So, What Is Self-care Anyway?
Self-care is such a trendy topic these days. I feel like as much as 5 years ago, I was barely aware of this concept while now, milky bathtubs doused in lavender-scented salts, rose petals, and fluffy bubbles flood the hashtag self-care on Instagram. A quick scroll through of this hashtag on social media or Google gives the impression that self-care is synonymous with relaxing, indulgence and alternative medicine. And I couldn’t help but think, “Well, if that’s what self-care is, I’ve tried it a handful of times!” A day defined for nothing but masks, meditating and massages. I had a wonderful time pampering myself like that but also, I was itching to go back to work towards the end of the day. To do something more constructive. I wasn’t getting the hype about this and how transformational everyone was making this experience seem. So, I dug a little deeper and not having sufficient enough of an idea, I mentally archived it. It wasn’t until the recent conversation I had with Karthika of KKBoutique that the penny truly dropped. My carefully curated spa days were a day for self-love. A day where I let myself love myself unconditionally and feel good! Which is great all in all, but turns out, is not the same as self-care.
Self-care turns out to mean literally taking care of yourself physically, emotionally and mentally. And as simple as it sounded, it blew my mind because it’s not something I do? Like, ever? I take care of my loved ones, I take care of my colleagues’ plants when they’re not around, hell, I even take care of my eyeshadow palette. But to treat myself with care and respect? To truly care for myself the way I do for others? I don’t even think it’s something that has crossed my mind in my 29 years. I didn’t even realise it’s something I should be doing, but at the same time, it feels like I should have intuitively? It felt like something a doctor would say like, “You need to start taking care of yourself. Eat better and have a 20-minute walk every day.” after you have a heart episode. But is that the extent you have to go to before you do some self-care?
Turns out, no, not really. Some introspection and experimentation revealed that some of the best acts of self-care I’ve done for myself were rather boring, and interestingly enough, didn’t even require much money as I so felt based on all the bath products I saw. I don’t’ even have a bathtub! Shower steamers seemed like a good middle ground but I digress. I felt like I was taking care of myself best when I was doing things like having that difficult conversation I’ve always avoided having with a “friend”, or figuring out how to best get on top of my budget, or doing Jillian Michaels’ “Banish Fat, Boost Metabolism” workouts. If you’re wondering “Is that Jillian Michaels’ workout not a form of self-love then?” Well, it could be. Depending on how you look at it.
Things like spa days or “spontaneously” treating myself to a cupcake have been a form of escapism for me. They’re great, it’s a good two hours of pampering but at the end of the day, I still have yet to sort things out about my life. Which continue to weigh on my mind and take a toll. Another thing I feel is so trendy to talk about these days is about building a life that doesn’t require us to take vacations from. But that’s a luxury that cannot be afforded by most. Many of us have commitments and needs that mandate a certain life, and in those instances a simple getaway, i.e., an act of self-love might not be enough. If our life feels like a routine, we can’t throw a bath bomb at it and make it go away. And that’s where self-care comes in. Self-care is about responsibility. Treating yourself with care and concern because you might want to hold on for this as you might not have heard it ANYWHERE else… no one else is going to do it for you. So, what does self-care look like? Maybe it’s trimming your social circle so that you feel like you have enough mental resources to share between your job, your family and your friends. Maybe it’s signing up for therapy and talking about things that haunt you even if you’ve tried to bury them deep within. Maybe it’s that 2-hour bath after all. Much like working out or finding a therapist, it requires a little experimentation to figure out which works best for you. It can even be a combination of a few different things but at the end of the day, self-care is about doing things for the long-term and making your life better. Setting aside time for self-care, or simply stopping to check in with yourself on whether you have taken care of yourself so far this week can bring that much more awareness to how you treat yourself. And we all know by now how we treat ourselves is how we ultimately allow others to treat us; the relationship we have with ourselves influences the relationships we have with others and the relationship they have with us. Self-care is about becoming a better version of yourself for yourself. It’s knowing that you can buy a cupcake and maybe cry into it a little because you had a difficult day or on the flipside, buy a cupcake because you had a fabulous day and the cupcake will be the cherry on the top. You’re doing both simply to enjoy life. Not to escape your life.
In a way, this is a very interesting time to learn and talk about self-care. Because this is a truly difficult time in all our lives. Not only do we have a pandemic but also civil unrests everywhere such as the farmers’ protests in India and Sri Lanka’s continued attempts against the sheer existence of Tamils. During such a time, self-care might seem like a very selfish thing to do. Or even a borderline ridiculous concept. But if anything, this is the time to take care of ourselves. Because in this context, self-care here refers to things like confronting our own negative thought patterns and navigating our own hurt and trauma. We can’t fix the society if we are not working on fixing ourselves because one doesn’t exist without the other; one cannot exist without the other. Action requires rest. It’s so easy during this time to decry unjust, to share all the information and resources necessary to educate a community, to be there for a loved one who’s having a difficult time, and yet, YET, feel like we are not doing enough. We are going to burn ourselves out. Maybe we already have because we are all looking for support that we are all too exhausted to give during a time like this. So, what good is it to keep going and going and going during a time like this until we have drained ourselves and we have nothing left to give? During times like these, taking a step back, saying “no”, setting boundaries are all forms of self-care that help us better process what is going on and how we can do our part in the best way possible. We can afford a little time to recharge, to heal ourselves before we try to heal our loved ones and the world. We have some time to stop and ask ourselves, “So, what is self-care anyway?”
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