Michael Fowler, LMFT
In the past few years, I’ve seen the term “self-care” floating around on social media. It’s usually attached to a meme about quitting your job or eating pizza or ‘Netflix and chill’. I really hope those memes are exaggerations and just jokes but I want to answer the question: What is self-care?
You could liken self-care to basic maintenance or upkeep. Let’s consider our cars. Hopefully, you take steps to keep your car running well by getting oil changes, putting gas in, and changing filters or parts as needed. We need to take care of these things so that they can serve their function. Do we show ourselves that same courtesy? Sure some of us get to take vacations every now and then, but do you take time in between vacations in order to keep everything running smoothly in your life? Self-care is intentional time taken to keep yourself mentally, physically, and emotionally healthy in order to be able to strive towards your full potential. It should be a time where you feel refreshed afterwards-revitalized-ready to face the next thing in life, whatever it may be. You need to take an honest assessment of your “hobbies” and determine if you need to branch out. If your ‘hobby’ is Netflix or video games, and you feel deflated/gloomy afterwards, you may need to find something that gives you a sense of accomplishment. This looks differently for everyone. I tend to cycle between gaming, reading, and working out. My wife likes to read, get her nails done, do yoga, or deep clean our apartment. All of these things are helpful to us depending on the season we’re in or the time we have available to dedicate to our self-care. After reading the definition of self-care, most of you probably fall into one of two categories: You are either confident you have destressing hobbies and take part in self-care regularly or you feel like you are too busy to have the luxury of self-care. If you fall into the latter, you might be thinking you don’t have time for self-care or that self-care sounds selfish Consider the car analogy: our cars are in need of routine care otherwise things can go bad very quickly. We could end up broke down on the side of the road without a way to get to our next destination. People are a lot like a car: we need routine self-care in order to avoid having breakdowns and getting stuck in a bad place. When we neglect relationships, jobs, school work, health, kids, things go can go wrong. Our relationships deteriorate, we get fired, fail, get sick, miss out on fun; we simply lose out on life. These are reasons why self-care is not synonymous with selfish. We all need to find a way to balance the many tasks in life that can break us down if we neglect our own personal cares. I wholeheartedly believe you are busy. I also believe that if you take time to take care of yourself you will be better equipped to take care of your responsibilities. Self-care doesn’t have to be a week vacation or an entire day; it just needs to be revitalizing so you can continue to carry on down the road, no matter how rocky it may get. Here’s 3 steps to help you move forward with your self-care:
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