Are you doing your self-care right?

I am truly happy that we are living in an era that almost every "influencer" on Social media, is talking about and promoting the concept of "self-care". On Instagram,#selfcare has more than 50 Million photos tagged. When an important mental health concept becomes a trend, it could also be misunderstood. I mean there are pictures of someone meditating in a forest , taking a bubble bath or eating popcorn and watching Gray's anatomy. But then also there are pictures of people indulging themselves in expensive vacations, drinking alcohol or going on a shopping spree. Self-care can look different for everyone but how do we know we are doing it right for ourselves ?

Self-care is a lot more than just taking care of yourself, It is recognising that it is IMPORTANT to pay attention to your needs. While it may sound very easy, it actually requires lots of effort in having compassion, awareness and discipline. The point of doing self-care is not only to meet our essential human needs but also to learn new skills that helps us grow as a person. We want to have a balance in life, to regulate our emotions and be able to achieve our life goals. Correct techniques of self-care would push us forward in this direction and benefit us in our personal development journey.

Similar to everything else in life that has a good and a bad side to it, self-care can actually go wrong. I have seen this happen in therapy several times and to be honest I have been guilty of it myself. Now you may ask how could someone go wrong with self-care? The simple answer to that would be, by misusing it. Below are common mistakes that we might make in misusing self-care.

• As a form of suppression.

You know those negative feelings that are so uncomfortable to express and they feel heavy on your chest? So what do you do with them ? You might try to avoid it by whatever techniques that you feel more comfortable with. You might think you are taking care of yourself by suppressing those emotions but what you are actually doing is digging a bigger whole. Distracting yourself with self-care to avoid feelings such as sadness or anger is not going to be helpful in long term. Feelings are meant to be felt and self-care is not a tool for suppression. So you might take yourself on a date, eat a whole cake or go for a hike, but as long as you are not addressing the emotion that you are feeling, nothing you do will help you feel better. As a result, you may begin to feel self-care is not going to help you at all whereas in reality, you are just misusing it.

• As a form of escaping responsibilities.

As we grow older, we have more responsibilities that we need to take care of. The more we want out of life the more tasks that we actually have to do. Pay the bills, do the groceries, go for that boring meeting and the list goes on. Sometimes we have to take care of things that are too much for us to handle, we might not have the emotional capacity for it. So what do we do ? Exactly, we find excuses! Yes, I know that is not the right answer, but it is what we do sometimes. Now taking rest and taking a break is absolutely OKAY. There is nothing wrong with admitting that we are tired. The problem occurs when we overuse self-care to buy us more time. As I mentioned before the intention behind self-care is to move us forward, to help us process things faster. How are we going to achieve and move past some of our struggles if we don't take responsibility for it ?

• To impress others

It is a lot easier to take care of someone else than ourselves. We might have become so good at putting everyone else's needs and pleasure before ourselves that we don't realise that the intention behind our action is to please and impress others. Even if its a simple act of self-care. I have had clients who only came to therapy to make their parents/spouse happy. Self-care is not about what others think and perceive of you. It is about how you think and feel about yourself. Self-care will not be effective and help you in any way if you are only doing it to make someone else happy.

• To meet high expectations

Self-care will not work if its treated as another form of mental pressure. The point of doing self-care is to unload some of your heavy burdens off the shoulder with compassion, understanding and love. Treating self-care like a to-do-list will only add unnecessary anxiety. Also, it is not about how many things you do for yourself to feel good but rather what is the best way to help yourself. When it comes to self-care its always quality over quantity. If you are engaging in more than 3-4 self-care techniques on a daily basis and you still feel bad about yourself, you are doing it wrong! I usually emphasise on creating a healthy daily routine for my clients who struggle with keeping up with their self-care. It is important that you know what works the best and why are you doing it. Sometimes we confuse self-care with self-improvment and expect ourselves to nail a certain activity. For example, someone enjoys playing piano as a form of self-care, however she/he would expect himself to not miss a note or make any mistakes. When you want to care for yourself, you also want to accept yourself, both good and bad, weakness and strength. an effective self-care technique can become harmful when it is treated as self-evaluation rather than self-acceptance.

• To fit in certain groups

Like I said before, everyones self-care routine is different and what works for you may not work for others. Your self-care must be based on your current needs, emotional state, physical ability, interest, and mindset. There are various of self-care ideas out there and everyone is promoting what works best for them. If you find yourself following someone else's self-care idea and it is helping you then good for you. If you are doing it for the sake of fitting in and being included in some community then it is not much of self-care but rather self-sabotage. Very clear example that we see on social media these days, is the trend of fitness. Some people find fitness and body-building a good way of practicing self-care. However, some may misuse this technique for the wrong reasons. Practicing fitness, just to be part of the #hotgirlssummer trend or to feel accepted, is not really a going to help you feel better about yourself because you would be constantly comparing yourself and your results with other people. Fitness is one of the best self-care techniques only if you do it with the intention of taking care of your mental and physical health.

• Its not always going to be easy

Another common mistake in doing self-care is that expecting it to be always fun and easy. Sometimes self-care is admitting your negative behaviours, its feeling those emotions that you have been avoiding, its breaking up with toxic relationships, its committing to a healthy diet, its practicing financial stability and as you have already guessed none of these are going to be fun and easy at the beginning. The truth is that self-care requires self-discipline. Its when you deliberately and consciously look at the things that no longer serve you in your life and make a positive change. Self-care can be bubble baths and herbal teas as well as developing new set of skills, creating boundaries and practicing self-control.

Self-Care is not just doing whatever pleases you but instead, its about doing what is best for you, mentally, emotionally and physically. The key point to a useful and effective self-care routine is your internal attitude about yourself. Self-care starts with genuine and compassionate caring for your own well-being. How can you take care of someone that you don't really care about? to care for someone, you have to make friends with them and get to know them first. Then, you probably need to asses what is working and not working for them. But most importantly, to care for someone, you need to have a sense of appreciation and believe that they are worthy of your care. Now make sure that special someone is yourself .