Why Self-Care Requires More Than Our Individual Selves
How to practice self-care from a more relational approach.
This summer, Julia and I are doing a podcast series called “Taking a Break From…”, in which we evaluate five specific areas of life, including parenting, sex, and social media, which tend to create a high degree of pressure for folks (especially during the summer months), resulting in performative relationship dynamics and decreased self care.
In fact, last week, we took a break from our business ventures (including Relationship 101) and backpacked through the Bergstrasse, a 100 mile (or so) trail through western Germany, in which we encountered quite a few of these:
Most of our longer-than-weekend vacations involve hiking, backpacking, and glamping. We’ll typically hike between 6 and 8 hours from village to village, staying in hotels and hostels along the way. We joke that we’re way more intense than European hikers—we’re both quite fast walkers, having lived in Boston for over a decade—while not being nearly as intense as most American hikers, who unlike us, choose to sleep on rocks and forgo the nightly showers that our hostels and hotels provide.
Sleeping outdoors sans mattress, shower, and roof over our head is a fairly strong negatory for both of us.
We started planning our Germany trip over a month ago. I almost exclusively use Booking as a website to procure lodging, and train tickets are considerably cheaper when you buy them a month in advance. As we both work for ourselves and don’t have paid vacation or any other company-offered benefits, we had to see extra clients in order to cover for the week off, causing the week before and after our vacations to be at well over 150% of our typical client and work capacity.
There’s a growing trend in the wellness world around self-care. For instance, in 2013, Olga Phoenix, author of Victim Advocate’s Guide to Wellness: Six Dimensions of Vicarious Trauma-Free Life, developed the Self-Care Wheel:
“I created the Self-Care Wheel, a comprehensive six-dimensional wellbeing tool, featuring 88 self-care activities. The Self-Care Wheel…provides a wealth of new ideas and open up an engaging space for self-discovery, evaluation, and reflection. They help us identify our strengths, challenges, priorities, and goals-effectively narrowing down our focus to areas of our lives that require the most attention.
This eye-opening process provides inspiration, clarity, and motivation-resulting in an educated, intentional, sustainable, and personalized self-care practice and a happier and healthier life!”
These are all great ideas.
However, the current discourse around self-care is often completely ignorant of the privilege needed in order to engage in self-care. Self-care requires (at minimum) four things:
Money. For starters, there’s a financial cost for doing many of these activities, either in terms of the fees for participation (i.e. the hourly rate of a masseuse) or the supplies to do these activities. Also (more about this in item 4), for those of us who work for ourselves, either as a small business owner or as a participant in the gig economy, participating in self-care means choosing not to make money for that particular hour. For example, even seemingly “free activities” (like a nature walk at a local park) still require the financial security (and other forms of stability) to not work during that hour, and not have to pay for child care (for those who have children). Also, as someone who is a small business owner in the gig economy (as are most therapists), what’s a sick day?
Time. Many of the items on this list require more than five minutes of time. While some people might have lifestyles that allow for the existence of some of these, most people have jobs, from professional work to childrearing, that require undivided attention and numerous amounts of physical, emotional, and psychological energy.
Community. Doing one of these self-care activities inherently requires me to take time away from one of the other elements of my life. If I live a lifestyle in which there are few things or people to whom I’m accountable, such as customers or children, I can take thirty minutes to take a bubble bath, and it’s not a big deal. However, if I have two children under the age of 5, the only way that I’m engaging in self-care is if I build collaborative relationships with other people with the hope that other people can fill the power vacuums that are created while I engage in self-care. Self-care requires me to have relationships with other people who are willing to partner in my thriving and self-care, and often assumes that I reciprocate.
Structures. I’m thinking about two specific structures: government and business. For governments, this can include affordable, accessible healthcare, the support of unions, and the funding of early childhood education and afterschool care. For businesses, this includes generous vacation policies, a four-day work week, and realistic production goals.
