I started this podcast to show the gulf between self-care professionals' ideal and actual self-care.

When life hits you with unexpected challenges, how do you maintain your wellbeing? In this episode of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast, trauma-informed therapist Eve Menezes Cunningham shares practical strategies for creating an emergency self-care plan using emojis - perfect for those with ADHD and trauma backgrounds.

Drawing from real-life experience during a family crisis, Eve breaks down her Feel-Love-Heal framework into manageable emergency practices:

✨ FEEL: Active self-care that regulates your nervous system (even when time is limited)

💝 LOVE: Self-compassion practices and giving yourself grace during tough times

🌱 HEAL: Finding meaning and potential growth, even in crisis

Key takeaways include paring down your self-care routine to essentials, maintaining flexibility in your schedule and creating visual emoji reminders for when your executive functioning is even more compromised than the usual trauma recovery and ADHD brain challenges.

If you’re navigating difficult times or wanting to prepare an emergency self-care toolkit for the future, I hope you’ll find this useful. Feel free to share with someone who might benefit.

🎧 More resources at thefeelbettereverydaypodcast.com 📚 Book: "365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing"

Feel Better Every Day! Learn from the self and Self* care practices the professionals depend on.

With a mixture of solo and interview episodes, your host, Eve Menezes Cunningham (author of 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing) shares trauma-informed and VAST / ADHD-friendly self and Self* care ideas to help you:

• Feel Better (regulate your nervous system and do the things that help you create a life you don’t need to retreat from)

• Be Better (accept yourself completely with love, compassion and kindness – you don’t need to do a thing) and

• Do Better (turn what hurts your heart into action to support your family, organisations, communities and the world at large)

Thanks for watching/listening.

New episodes come out every Tuesday morning (Ireland time) and if you subscribe (via your favourite podcasting app or by joining the Sole to Soul Circle), you’ll be notified about each new episode.

Sole to Soul Circle members get deeper dives each Wednesday morning.

WANT TO WORK WITH ME?

• There’s the book – 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing – and all the book bonus videos.

• All the free resources (for trauma, ADHD, menopause, solopreneurs, anxiety, sleep, confidence, resilience, finding purpose, meaning and joy and more) across my platforms and the library of self-care ideas and practices at https://selfcarecoaching.net

• You can join the Sole to Soul Circle on Substack (https://evemc.substack.com ) and get bonus interviews and content specially designed to help you dive deeper into each week’s theme.

• If you want to support my work but don’t want to commit to a membership, even for a month, you can choose any amount at https://ko-fi.com/evemc

• While my private practice for one to one work (trauma-informed and ADHD-friendly therapies, Self care coaching, clinical supervision and supervisor’s supervision) is almost always at capacity, if you’re based in Ireland or the UK, it’s still worth completing the short form at https://selfcarecoaching.net/contact to book your free telephone consultation in the hope that we can find a mutually convenient time to work together.

WANT TO CONNECT WITH ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA?

You can find me almost everywhere – please say ‘Hi’ and share your questions or comments:

YouTube @evemenezescunningham

Substack @evemc

Bluesky @eveimc

TikTok @evemenezescunningham

Insta @evemenezescunningham

Facebook @FeelBetterEveryDay

And if you’d like to leave a review and/or rate this and other episodes you’ve enjoyed, your feedback and support helps me help more people (of all genders) with trauma histories and/or ADHD take better care of their whole selves and create lives they don’t need to retreat from.

CHAPTERS

(0:02 – 0:55) Introduction to the podcast and episode

(0:56 – 1:46) Why emergency self-care matters

(1:47 – 2:48) ADHD, trauma and crisis mode focus

(2:49 – 3:45) Navigating uncertainty with self-care

(3:46 – 4:28) Executive function struggles in emergencies

(4:29 – 5:50) The power of short practices

(9:31 – 10:32) Letting go of non-essentials and pressure

(10:33 – 11:12) Self-talk and nervous system care

(11:13 – 11:53) Being human and allowing emotion

(11:54 – 12:33) Thinking ahead with compassion

(12:34 – 12:54) Closing thoughts and next episode preview

DISCLAIMER

The content I share is not a replacement for one to one trauma therapy (etc). While you can do an enormous amount to support yourself, please always seek appropriate medical advice.

