Questions about Self-Care
Something that I’ve come across again and again in my personal life and clinical practice is people (myself included) bumping up against the fact that we have a harder time offering ourselves support when we’re struggling than we do offering it to others. In fact, this comes up so commonly that it’s led me to be suspicious about the whole thing. Is there something not quite right about our expectations for self-care?
In regard to physiological pain, we don’t hold this same expectation of the one who is suffering to take care of themselves. From all of my trips to the emergency room I’ve never once been met with a nurse telling me “you know, you should really work on your ability to stitch yourself up.” But I’m sure many of us are familiar with the cultural meme of the therapist telling their client “hmm, maybe you should learn to give *yourself* the same care that you’re giving others?”
Now this isn’t to say learning to offer emotional care to ourselves is a bad idea or won’t be helpful. I’ve seen for myself how this is possible and often necessary when a supportive friend is not available. However, I wonder how much of the current culture around this idea is impacted by an unhealthy individualism. Maybe we didn’t evolve to be fully emotionally self-sufficient.
Yet, we still find ourselves in the current culture as it stands, and sometimes caring for yourself and getting care from others are one and the same. For instance, one of the best ways I’ve found for taking care of myself when I’m upset is finding my way to a supportive friend ASAP!
All this is not to say stop doing things that care for yourself, but maybe this perspective can help keep us from beating up on ourselves when offering forms of self-care seems hard and help us shift towards building social networks and communities where “other-care” is more readily available.
