Self-care and feeling better vs. being better

[flamingsword]

I have some thoughts about what we say are self care, and I think there is a distinction that needs to be made about the "bubble bath" self care that makes you feel better and the "go to therapy" self care that makes you feel worse in the short term but fixes structural problems that are making you feel bad to begin with.

When I have seen self care lists on tumblr and Facebook, they are always about the feel good sort. Rarely is the hard type even mentioned. Rarely is the *existence* of the second type even mentioned. And I have a huge problem with that. I have a problem with people thinking that hating themselves is fine as long as they comfort the horrible pain caused by self hate with food and soft things. Physical comforts are not going to fix emotional dysfunction. You are also setting up a pavlovian response to your pain where you punish yourself until you "deserve" your basic human needs. That is so fucked up? No, like the bad kind of fucked up. That is an abuse dynamic that you are aiming at yourself, and you wouldn't put up with someone doing that to your friends, but doing that to yourself is fine somehow? Because you are convinced that you can keep doing this even though you are actively suicidal sometimes?

Can we, maybe, collectively, not?

And I realize that I used to be as bad about this as anyone. But I am mostly an emotionally healthy adult now, and if I have to be a grownup, then you're coming with me, dammit.

[Edit: I think maybe a big reason for this dichotomy and the assumption behind forgeting structural self care is that the term self care was probably invented in therapy. The assumption was that you were already doing the structural stuff to make your situation less depressing.]

Comments

[havocthecat]

I am agreeing with you, only very, very long-windedly:

I mean, sometimes self-care means "fuckitall, I cannot deal with ONE MORE SECOND OF THIS DAY and I am taking a bubble bath to de-stress until I can cope," but that is self-care for people who don't need adulting skills and who have learned how to long-term care for yourself.

Long-term care is hard. Long-term care is not easy. Long-term care is a learned set of skills.

Maybe the original self-care advocates didn't realize that was a thing too, because I can see it coming out of the guilt and self-denial dynamic that happens so much, and so I'm willing to forgive the original self-care advocates their internal self-biases. That's all understandable.

But if you're the kind of person who needs to learn how to long-term care for yourself in an adult fashion, especially in a therapeutic way, then that short-term self-care is just going to set you back farther, more often than not, yeah, and it's hard. Remembering and wanting to do the hard things is not rewarding in the short-term and I feel for everyone going through the how-to learning process on that, especially because there's no one, universal way to do it.

The other problem, of course, is now self-care is being co-opted by companies and commodified, commercialized, and turned into a "buy more, own more, it's all about material goods," rather than about actual caring for oneself. Gross.

[flamingsword]

Yeah, I was one of those people who had to learn the emotional and interpersonal skills to manage my mental and emotional dysregulation. It was awful, but it was necessary. I think our entire culture needs therapy, but even the friends that agree with me won't invest in themselves and go do it. They won't watch the videos I link them or read the books I buy them or do stuff that I have made accessible to them that can substitute for some parts of therapy.

So many of my friends do this kind of equivocation about self care that is concerned with getting material goods and feeding themselves expensive things -when they eat at all. Splurging on those $160 boots etc is unsustainable for their lifestyle and makes them feel worthless later, even though really good boots will last them 10 years and may be a better investment than a series of crappy shoes that will get thrown away in a year. But they are too busy berating themselves to see that, because they aren't retraining their brain to not do that. They equivocate about how they are doing self care when they mean only the bubble bath kind and none of the self-help or go to therapy kind.

And it makes me sad and angry.