What is Self-Care Really?
The way self-care is portrayed in the media today is a double-edged sword; I am glad that the idea is widespread, but I’m afraid the way self-care is presented to folks these days is lacking substance.
We hear things like “love yourself” but honestly, that’s pretty vague! What does that actually mean, and how do we go about doing that?
Before I jump into it, here is your disclaimer for this post: What follows are my musings on the topic. No research here, just my opinion on something I’ve been stewing on for a while. But all of that said, I hope you get something out of it; if you don’t agree with my take, I hope it gives you something to push against to reach a greater understanding of your own self-care.
Self-care is a concept I was first introduced to while I was completing my graduate work in Social Work. It was a motto within those halls because if you are planning on becoming a social worker, you are likely planning on having a job with a high emotional toll. Because of this you have to take care of yourself; you cannot give if your cup is empty. While this explanation is better than the usual “TREAT YO SELF!” mantra that most people get, it still doesn’t quite encapsulate what self-care really means.
Self-care is the act of giving yourself what you need so that you can be your best self.
Before your mind immediately goes to a bubble bath after a hard day at work, let’s break that sentence down, as there are some complex concepts in this seemingly simple definition.
Part one of that definition is that you give care to yourself, and I say it this way to emphasize that it is a deliberate act.
You have to carve time out of your day to do self-care, which means you have to treat it as a priority. We have all known someone who does so much for others but doesn’t give that same level of care to themselves; it could even be you! If left unchecked, this pattern leads to burnout (an entirely separate blog l need to write).
To summarize it for the purposes of this post, burnout is the state you enter when your cup is empty, and you are no longer able to be the person everyone counts on you to be. You can’t perform your duties the way you need to because you are essentially starved of the physical, emotional, social, or spiritual resources you need to operate at your best. Put simply, if you deliberately commit to taking care of yourself, you can avoid the pattern that leads to burnout.
Part two of the self-care definition hinges on the word “need.”
Generally speaking, everyone can easily name what they want but sometimes what someone truly needs can be harder to pin down. After all, it could be a bubble bath after a hard week at work. Imagine you’re a nurse working in the ER, you just pulled two double shifts and you had some tough patients. You love bubble baths so you decide to ask your partner to take the kids somewhere for an hour so you can have a beautiful, undisturbed soak with your favorite bath bomb and a glass of wine, and you’re able to take your next shift rejuvenated. This may also not be feasible—maybe you’re in the middle of a double shift at a stressful job, so you go to the bathroom and take a few moments and some deep breaths so you can keep going. Both of these examples are self-care.
Conversely, you may be stressed about how messy your house is. In this case, your self-care could be to take a bubble bath, but that would still leave you feeling stressed when you come out of your bathroom into your messy house. Another self-care option in this example would be to clean your house! If you can’t clean the whole house, clean it for 10 minutes. If you don’t have 10 minutes, make a plan to carve out time to clean your house. If you just had a stressful shift and you just need a bubble bath and you come home to a messy house that stresses you out, have the bubble bath for sure; but at some point, come up with a concrete plan to clean your house! If a clean house sets your mind at ease, you have the power to give that to yourself!
“But Ben… isn’t self-care supposed to be relaxing?” It can be, but it can also be about applying some effort to achieve the goal of peace, satisfaction, or joy. It could even be decidedly unpleasant, but necessary to live your best life. I consider all of the following to (potentially) be self-care:
Training for a 5k
Talking to someone about something they are doing that is bothering you (with the goal of a better pattern of interaction in the future)
Completing a task that’s been nagging at you for a while
A bubble bath!
Meditation
Forgiving someone
Curling up with a good book
Watching your favorite awful reality dating show
Getting your calendar in order so you don’t miss deadlines
A wild night with friends
A very tame night with friends
Canceling plans with friends because your social battery is low
Looking at yourself in a mirror and admitting that you made a mistake and making a plan to make it right. Be sure to avoid the shame spiral though.