Mental and emotional capacity. Julia grew up in a family full of nurses, and some of her family members are still practicing in health care, including having survived emergency room nursing during the international crisis of the pandemic. Have you ever chatted with a nurse after three 12 hour days in the emergency room? That first day “off” from work is not really “off”; they are just trying to stabilize after the intensity and vicarious trauma that their job requires. Or, have you spent time with a teacher during the first week (or the entirety) of their summer vacation? They are recovering, and in these recovery time, “healthy” self care activities may not be emotionally or mentally accessible, even if the time/money/community allows. Julia and I also work at least two 12 hour clinical days of therapy. Even more soothing forms of self care, like journaling or baking cookies, may be out of reach while we are decompressing. Sometimes all you can do is stare at wall. We could give many more examples from multiple different fields of work or other life circumstances. So, when you are encouraging these types of self care (for yourself or others), be mindful that mental and emotional capacity is also a form of privilege necessary for self care.
A quick word to mental health agencies. Expecting therapists to see 25 hours of clients per week (or more), which amounts to at least 45-50 hour work week when you include training, supervision, preparing and reviewing session notes, communicating with clients and insurance companies, and emotional/geographic transitions between clients, and then chastising employees for burning out is occupational gaslighting.
So how can we talk about self-care more effectively?
The World Health Organization created guidelines for self-care interventions and wellbeing in 2022, as shown through this conceptual framework:
In order for self-care to happen, all of these pieces have to be in place. (In fact, if this were me designing this, I would put the “key principles” as the outer-most layer.)
We have to design content, media, and educational tools that center around holistic, collaborative, systemic care, designed to advocate for the rights and longevity of all humans, and invites other people to invest in the wellbeing of all of humankind.
The more likely that governments and policy makers, business owners and supervisors, donors, healthcare providers, and social media companies are invested in these goals by providing accurate information, protection from stigma and discrimination, and psychosocial support (as well as the other items in the red circle), the more likely that more individual people will engage with these goals.
Relational health encourages us to start from the outside of the concentric circles model and work inward by encouraging accountability from governments, businesses, healthcare providers (I see you insurance companies), and other groups of people.
There are plenty of people and systems that suggest that this model starts with the inner-most circle, working outward. Many self-care and self-help influencers suggest that self-care can be attained through the practice of the following language:
“Just say no.” Or the relational version: “Just set those boundaries.”
“Treat yourself. You deserve this.” To be fair, you do deserve self-care. But self-care requires a ton of planning for most folks, in addition to the necessary resources mentioned earlier.
Anything having to do with manifestation.
Our series on “Taking a Break From…” comes with a Texas-sized caveat:
Without the accountability and enabling environments described in the WHO model, self-care is only accessible to those with the five privileges that I named earlier—time, money, community, structures, and mental/emotional capacity.
Until we have systems that invest in an environment that enables everyone to take care of themselves, I encourage you to do three things:
This summer, set realistic expectations, and be kind to yourself regarding what you can do. As Julia and I prepare for multiple upcoming transitions this summer, we have to be particularly mindful of our tendencies to get sucked into the “urgency” mentality that is (ironically) also perpetuated in the Wellness spaces. Ever seen those posts that communicate some form of “no time like the present” to ______ (achieve goals, practice self-care, etc.)? Isn’t it funny (or not funny at all) that Wellness communities often encourage us to simultaneously “take it easy” and “ramp it up” all at the same time? So, if you are like us, re-invisioning self-care means starting at the most basic level. The tasks from the emotional component of the Self-Care Wheel are really important. Practice self-compassion. Compliment yourself. Tell others that you love them. We get it— this isn’t “enough” self care for most of us, and it is the place that we can begin.
Laugh. We’ll write more about the importance of humor on Thursday.
Take a vulnerability risk. Since so many of these self care tasks require some level of support (as discussed above), take the risk to ask someone you love for support. This may mean asking a friend to accompany you on a walk, especially if motivating yourself is difficult. Or, perhaps you ask a partner to take on additional household administration for the upcoming week if you are struggling; this doesn’t have to be forever— just until you get the ground back underneath your feet.
Vote. Especially, vote for politicians who are invested in developing political, judicial, and occupational systems that allow all people to thrive, and hold those who attempt to interfere with the care of all people.
Let’s heal together!