Thanks for watching. Please subscribe / follow and share with someone who you think will benefit from this episode.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Hi, I'm Eve Menezes Cunningham and you're listening to the Feel Better Every Day Podcast. Every Tuesday I share trauma-informed and ADHD-friendly self-care ideas to help you take better care of yourself and your Self with that uppercase S, that highest, wisest, truest, wildest, most joyful, brilliant and miraculous part of yourself.

This is episode 67 and the idea is that it will help you create a life you don't need to retreat from. You can find out more about the podcast at thefeelbettereverydaypodcast.com. You can also get deeper dives by joining the Sole to Soul Circle for bonus interviews, practices, rituals and access to a rich archive including the entire Love Your Whole Self chakra journey.

You can also find out more about the book 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing, I forgot the title of my own book there, and other resources at selfcarecoaching.net.

And today's episode is basically… I started this podcast thinking that there's a huge gulf between what we as self-care professionals know we want to be doing in an ideal world and what we actually do.

Today, it's World Emoji Day and I'm going to have you use emojis to create an emergency self-care plan for yourself for trauma and ADHD.

I have a loved one in hospital at the moment (at time of recording) which means that things are different to my normal life. I've massively pared back on my normal daily self-care but I've also really focused on it. I know that I'm no good to anyone if I'm not taking care of myself.

Especially with trauma and ADHD we can be really good in a crisis. I think, on the Friday when we had to call the ambulance it was just very, very focused. We don't have to worry about different priorities, it's just like OK. The emergency takes all the focus.

Then, as things progress there's more to navigate. We get more and more tired, potentially, if we're not taking good care of ourselves.

There are always going to be things that are out of your control but I want you to think about how you navigate uncertainty and how you navigate emergencies and what you can do whether you're dealing with a tough time now or whether you want to put something in place as an emergency self-care kit. It's really important.

I really noticed my executive functions worsen. Things like paying for the hospital parking ticket and putting it in the specific pocket in my bag so that I wouldn't lose it and of course losing it. And then I couldn't even turn the steering wheel on the car, I couldn't get the key in the car and I even wondered is this my car because it had been so full-on had I accidentally got into someone else's car. No. I'd locked the steering wheel but I'd never done that before. It's just having lots of extra patience with yourself when you're dealing with it.

I'm skipping ahead a bit because it's really about you thinking about what you want to have in place for any emergencies that you might think of. And it's not like you have to think, I'm not encouraging you to ruminate or catastrophise or anything like that, just thinking I've been asking all my guests what is your ideal self-care, your ideal daily practices and weekly and what would be your essentials. If you're ill, if you're travelling, if there's some sort of emergency.

Feel better…

For the Feel better part, it's very much about regulation, it's very much about the active self-care. I've been swimming practically every day and I swam twice yesterday (at time of recording) because I knew I'm far better for other people if I'm at my best, if I'm peaceful, if I'm calm.

And to be honest the second heated pool swim was on the way back from the hospital because I didn't know how I was going to have the energy to stand up in the shower at home.

The idea of going for a heated pool swim and then sitting in the steam room and then having a luxurious shower there is nicer than my shower at home. I thought, I'll do that and then just five, ten minutes of swimming, really lovely, that's me. Think about for yourself, think about what is your essential. I'm also thinking my daily yoga nidras. They're essential for me.

I'm about to start ADHD medication (have started! More to follow in Episode 69!) but I've been using the daily yoga nidras now for I think more than two years. It's really essential for me but today, it's like so much to do, not going to have time for one of the longer ones that I've got accustomed to.

I did a shorter one and it was amazing and it's like so often we think, “Oh but if I can't do the full practice, the full thing, what's the point?” Doing one or two yoga poses, that's enough. It's not ideal but it's enough.

Deleting everything that's not essential from my diary for the next few days. I've been fortunate enough to be able to really be present in sessions and I've not had to cancel clients but there are other things, like some of the writing work that I'm doing, it just has to wait, my brain isn't there right now.

