Why does “self-care” make me feel guilty?
Hint: perfectionists, you might want to take notes.
Of course, coming off the back of a surprisingly positive response to Issue #01 of Bravely, she said, I was excited. Then after a couple of days, I was much less excited… Because I found myself procrastinating writing this next issue. 🙄
I think it was clear that issue #01 was written from an emotionally charged place: indignation at how my ugly wrestling with my mental health was being turned into a trendy hashtag for the month of May.
But now that the annoyance had faded, and the ugly reality of imposter syndrome was rearing its familiar and unwelcome head.
Together with a week filled with health issues, I spent every day wondering what was the “perfect” topic to write about next. It could have easily been any one of over a dozen issues that were impacting me: anxiety, perfectionism, burnout, stress, or chronic health worries.
In fretting over it, I realised what I really needed before anything else: To take a damn break from worrying!
Except I couldn’t relax. I felt guilty.
…Because I hadn’t EARNED the right to relax.
The irony of a mental health startup founder who found such difficulty practising self-care actually made me laugh aloud.
But as I promised, I was here to do the work. And to show you the work that goes into bettering my mental health.
So I got down to business.
Experiment #1: Reframing “self-care”
Helpfulness score: 8/10; Success score: 8/10
It turned out that realising I felt guilty when I practiced “self-care” was huge! It allowed me to redefine what “self-care” meant to me, and unpack why I felt so appalled at the notion of taking care of myself.
(To be honest, I think social media has really butchered the term “self-care”. I feel like it conjures up images of bubble baths, tea, candles and face masks. It’s turned the term to be so… Floppy. Hippie. Self-indulgent. Like yeah, candles are cool because I like fire that smells good, but that’s not what taking care of myself means to me.)
So I set myself to work.
Step 1: I wrote down a quick list of things that I take care in doing
- I take care to fold towels neatly
- I take care not to spill things I pour
- I take care to give my team kind but constructive feedback
- I take care to organise my to-do list
- I take care to cook food that tastes good
Step 2: I reflected to change my perspective.
I realised that I show care in many ways — from interactive with people to working with inanimate objects — so why on earth should I feel guilty about taking care of myself?
I kinda just sat thinking about this for a while. After a little while, I accepted that it made sense. Cool, what next?
Step 3: I redefined what self-care meant to me
It was easy to know what self-care that worked for other people but was NOT for me. But it was much more difficult to know what refilled my battery.
In the end, I came up with a little list:
Experiment #2: Practising “self-care”
Helpfulness score: 9/10; Success score: 7/10
Ha. Of course, implementing this and shaking off the feelings of guilt and worrying weren’t going to be that easy. So, I turned to the Bravely team for help.
2 ideas popped up immediately:
💡 Idea #1: Radical acceptance (a therapy technique)
This is taken directly from the Bravely app:
Some of the stressful situations in our day-to-day lives feel impossible to let go of. However, these are usually situations that are out of our control. And focusing on trying to change them can lead to even more stress.
Hence, it’s important to shift our energy from solving the situation to accepting or letting go of it. This process of relinquishing control is known as “radical acceptance”.
Try it
Let’s look at the steps to practise radical acceptance and minimise negative feelings about a difficult situation:
- Step 1: Identify the difficult situation. My answer was: I feel guilty about not working and instead, taking care of myself.
- Step 2: Describe the part of this situation that’s tough to accept. My answer was: I hate feeling guilty! It’s very uncomfortable.
- Step 3: Think about the unpleasant reality of this situation. Focus on the causes, what’s under your control, and what isn’t. My answer was: I don’t have to LIKE feeling guilty, but I can accept that I’m feeling guilty and be comfortable with feeling uncomfortable.
- Step 4: Reflect on the actions you would be willing to take if this was a situation that didn’t bother you, and if you were willing to accept the facts. How would they be useful to you and what could you then expect? My answer was: If I accept that I’m uncomfortable with feeling guilty, but went ahead with self-care, I’ll probably feel less guilty AND more recharged after, that’s within my power and abilities.
- Step 5: Try using some acceptance exercises like visualisation and affirmations in our mindfulness toolkit. You can also chant a mantra of acceptance such as “This is the way it is”. What sentence speaks to you the most and gets you closer to acceptance? My answer was: Feeling guilty is uncomfortable, but I am not my emotions and I don’t have to like how I feel, but that’s okay!
Therapist tip
When we are faced with a stressful situation, our natural inclination is to try and control it. This reflex comes from being unhappy or uncomfortable in that circumstance. But blindly reacting out of habit doesn’t help us!
Perhaps the best way to get through a difficult situation that we can’t change is with radical acceptance. This means accepting that the situation is unpleasant instead of trying to control or modify it.
It can sound counterintuitive, but by doing this we release ourselves from struggling unnecessarily against the inevitable. This in turn creates space for more creativity and flexibility in how we deal with our circumstances.
If the pandemic has shown us anything, it’s that trying to control the uncontrollable isn’t the best course of action — especially if you’re already stressed out!
💡 Idea #2: Schedule in self-care time!
This was a little easier. After all, being a bit of a workaholic meant that I was good at one thing: scheduling. So I simply scheduled in time for some self-care.
In conclusion…
All in all, I considered this experiment a pretty good success! Friday has seen SIGNIFICANT improvements in both my mental health and my productivity compared to Monday and Tuesday. 😄🥳
The scheduled self-care for tonight is cooking, so now, I’m off to whip up some food. 👩🏻🍳 Have a great weekend everyone!
Sincerely,
Mel
