Daily Self Care With Self Love Languages

I recently read a blog post on what’s quickly becoming my favorite self care blog, Blessing Manifesting. The blog post talks about how you can get self care by doing activities that relate to your own love languages.

The self love languages follow the same love languages in the book The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman.

If you don’t know your love language you can take the love language test here.

I read the love languages back when the book first became popular. Then when my husband and I first started dating we discussed our love languages with each other.

His primary love language is touch with a secondary in quality time. My primary love language is quality time with a secondary in acts of service.

I give my husband plenty of hugs, kiss, cuddles, and back massages. He dedicates time to spend with me daily and sets up my coffee maker for me for the morning.

While I’ve always known the importance of speaking love languages in any relationship or friendship in my life, I never thought of using the love languages in self care, until now.

Self Love Language Actions

The five love languages each have their own types of actions that make us feel loved. So when it comes to self love and self care you take what shows you love and show it to yourself.

This graphic from Dominee at Blessing Manifesting details the types of self care activities you can do to show yourself some love.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B8Okiw8gfWB/

Physical Touch

These days physical touch is pretty much frowned upon, that means going for a massage is off the table. However, a self massage is possible. Massage your head, neck, shoulders, arms, hamstrings, feet and hands.

Other ways you can get self care with this love language is:

Stretches and movements like those in yoga can help to relax muscles.
A hot bath or a shower.
Face masks
Using body butter to moisturize your skin.

Physical touch is about doing things that help your muscles relax and our skin feel great that helps us feel loved.

Acts Of Service

Acts of Service love languages are all about having little tasks done for them. For me, when my husband – who doesn’t drink coffee – sets up the coffee machine every night so I can have coffee in the morning, I feel he loves me.

When taking an acts of service love language into account for your self care needs these activities may appeal to you:

Journaling or using a bullet journal
Creating lists
Organizing frequently used areas

Doing things that help to organize your thoughts, plans, or tasks is a great way to give yourself some self care if your love language is Acts Of Service.

This is my secondary love language and I recognize that I often take time to brainstorm, create lists, and get in my planner. I always feel more organized and better at the end of my task.

Receiving Gifts

People often confuse the gifts love language with someone who is materialistic by nature. Gifts don’t have to be extravagant, just items that are helpful, useful, or meaningful.

When it comes to this love language in self care you can do things like purchase something small that’s just for you:

Crafting supplies
Your favorite take out
Self improvement items and books

Investing into yourself is a great way to show yourself some love if receiving gifts is your love language.

Quality Time

The quality time love language is when you feel love with getting to spend time with someone. Quality time means having someones undivided attention.

The best way to show yourself love with this love language is in getting time for yourself:

Give yourself alone time
Journaling
Quiet yoga time

These types of activities are great to spend time in your own thoughts. For the quality time love language this time is representative of you getting quality time with yourself.

Words Of Affirmation

The words of affirmation love language is when you need to hear things like, “I love you,” or “you are fantastic.” If hearing compliments or affirmation makes you feel loved this is probably your love language.

So if you feel loved when other people compliment you, it stands to reason that complimenting yourself would be self care:

Journaling
Leave yourself love notes
Reading self improvement and positive books

Giving yourself pep talks are a great self care activity to show yourself some self love.

Daily Self Love Language

I had never previously realized how much my own love language could help me in my self care until reading Dominee’s post. But once she made the connection it was like a light bulb went off in my own head.

It was time to start catering my daily self care to my love language. There is something o keep in mind though.

Daily self care is entirely individualistic and based on your daily mood. On days that my stress levels and anxiety are high, self care can be as simple as getting dressed. But on good days my self care is as simple as taking a few minutes to do some planning.

Your self care could look entirely different and if you have depression or anxiety. Furthermore, you may need to switch up your self care activities to deal with symptoms from depression and anxiety.

Wake Up With Self Care

I started implementing a wake up with self care routine. Basically I get up, do my normal get dressed, get coffee routine and then take a minute to focus on what I need that day.

There are days I wake up feeling frazzled right from the get go, those are days when I rarely get my tasks accomplished. However, there are days where I wake up focused and motivated.

Taking stock of where my head is first thing in the morning allows me to plan out my day and my self care in a way that actually works.

On days when I feel frazzled I know that my acts of service self love needs attention. Now I can sit down and spend some time creating lists, planning, and organizing myself.

On days when I just have no desire to socialize, I know my quality time self love is lacking. So I take quiet time for myself.

Slow It Down

Understanding how my love language affects my self care and self love responses I’ve also recognized the need to slow it down.

On days that start out great but half way through leave me feeling overwhelmed I know that I need to take time to relax and slow down. During that slow down process I can figure out exactly what I need to do to give myself some self care.

Give Yourself Grace

Learning to use your love language in your self care is not always the easiest thing to do. It can take a bit of time to figure out, schedule, and implement this type of self care in your life.

Switching from a societal normal self care concept to an individualized self care routine takes some time. We are not all physical touch and receiving gift types.

Recognize what makes you feel loved and find ways you can accomplish that feeling on your own.

Furthermore, it’s important to recognize that we may not be needing love from others as much as we need to love ourselves. Overwhelm, stress, anxiety, are all signs that you may need to show yourself some love.

Make Self Care A Daily Ritual

At the same time or as close to the same time every day practice your self care.

It doesn’t have to be the same types of self care, it just needs to be a ritual where you take 20 minutes or more to focus on loving yourself around the same time each day.

This helps you to build up the habit of participating in self care every day.

Self Care Love Languages

Knowing your love language, what makes you feel loved, and how to apply that to your self care will give you better results than doing something that just doesn’t speak to your love language.

This isn’t to say that you won’t enjoy self care activities that are related to different love languages. It just means that if you really want to speak to your own needs, using activities that relate to your love language can do a better job than those that don’t.

What are your favorite self care activities that relate to your love language? Let me know in the comments below. Follow me on Pinterest for more like this and pin this to your favorite self care boards.

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