Escaping myths about self care

Self-care does not require you to make radical changes to your life, because it is the radical change itself. Self-care as something that requires a drastic lifestyle shift is promoted by both social and mainstream media. On Instagram and Tiktok, videos of people getting their life together by waking up at 5:00 a.m. to run and drinking green smoothies are much more commonplace than small lifestyle improvements like setting an alarm or cutting down on caffeine. Celebrities have drastically different lives from the average person, so any time they share their self-care procedures, it inadvertently establishes an unnecessary standard for self-care for people watching. Whatever the reason, the effect is that people are discouraged from self-care because they feel like it is too much work, or feel unqualified about any current routines or progress. We have learned to identify self-care as the aftermath, even though what it is is the realization that your health and mental wellbeing should be a priority; whatever comes after is specific to each person. Your self-care journey does not have to be a whole shift in your routine. It can be very small steps, like going on a walk for the first time in months, as long as it is good for your health and wellbeing.

Self-care is not the prerequisite to deserving or benefitting from the care of others, or giving this care out. Of course, having a strong understanding of how you should be treated as a person lets you process how others treat you, but it does not mean that asking others for help is useless when you are not yet fully immersed in the activities and mindset for self-care. It is often a good idea to ask others-family, friends, professional services-for help to guide both your overall wellbeing and your personal approach to it. This also applies to how you care for others; even if you are not good at taking care of yourself, the compassion and care that you show to others is not necessarily futile. Other people will feel the effects of your actions and how it improves their wellbeing as well. 

Self-care does not include everything that makes you happy. The difficult truth is that we all indulge in harmful, even self-destructive things, and see many of our wants as needs. Excessive shopping is not self-care, no matter how many of them are skincare products slapped onto the infinite numbers of articles listing “self-care products” that you “absolutely need”. Drinking coffee is not self-care if you’re addicted to caffeine; in fact, it is often the foundation of other self-destructive habits like overworking oneself. To determine what actions are best for your self-care process, you must first determine what your life is currently like - what is truly helpful to you, what is enjoyable but hurtful, what is making you feel good about yourself, and what is simply creating an illusion of self-validation. Self-care requires self-control in cutting out what may be satisfying in the short term, in order to make sure that your wellbeing is preserved for the extended future. 

More resources (also my references!):

https://cmha.ca/beneath-the-surface-self-care-myths-and-facts/