What is self-care?

Self-care is, as the name suggests, anything we can do to take care of ourselves. Its vital for looking after our mental wellbeing as, if we neglect our needs, we end up feeling stressed, anxious, burnt out and so on. Nothing good. It’s so important that we remember to do it. The problem is we all have a list of priorities in life and all too often we are at the bottom of the list. That’s if we appear on it at all. But why do we neglect ourselves, and risk our own wellbeing whilst managing to find the time to take care of everyone else?

Is self-care selfish?

This is one of the main questions I get asked in my therapy practice and its understandable. We are often bought up to believe that, to be a nice person we should take care of other people, put others first and that taking time out for ourselves is somehow self-indulgent. Let’s put this to rest, once and for all… No! Self-care is NOT selfish.

You may not fully believe that so let me give an example. Take your phone. The phone gets used all day for all different kinds of things, its brilliant and we can’t live without it. But at the end of the day the phones battery has run down and needs to be recharged. This isn’t your phone being selfish. It’s your phone being clever and saying “I need more energy if I’m going to continue to do all these amazing things that are being asked of me.” Recharging the battery is self-care for the phone. Now imagine what would happen if you didn’t charge it. Eventually the battery would run flat and it’d stop working altogether.

Now imagine you are the phone (you’d probably guessed where I was going with this!). If you don’t allow yourself proper time for self-care, to recharge your batteries, then eventually you’ll run out of energy and you’ll stop working. Then you won’t be able to do all the amazing things you do for other people. So, self-care isn’t selfish, it just means giving yourself time to recharge so that you can continue to do all the things that are important to you.

How do I find the time for self-care?

This can be a trickier question to answer because it involves reassessing the way we currently spend our time. Rejigging the priorities if you like. The mistake a lot of people make is to try to shoehorn some form of self-care into their already jam-packed lifestyle, which leaves them feeling stressed and like they then have to play catch up with everything else. This defeats the point a bit. There’s little value in going for a lovely walk in an evening if you’re constantly clock watching and thinking about all the things you ‘should’ be doing at home.

Imagine your life like a pie chart. The sections of the pie are divided up between all the things you currently do – work, family, friends, housework, etc. If you want to make room for something new you can’t make the pie bigger, you have to take some room from something else. This is where the tricky bit comes in. If we look at our lifestyle pie chart with these big things in it we’ll think “but I have to go to work” or “I can’t stop seeing my family”. Of course not (unless that’s something you want to do in which case, it’s ok) If you take another look at the pie there are probably other things in there taking up a lot of time, which could be better spent being kinder to yourself. Things like scrolling on your phone, doing little jobs for other people that they could quite easily do themselves or even the adhoc things like mowing the lawn. Ask yourself, do I need to do this? (as opposed to someone else) and does it need to be done today? If the answer to either of those is no then maybe there is time to take a slice of pie for yourself.

And remember, self-care doesn’t have to be big expensive, time-consuming things. Treating yourself to a holiday is a wonderful idea but its unrealistic to think you can do it every day. Small things count, like sitting quietly in the garden for 15 minutes when no one else is around, or going for a walk on your lunch break. It could mean buying yourself a bunch of flowers just because you like them or sitting down to watch your favourite program rather than folding the laundry.

I would challenge you to find 30 minutes a day to spend on things you find restorative. Things that are just for you. Things that recharge your batteries. Just 30 minutes out of your whole day. If you can do that then you’ll probably find you have more energy and resilience to do all the other things too.

What counts as self-care?

Here are some ideas just in case you need help getting started:

• Take a walk in the fresh air

• Sit in the garden – or by an open window

• Buy yourself a coffee next time you’re out

• Take a hot bath

• Read the book you’ve had for ages and haven’t started yet.

• Do something creative like painting or drawing

• Restart an old hobby you haven’t done for a long time

• Take an exercise class

• Join a club or group (this is a good one to help remind you to do it regularly)

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