I wanted to give you these examples to illustrate that to identify what you need, you have to know not only what negative feeling you're experiencing, but also what circumstance is leading you to feel that way. If you’re feeling sad because you’ve experienced a loss of a loved one, your self-care may look different than if you're feeling sad because you’re lonely and craving connection. Emotions and circumstances are complex, so even with this post in mind, it may be hard to figure out what your self-care need is. That said, considering both the reason for the feeling and the feeling itself is a good way to determine your need and what action needs to be taken to address it. If you’re unsure, just try something! Even if it doesn’t work at all, it will probably give you a good idea of what would work.
Part three of the definition of self-care is your best self.
It’s a tough one, to be sure! Who am I to tell someone what their best self looks like? “You’re a therapist, isn’t it your job?” Fair point, but as I always say, therapy is a process of discovery, and so too is the process of finding your best self. But here are my general thoughts on how to strive for that self-actualized life.
Everyone has traits that make them who they are, and it is up to us how we choose to manifest them. I believe most traits can be expressed both positively and negatively. For example, you’re empathetic. This means you can understand others and how they might feel intuitively, which can lead to greater understanding of others as well as deeper social connections. On the other hand, Empathetic people are more affected by the neurotic and negative emotions of others; some empaths are highly reactive to those negative emotions and that causes them to escalate situations that lead to damaging conflicts.
The same emotion that drives greed can be expressed differently to drive ambition. If you are quick to anger, (stay with me here) you can learn how to stop when you’re angry at the wrong thing, and express your anger in a productive way in situations that call for it. I realize the thought of “using your anger in a productive way” might seem counter-intuitive, even ridiculous; I’ll put this on the list of blog topics I’d like to tackle someday. For now though, think of standing up for someone or even acting against oppression. When done properly, these are regarded as very positive acts, and anger is the main driver of them. Some traits are harder to express positively in our day-to-day lives, but even if you don’t always have opportunities to show your traits in a positive light, being your best self is minimizing the negative expression of your traits in addition to finding ways to express them positively.
To summarize, it’s difficult to explain exactly what your best self is. After all, your self is always changing, so your concept of your best self should also be changing. But if you start with what you know you’re good at, what fills your cup, and what’s keeping you from doing those things, you can start to think of ways you can remove or minimize those barriers to your best self.
Now that we have explored this definition of self-care, it’s time for the “take action!” section of the blog. Below is by no means the end-all-be-all of self-care and actualization, but it is where I start when I’m evaluating what actions to take next to give myself what I need.
Recognize the way(s) in which you’re depleted. Maybe you find yourself stressed or maybe you feel lonely. Maybe you feel like you don’t care at all and you know you should. Or maybe you’re just hungry. In any case, you’re feeling like you don’t have the resources to be at your best. This feeling motivates us to act in service of self-care.
Figure out what you need to do to reverse that depleted feeling. What do you need to fill your cup? It could be any of the examples I gave earlier, depending on what emotion you’re feeling and where it’s coming from. Don’t rule out the idea that it’s something you’ve never tried before, which brings me to my next point.
Experiment and try to avoid rigidity in your self-care. Thomas Jefferson said the first version of one of my favorite quotes, “If you want something you’ve never had, you have to be willing to do something you’ve never done.” This is true in light of self-care as well. Maybe you know what works for your self-care in certain situations, but life always finds a way to hand us new circumstances. So, stay flexible in your ideas on what would restore you. If you run into a situation in which you’re stressed and you can’t take a bubble bath, it’s good to have some other self-care methods on hand as well.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this romp through the weeds as we explored in detail my definition of self-care. Again, what you have just read are only my thoughts on the idea of self-care. Hopefully, they are helpful to you, but your journey is your own! I hope you find a way to fill your cup so you can fill the cups around you too.
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WRITTEN BY BEN KINSEY, LCSW (HE/HIM/HIS)
Ben has worked with children and families in many different contexts: Summer camps, schools, foster care and children's shelters, hospitals, medical clinics, and private therapy. He’s worked with teens, toddlers, and everyone in between. He can tell you one thing for certain: there is no handbook for the challenges and hardship you and your child are facing, both in and outside your relationship with one another. The goal in his room is to give your child the tools to cope with and navigate through any troubles they may be wrestling with, and with the family's support, empower them to use those same tools in the future.
