What Is Self-Care and Why Does It Matter?
What is Self-Care?
Defining #selfcare at this point is no easy task, but then again, neither is anything that’s been used as a hashtag over 17 million times.
As defined by Instagram users, self-care can encompass anything that you do for yourself that’s remotely beneficial for your health and well-being.
But, this widespread adoption has come with a level of subjectivity around what exactly constitutes “beneficial”. On one end of the spectrum you have activities that have been scientifically proven to provide various benefits like meditation, journaling, or yoga, on the other you have Netflix and red wine.
Just recently Medium’s own Elemental publication, released a piece called, Can Beer Be Wellness? where, thankfully, the author concludes that no, objectively it cannot.
This murky, and somewhat subjective definition poses some risks that if not acknowledged threaten to discredit the value of the truly beneficial self-care practices.
But, to get to the bottom of this it’s worthwhile to go backwards…
How Did It Arise?
As Jordan Kisner points out in a New Yorker piece, the theme of self-care…
…was taken up by Seneca, Epictetus, and a host of early Christian thinkers, and provides the foundation of the modern religious and philosophical imperative to “cultivate the self” or “care for the soul.”
The concept resurfaced through the topic of American citizenship in the mid-1800s where those that held positions of political power asserted that an individual had to not only possess but also demonstrate the capacity to take care of themselves in order to be a responsible citizen. They used this highly subjective determinant as justification to limit the rights of certain groups, including as a justification for keeping slaves and denying women the right to vote.
“Self-care” is newer in the American lexicon than “self-reliance,” but both stem from the puritanical values of self-improvement and self-examination.
So, in many respects the concept of self-care is as American as apple pie. In a country where pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is cemented in the collective consciousness, it’s actually shocking that “self-care” or maybe more appropriately, “ you better be able to take care of yourself” isn’t written in giant neon lights on Elis Island.
Fast forward to the 70s and 80s, self-care was adopted by marginalized, minority groups as a form of protest. If the country wasn’t going to look out for them or worse actively deny them of basic human rights, they would use self-care (for themselves and one another) as a form of rebellion. The now fairly famous quote from African-American, lesbian writer Audrey Lorde sums it up:
“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
Through these examples, we can start to understand how the concept of self-care isn’t at all created and confined to the Instagram posts of well-off white women. It’s actually enmeshed in numerous political and cultural issues throughout our nation’s history. And that has implications in creating a balanced understanding of it today…
Fast Forward to Present Day
We’re in the midst of a now decades-long struggle for the middle class to keep pace with the increasing costs of living while more and more of our country’s wealth is being consolidated in the hands of fewer and fewer.
We’re stuck with a healthcare system that has become increasingly inaccessible and cost-prohibitive.
A Vice article by Shayla Love, entitled The Dark Truths Behind Our Obsession With Self-Care illustrates our healthcare system’s shortcomings through mental illness:
In 2017, the nonprofit Mental Health America found that 56.5 percent of US adults with a mental illness received no treatment, and neither did 64.1 percent of American youths with major depression.
Add to this the election of Donald Trump which has propagated the belief that every group but white males is somehow lesser, unworthy of basic freedoms and increasingly at risk of persecution.
Kisner’s New Yorker piece, shared a quote from an interview that writer Evette Dionne did with Bitch magazine that illustrates the role that self-care plays for black women in this cultural climate:
“Many of us are poor, many of us are working ourselves into early graves…So standing and saying that I matter, that I come first, that what I need and what I want matters I think is a radical act because it goes against everything that we’ve been conditioned to believe.”
With all of this in mind, it’s easy to look at self-care and see a movement that is empowering if not sorely needed.
Healthcare Needs Self-Care
We touched on our healthcare system but it’s worth revisiting because, well, self-care has to do with our health.
Not only is it failing us on the institutional level, but on the personal level the idea that health should only be done to us, rather than with us, seems outdated in an age where so much information sits at our finger tips.
My father had a heart-attack some years ago, and when he asked the doctor what changes he needed to make to his diet, the doctor told him to just take the pills. I’m not sure if this is incompetence or laziness but it’s the result of a system that sees the worst in it’s patients, rather than the best.
It’s also indicative of one that doesn’t place enough value on preventative measures, things that can undeniably improve our health like diet, exercise, and stress management— the empowering activities that self-care is built upon.
Understanding the Risks
So, everything that we’ve talked about so far has basically amounted to people saying, “fuck it, I’ll do it myself #selfcare”
And, while this is overall a positive expression, it also poses some risks that we need to acknowledge:
Risk #1: Being lulled into the false belief that self-care practices can serve as a total replacement for conventional care. As Shayla Love points out,
you can’t actually treat an anxiety disorder with a bubble bath or a meditation app, and the supposition that you can is a dangerous one.
Self-care is meant to supplement existing care from any necessary professionals be they conventional or alternative.
Risk #2: Believing that our country’s failure to take care of it’s own is just how it is and we need to adapt to be even more self-reliant than we already are.
If you look beneath the surface, the very idea of self-care has a sort of conservative ideology behind it — that you’re on your own, and that the government and public institutions it funds, should not be relied upon for support.
This is wrong, and to believe it, is to fall victim to the Trumpian ideologies that are actively working to dismantle the social structures that have helped the people in this country (and the country itself) to grow and prosper for decades.
The Purpose of Self-Care
At the heart of every definition of self-care is growth and empowerment through action.
No, we are not capable of solving all of our own health problems. But, each of us is the first and most influential variable in the equation. Without our engagement as the starting point, there can never be healing or growth.
As Laurie Penny poetically articulates in The Baffler:
The harder, duller work of self-care is about the everyday, impossible effort of getting up and getting through your life in a world that would prefer you cowed and compliant.
A world whose abusive logic wants you to see no structural problems, but only problems with yourself, or with those more marginalized and vulnerable than you are. Real love, the kind that soothes and lasts, is not a feeling, but a verb, an action.
Although self-care is grounded in a sort of individualism and self-reliance, its highest calling is not as a solitary, me-first act, but as a we-first one.
To understand and care about our own vulnerabilities and needs, enables us to better appreciate those of others.
And, by empathizing with the needs of others, we will find the strength and will to change the institutions that created this problem in the first place.
To be good family members, co-workers, citizens and community leaders, we must possess some level of physical and emotional stability. In short, we nurture ourselves so that we may nurture one another.