Ditching "Self-Care" for a Healthier, More Fulfilling Life

Women dancing in outside in the moonlight

Source: Amy (Prettysleepy1) / Pixabay

There is a growing rejection of grind culture, and 59 percent of American workers experience at least moderate levels of burnout that decrease their quality of life.¹ Research has long shown that high stress is related to poorer health outcomes, the mind-body connection is well accepted, and key determinants of happiness include mental/emotional/physical well-being, purposeful holistic work-life balance, nurturing social relationships, and caring for self and others.²

Emerging research shows a connection between autoimmune diseases and lack of empowerment when women prioritize others over their own needs. Autoimmunity and the "Good Girls" found that 87 percent of women with autoimmune diseases reported putting themselves last regularly without even knowing it, and 73 percent endorsed wanting (but not knowing how) to change patterns of deprioritizing themselves over others.³ It's no wonder that the self-care industry is booming.

I am a clinical psychologist, college professor, consultant, burnout coach, and single mother to three young children. All of these roles involve encouraging people to practice self-care, and when I don’t follow common self-care guidelines myself, I feel like a hypocrite steeped in guilt, shame, resentment, and exhaustion.

The Problem With “Self-Care”

Various definitions of self-care typically include aspects of physical, mental, and social well-being. But common guidelines neglect important aspects of a fulfilling life. When you hear “practice self-care," it probably conjures variations of the following:

• Get enough sleep.
• Eat regularly and healthily.
• Stay hydrated.
• Manage and prevent physical and mental health problems.
• Get enough exercise.
• Take time for yourself.
• Treat yourself to something special.
• Find work-life balance (as if work and life are separate).

While all of those things are important and valuable, they also sound like additional tasks for our endless to-do lists and they don't address critical aspects of a fulfilling life. When someone is drowning in overlapping responsibilities, some of these common self-care goals are highly unlikely or downright impossible.

The commercialized self-care and wellness industries have bombarded us, particularly women, with ideas about self-care pampering and temporary escape from the daily grind. Spa days, pedicures, massages, wine, expensive supplements, weekend getaways, personal fitness trainers, meal prep/delivery services, luxury self-gifts, etc. are touted as self-care and self-love. They’re also framed as ways to take a break from the grind or reward yourself for being so productive, successful, and hardworking. These cultural messages have evolved into internalized oppression cleverly disguised as self-care with the ultimate goal of recharging so you can continue prioritizing work demands over personal wellness. The paradigm of grind culture benefits systems and institutions dependent on hard-working people for profits, but it distorts the goals and impact of self-care and self-love.

Overlapping demands from work, home, caretaking, and personal interests can cause guilt and overwhelm for people who think they don't have time or money for sufficient self-care. This can be particularly salient for single working parents who may have thoughts about self-care that are discouraging sources of guilt and burnout,⁴ like the following:

• Get enough sleep: This is virtually impossible as a single parent of young children.
• Eat regularly and healthily: Do protein bars in traffic or leftover chicken nuggets count? Rising food costs, little/no lunch break time, and limited access to healthy foods are big barriers to this.
• Take time for yourself: The only time when some people are alone is during commutes or late at night.
• Get enough exercise: How does this fit around complicated work/school schedules, and what about physical pain and fatigue that impact so many people? Gym memberships, home exercise equipment, running strollers, and childcare are expensive and often inconvenient.
• Treat yourself: Should those spa days and self-love gifts be added to stressful credit card debt or siphoned away from budgets for groceries, childcare, or insurance?

The modern concept of self-care can add to emotional workload, burnout, and reduction in overall wellness.

Shifting to Embracing Self-Nurturing

Even the word practice makes self-care sound like something we aren’t innately good at and need to put effort into developing. Embracing self-nurturing acknowledges that we are intuitively aware of ways to improve our wellness and quality of life but may ignore or deny our needs due to a range of sociocultural norms and pressures.^5,6

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We need a massive culture shift away from praising hard work and productivity toward praising holistic life balance. We need to change from encouraging self-care to embracing holistic self-nurturing.

Yet many of us accept the concept of self-care as a brief respite from the daily grind even though caring for ourselves is more than simply attending to basic needs like eating, sleeping, and moving your body. Modern self-care is more similar to survival and distraction in an oppressive situation than improvement in wellness or quality of life.

Would caring for basic needs be sufficient for a growing child? When we nurture our children and loved ones, we aren’t only addressing basic needs. We provide resources and experiences that are values-consistent to promote exploration, growth, curiosity, bonding, fulfillment, and balance. Why are we accepting survival and tolerance of oppressive situations as sufficient for ourselves? People of all ages need more than care to truly thrive—we need nurturing.

What we need to truly nurture ourselves in a particular moment changes—play, fun, sleeping, exercise, eating, contributing, soothing, learning, creating, indulging, spending time alone, feeding our interests, and engaging with our relationships are all important for a fulfilling life. Holistic self-nurturing is an ongoing process that is integrated, prioritized, and individualized for personal values and circumstances by:

• Honestly and compassionately assessing our current needs, resources, and interests
• Prioritizing our needs, goals, and wellness and balancing them with caretaking for others
• Maintaining healthy boundaries with ourselves, relationships, and institutions
• Being flexible with our goals and priorities to match our evolving values and circumstances
• Claiming our right to guilt-free rest and self-nurturing instead of consistently martyring ourselves for our jobs or families
• Honoring our unique identity, interests, and relationships in ways that feel nourishing and fulfilling
• Fostering growth, exploration, curiosity, and development
• Practicing mindfulness to greet and manage our current situation without self-judgment
• Being OK not being OK so we can sit with discomfort instead of escaping it with unhealthy distractions
• Expressing our authentic emotions (appropriately) instead of faking “fine” to make others comfortable
• Giving ourselves what we need to truly love ourselves in each moment, even when it goes against status quo self-care guidelines.

4 Steps to Shift from Self-Care to Self-Nurturing

This type of paradigm shift starts with each one of us making changes for ourselves and reinforcing changes at work and home. Here is the evidence-based method that I guide my clients through in my coaching, consulting, and psychotherapy practices. Each step builds insights and skills to help you live a more authentic and fulfilling life.

1. Increase your insight and awareness of social and cultural training that urges you to deprioritize your own needs and wellness.
2. Clarify your true core values, priorities, and goals to see how much your life embodies them.
3. Identify how you need to recover, recharge, refocus, and reconnect to live your best, authentic, fulfilling life.
4. Define, pursue, and encourage values-consistent changes to behaviors, thoughts, norms, expectations, and systems.

So the next time someone tells you to “take care of yourself" or "make time for self-care," tell them you deserve more than care and are embracing holistic self-nurturing instead.

Copyright 2024 Kelly E. Green, PhD and Grind Wellness, LLC