Most people have one or two core self-care needs that, if they're met, everything else feels easier. This episode is about how to figure out yours... and what to look out for when you hear people preaching about their own!

There's also acknowledgment that your neurodivergent body and brain may process things in different ways, so the following questions may not be that useful for you.

Figuring out your core self-care need or needs (just a jumping-off point!):

1. Thinking back to times in your life when things felt the easiest, what was your life like? Which of your needs were being met fairly well?
2. When life has been a bit easier or better, did you notice any particular ups and downs based on particular needs being met? For example, if you were overall feeling pretty good compared to your baseline, was there anything that particularly threw you off? Or something that could bring you back to that feeling better pretty quickly?
3. Tuning into your body right now, is there anything your body is asking for? This won't necessarily be a core need, it's more a check-in to see what messages your body is already good at giving you.
4. Thinking about the past few days, weeks, or months, are there any messages your body has been consistently giving you? For example, when you've felt tired, does it feel more like you need sleep, or more like you need food, or more like you need to be around another person to recharge? Again, this isn't a perfect metric, just noticing how your body talks to you.
5. Is there any form of self-care that feels like it REALLY fixes a bad day?

Resources mentioned:

1. Takedown of Why We Sleep: https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/
2. Commentary on the above post: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/11/18/is-matthew-walkers-why-we-sleep-riddled-with-scientific-and-factual-errors/
3. Transcript Doc

And one more link someone sent taking down the book Why We Sleep (I haven’t listened to this episode but the links alone look great): https://open.spotify.com/episode/4r0Vawq8xAfnsnKbYVUNhc?si=n7t-koeuS2GXQ2QnA8j4dQ

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