Self Care: Struggles, Structures, and Showers

How long does it take for you to take a shower?

What was the longest you’ve ever gone without eating? 

When was the last time you did laundry?

Self-care is a topic that you are probably familiar with. Taking a day off, meditation, coloring books, or yoga are some of the most common suggestions for someone struggling with it.

I consider myself someone who struggles with self care, but not the emotional or mental part. I struggle with the physical part.

Showering, eating, laundry and more: I struggle to do them regularly/consistently. It’s not on purpose and it’s not because I’m sad or depressed. It’s hard to articulate why they’re so difficult for me, but I have had some recent revelations about them that make them a little bit easier.

Showering is at least a two hour time commitment for me. No, I’m not joking. Let me explain.

For one, I include the time it takes to dry my hair as part of the showering time block. Since the sensory experience of using a hair dryer is deeply unpleasant for me, I let my hair air dry, which can take well over an hour. 

This is also part of the reason why I shower at night instead of in the morning. I don’t have to worry about damp hair while walking to class in 30 degree weather. But I can’t shower too close to bed time, or else I’ll have to stay up to avoid getting the pillow all wet.

That still leaves the actual event of showering that includes: shampoo, conditioner, body wash, and shaving. The only thing on this list that is optional in my brain is shaving. My hair is very thick and develops knots pretty easily, so just an initial comb through might take 10 minutes or more.

The concept of showering daily always sounded exhausting to me. How on earth did people have the energy or time to fully shampoo and condition their hair, wash their body, and dry out their hair every single day?

Turns out, they don’t! People who shower daily don’t always do the full routine every day or even get their hair wet every day. They just stand under the shower for a few minutes and get out. From my understanding, people aren’t showering daily since they aren’t washing their hair daily (or even getting it wet), they are rinsing off daily and deciding to shower at least once a week! Which makes so much more sense.

While doing a full shower is a multi-hour time commitment, rinsing off can take as little as five minutes. I’m still working on making rinsing off a part of my routine, but even just being asked if I need to shower or rinse off makes it all feel easier.

I also understand the purpose of shower caps now!

I once forgot to eat or drink anything outside of family dinner for three days in a row. While I did eat at those dinners, the simple fact that I hadn’t had anything else to eat each day really concerned my parents.

Part of the problem is that a side effect of the medication I take is hunger suppression. It wasn’t a problem in high school but it became one during online schooling. 

I would wake up an hour before school started and just sit at my computer waiting without going downstairs for breakfast. During those lunches, I just scrolled through my phone. Even after school got out for the day, the thought of food never crossed my mind. By the time dinner rolled around, I would have gone at least 10 hours without eating.

I’ve learned that eating is not just something I can schedule into a day, it has to be built in. 

To explain what I mean, let me use in-person high school as an example. Before I left for the bus, I would always microwave something small for breakfast, like a slice of pizza or some hot dogs. This was easy and convenient because the kitchen sits at the bottom of the stairs and it was a routine I had done since kindergarten.

Then came lunch at school. I had a particular spot in the hallways that I would go to eat in. I would always have the same exact lunch every single day: an apple, two cheese sticks, and two packets of fruit snacks. They are foods that I find engaging to eat, especially the fruit snacks that I would sort by color before eating. 

Family dinner was always orchestrated by mom or dad, so I never had to think about it. 

During online schooling, there was no going downstairs before heading to the bus, no hallway to go and eat in, only family dinner.

In college, I’ve really learned that the closer the food is to me, the more likely I am to eat it. The minifridge and microwave combo sits directly next to my desk. If I decide I want food, I can just lean over and pick something out. Anything not in the fridge is stored in some open shelves. If I don’t see it, it doesn’t exist. 

I buy my food at the grocery store instead of using my meal swipes, because it’s physically easier to spend one day on the weekend out grocery shopping then it is to walk to the eating hall multiple times a day. It’s also more sensory friendly and gives me more options that I like. 

That’s not to say I’ve been eating enough. I’ve been slowly losing a little bit of weight each semester, and not intentionally. At one point, I was under 100 pounds, which was really close to being under weight for my size. I can’t track calories, the thought of having to write down every single thing I eat just makes eating less appealing. But, I’m going to try buying a scale for my dorm room and try weighing myself regularly. 

Not to track my weight, I think that’s an important distinction here to make, I’m not making a data sheet for this. But to give me a sense of if I need more food. I don’t feel the difference in weight, but by being able to see the number, I become aware of it.

It also sounds kinda fun. Do I gain a visible amount of weight just by eating an apple? What about a slice of pizza? How much weight is lost over the course of a day? How much weight does a full bottle of water add?

Oh, I am going to make a data sheet for this. And I’m going to have fun with it!

The last time I did my laundry was when the pile grew to be nearly twice the size of the hamper and threatened to spill all over the floor. The hamper is around 3 feet tall for reference. 