Thinking about your own workload, how can you have enough flexibility where possible, where you can just take pressure off yourself and delete, delete, delete?

Think for yourself in terms of what helps you in terms of your own regular self-care practices and how you might pare them down in an emergency.

Love…

Then, thinking about the Love part, where it's about acceptance and it's about self-talk and allowing yourself to just be and allowing yourself to pull a duvet over your head which of course is less possible often in case of emergency but it's not impossible.

You might feel that it's impossible, you might feel that you just don't have the time but if you honour your nervous system and if you give yourself a break it will help.

For me it is, I know I always go on about water but sitting underwater is like an emotional duvet for me, just like and obviously I'm not breathing underwater. But thinking, like just getting those stress hormones out of the body… but for you, let yourself be still if possible, let yourself cry, let yourself have the big feelings, let yourself be messy, let yourself be the human that you are.

And the more you give yourself grace, the more you're able to talk with compassion to yourself, the more your loved ones will benefit as well. The more the people around you rather than you being under so much pressure that you're potentially a bit of a nightmare to be around (which I know I would be if I didn't actively do all these things on a daily basis even when they're pared down).

Heal…

Difficult conversations as well, letting yourself be a human and moving into the Heal practice.

It might be that the most you can think about in terms of post-traumatic growth or using that heightened care for social justice that you might have with ADHD, it might be for your nearest and dearest.

Or it might be even thinking for the future at some point when you've processed what it is that you're dealing with.

For some people, it can be really beneficial. I know for me it's really beneficial to think even like kind of it might sound a bit morbid but thinking at a certain point in the future I might do more grief work, I might do more to support like kind of there's so much that I love the trauma work, I love the ADHD work but at a certain point maybe like that just sounds really morbid but being there for loved ones, helping me think beyond me, helping me think beyond the person involved…

I'm not putting pressure on myself like everyone's like look after yourself but I already do. I know that I have to, I know that my brain won't let me, my heart won't let me, my body won't let me if I don't.

I mean I've been working in self-care for 20 plus years but thinking if it helps motivate you to take better care of yourself, think about how whatever the emergency you're facing might potentially, I'm being so careful here because the last thing I want to do is put anyone under additional pressure when you're already in a crisis situation but for some people, myself included, it can be motivational and empowering to think at some point, it's like Nora Ephron used to say, “Everything is a copy”.

She wrote When Harry Met Sally and like a gazillion other things but her parents were screenwriters. She was a writer and the idea of turning that pain into words, it just helps us move through it, it helps us process so thinking in your own life whether, like don't think too hard, just be open to the possibility that at a deeper level at some point what you're navigating now can potentially help others but let yourself be, love where you are, like kind of give yourself all the love, all the compassion and do all the things that help you in the meantime.

Sole to Soul Circle…

For the Sole to Soul Circle members this week: There's going to be a shorter emergency yoga nidra for those times where you think, “I just don't have time but I need something!” so a very short one.

But it will help you keep your word to yourself in terms of taking that care of your whole self.

Thank you for listening or watching, thank you for sharing, subscribing, commenting, engaging, I love your emails, I love hearing from you and I would love to encourage you to ground this episode by thinking of World Emoji Day and thinking about what you've identified as you've been listening in terms of the self-care practices that support you and the soothing self-talk and the self-acceptance and self-love and the allowing yourself to be with all the emotions, messy, angry, all of it and also the heal element where the potential for post-traumatic growth, the potential for helping others, your loved ones, your family, your community, potentially the world at large.

Let yourself choose some emojis. Make it fun, get past the conscious mind a little bit and give yourself a code in case you forget what they are. I would love, if you want to share your emojis, self-care plans, so maybe one if you want to narrow it down, you can have as many as you want but maybe choose one for the Feel better, so where it's the active self-care and one for the Love where it's you giving yourself grace, you're talking kindly to yourself, you're allowing yourself to just be and have the big emotions or be numb or whatever it is you need to be and the Heal when you imagine the future. Have a bit of fun with it if you have the chance and let me know how you get on.

I look forward to sharing more next week, this episode like all of them has been produced by me, your host Eve Menezes Cunningham and wishing you a wonderful week.