been lying around here and our other houses 25 years.

I have to mention this again as the fact I was making myself miserable is so clear. I feel ? Stupid. I know the therapist would say trauma.

I always drove the first 3 miles with my teeth chattering unable to blast the heat in the car till it warmed up. Or I could have started the car? My wife got a remote starter I’m so jealous. I was nice and warm and dressed so as not to be too hot when the car warms up, that’s important!

The point is though I was causing myself a LOT of misery that was corrected easily enough. Was I telling myself don’t complain? You can take it?

Really? Even in the house now I’m wearing twice the clothes.

It’s still not cold really. This year has been mild so far. I’m dumbfounded though by my own behavior.
 
I’m dumbfounded though by my own behavior.

I remember that moment... the first time I really took control of my own space.

The reasons I didn’t in the past were legion.

The most... complete? All-encompassing? it’s difficult to explain, the thread that tied all the disparate (yet equally valid) reasons together into a single indestructible whole... was that no one could take away that which I really didn’t care about. I might bitch, be miserable, be too cold / be too hot / hungry / hurt, but I was ALSO untouchable. Because I didn’t reeeeeeally care. All anyone around me could see were the surface ripples, whilst I was waaaaaay beneath the waves. And could shrug off the surface in the blink of an eye, should I care to. As I often did.

But to actually take it as MINE? To claim my space, my territory, and expend effort to make things as I wanted them? Showed people the real me. What mattered to me. What would hurt me if I lost it. Where I was vulnerable.

One day, I just said f*ck it. It’s mine. Fight me for it. And I bought warm clothes, and cranked up the thermostat, and put art on the walls, and food on the table, and furniture I loved, and built play spaces, and just... claimed it. Mine. What I WANT. How I want to LIVE. Me. Mine.

Old behaviors still swirled out in certain ways... refusing to carry photographs or leave evidence of who I loved on the walls (unless you happened to know WHO I associated with this/that/or the other, and every time I looked at it? I saw their face better than a thousand pictures of them), keeping backups of things I actually cared about elsewhere, so that I could walk away from everything with nothing but the clothes on my back and not regret, and a few other quirky things. Shrug.

But the day I put on a warm coat in the cold? instead of just dealing with whatever was in front of me? Was really the MOMENT I chose to build a life, claim it as mine, rather than just float on the wind & go where life took me, invisible/untouchable as possible.
 
Being who I am, by wearing what I want, has been a sign of progress for me. Started with simply wearing a bracelet that I liked. It is hard to be comfortable in my own body and harder to have others see me being comfortable. I have started buying things because I want them and not because I think I should. Interesting thread. :)
 
I remember that moment... the first time I really took control of my own space.

The reasons I didn’t in the past were legion.

The most... complete? All-encompassing? it’s difficult to explain, the thread that tied all the disparate (yet equally valid) reasons together into a single indestructible whole... was that no one could take away that which I really didn’t care about. I might bitch, be miserable, be too cold / be too hot / hungry / hurt, but I was ALSO untouchable. Because I didn’t reeeeeeally care. All anyone around me could see were the surface ripples, whilst I was waaaaaay beneath the waves. And could shrug off the surface in the blink of an eye, should I care to. As I often did.

But to actually take it as MINE? To claim my space, my territory, and expend effort to make things as I wanted them? Showed people the real me. What mattered to me. What would hurt me if I lost it. Where I was vulnerable.

One day, I just said f*ck it. It’s mine. Fight me for it. And I bought warm clothes, and cranked up the thermostat, and put art on the walls, and food on the table, and furniture I loved, and built play spaces, and just... claimed it. Mine. What I WANT. How I want to LIVE. Me. Mine.

Old behaviors still swirled out in certain ways... refusing to carry photographs or leave evidence of who I loved on the walls (unless you happened to know WHO I associated with this/that/or the other, and every time I looked at it? I saw their face better than a thousand pictures of them), keeping backups of things I actually cared about elsewhere, so that I could walk away from everything with nothing but the clothes on my back and not regret, and a few other quirky things. Shrug.

But the day I put on a warm coat in the cold? instead of just dealing with whatever was in front of me? Was really the MOMENT I chose to build a life, claim it as mine, rather than just float on the wind & go where life took me, invisible/untouchable as possible.
Thanks. it’s mind boggling because as you said, the implications. I hadn’t though if it in the broader sense.
 
IMG_20210116_103734.jpg
 
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