Laundry is something I only learned to do once I started college and I don’t do it on a schedule. It’s not something my brain can just get me to do, it needs to meet certain criteria first. Either: I am out of comfortable clothes for the weather or I have run out of places to put the laundry. 

At college, this works perfectly fine. Going to Roger Williams University in Rhode Island, the weather is usually pretty cool during the school year and I usually fill up my school hamper (longer but only around 1.5 feet tall) to trigger laundry mode every two weeks. During the really cold winter months I’ll usually end up doing laundry once a week because I only have four pants that can put up a fight in thirty degree weather. 

Then there comes the actual process of doing laundry. 

First, I sort my clothes by fabric thickness instead of by color. Personally, I just don’t own enough brightly colored clothes for it to matter. Even if I did, I only own a handful of white t-shirts and I’ve found that modern dyes don’t bleed enough for it to be an issue. Sorting by color just never made sense to me.

Sorting by fabric? Now that makes sense. I own so many fluffy clothes that see regular use during the school semester, that by the time I do laundry, I often have to split it into two different loads. One is filled with all the thin fabrics: t-shirts, light pajamas, a handful of thin pants, etc. The other is filled with all my fluffies: mostly outer layers, a few pants, and my heavy pj’s. 

If I didn’t sort them like this, I’d end up with dry shirts clinging to a still damp fluffy sweater by the end. When they’re sorted properly, I can use the proper settings for their fabric type. Which is… uh… well…

I don’t really know what settings work best. Or what the settings really do?

The dryer settings are simple enough, spanning from no heat to high heat. The washing machine is… more confusing. What does “perm press” mean? What makes a “perm press” cycle different from a normal cycle? Why is a “delicates/bulky” cycle shorter in length than a normal cycle? What do the different “soil” settings actually do, spanning from light to heavy? Should I wash my graphic tees with warm or cold water? Does water temperature affect my fluffies long term fluffy-ness?

Three years at college, probably over a hundred loads of laundry done, and I still have no idea how any of these settings affect my clothes. I have spent multiple hours, even calling the company that made the machines, and I still don’t know what settings to use for the different fabric types. 

I must be doing something right because my fluffies are still fluffy and my shirts still have graphics.

These are the basics. The very pillars of self care and independence, in a sense. Yet, while I’m struggling with them I’m successfully turning my assignments in on time, working on a club council, and happily exploring my interests in my downtime. 

Everyone deals with these tasks differently, building up their own systems or routines. Yet no one talks about them. Neurotypical, neurodivergent, it doesn’t matter. Being confused or needing help with these tasks can feel so taboo. 

I think people assume that someone who doesn’t have a system built up for these basic pillars of self care would be noticeable. They’d smell with an oily sheen, stains would litter their clothes, and they’d be miserable and exhausted. But I know that’s not true.

During my very first semester at college, I only showered twice the entire semester. 

The weather was cold, I didn’t play any sports or go to the gym, and I didn’t rewear clothes more than once or twice before I had to do laundry. I wore my hair in a pony tail with a baseball cap on my head. 

No one noticed. 

If they did, they certainly didn’t say anything to my face. I didn’t realize until it was the end of the semester and mom reminded me to shower before they arrived to pack up my room. 

I’d wake up at 8am for classes and realize I’ve only eaten two cheese sticks the entire day at 8pm. But you wouldn’t have known that talking to me. I smile and take notes and compliment someone on a cool shirt they’re wearing. Maybe I’m a bit tired but people don’t ask what you’ve eaten for breakfast when your eyes are dropping in a college classroom. It’s not a problem as long as I eat two microwaved hot dogs and half of a full sized bag of chips at 8pm, I’ll snack on something else at midnight too. 

Maybe college isn’t the best example for laundry, but I’m not a messy person. I’ve only spilled water and hot dog grease on my clothes on rare occasions. Fluffy outer layers are too thick for sweat stains to show up at all, and that’s only if I actually sweat in them. I’ve been physically uncomfortable wearing clothing too many times and they don’t look any different from when they are taken out of the dryer.

I’ve built up my systems and routines since then. Through trial and error, experimentation, and googling, I’ve learned and gotten better because of it. But the reason I’ve had such an explosion of understanding in the last few months is because I’ve been asking and talking to people about it.

Talking is how I learned people stand under running water without getting their hair wet and call it a shower. Talking at the dinner table was the only reason we caught on to the fact that I wasn’t eating during lockdown. Just the process of writing this blog post has sparked several small realizations. 

We all have systems and structures in place for these things. They’re so basic yet important.

So why don’t we talk about it?

Lauren Von Elm is currently interning at The Arc of North Virginia through a program with BroadFutures. She is a rising senior in college at Roger Williams University. She is working on a major in Marine Biology and hopes to study sharks in the future. “I am extremely passionate about sharks,” she says, “and even have a Spiny Dogfish Shark specimen in a jar named Finley!”