Self-care culture is gaslighting us.

Maybe the deepest form of self love is allowing ourselves our humanness.

I’m not going to insult you by assuming you couldn’t already recite a list of at least a dozen different self-care strategies. Nor am I going to regurgitate patronizing one liners that flatten out your actual experience into a metaphor for life that bears no actual weight in the real world. Things like “take the time today to love yourself” and “self care is not a waste of time” feel empty and hypocritical in a world where such advice is often served up alongside a desire to move forward in some way, attain something, or serve someone.

Taking care of ourselves so we can take care of others, for example, has become our favorite justification for slowing down. So much so that making room to care for ourselves without attaching “so we can” to the end has become a self-indulgence rather than a birthright. Even in rest we compulsively reach into the future, our mind busy performing gymnastics trying to make something happen or plan for what’s next. And although the culture of self-care has done an impeccable job of convincing us that this is a personal failing - a me problem and a you problem - what I’d like to offer is the idea that perhaps our discomfort with rest is actually a reflection of the world we live in and less a reflection of our lack of commitment to ourselves and our wellness. That disentangling being well from the socially constructed versions of “wellness” we have come to know and crave is required if we are to find our way back to ourselves.

In truth, there are some waters we collectively swim in that can’t be worked out on a yoga mat or with a well balanced meal. In truth, much of what we hold are hard are realities that cling to us, moments that catch our breath and break our hearts, events we cannot escape, cannot forget, and cannot put aside. There are painful things happening in this world, things we cannot simply just work harder to fix, things that hang on us, haunt us, and stay with us long after we’re told we should be over it. There are injustices that barrier millions of people from fully embodying their humanness. There are larger political platforms reinforcing our beliefs about what makes us valuable, with clear instructions about how to rank our value against our neighbor. There are social systems that compel us with a brutal intensity to move forward without end, to urgently leave here and get over there - a far off place where we have achieved something visibly and materialistically great. A place where rest is offered in scraps and policed harshly such that we are discouraged from overindulging or taking more than is warranted for what we have achieved.

And so we have learned. We have adapted. We oscillate through a very small range of emotions, attempting to stay somewhere close to feeling well enough to keep going without tipping over and burning out entirely. But what makes this even more difficult is that somewhere along the way we also started handing out trophies to whomever can get as close to that line as inhumanly possible without the tipping over part. So we are also creating a culture that celebrates pushing beyond what a body was ever meant to tolerate. We reward those who pretend to thrive on scraps, who reproduce the patriarchal ideals of being stoic, motivated and independent and make it look awesome to forget ourselves in search of something better.

And that’s how capitalism wins.

When we forget ourselves and internalize exhaustion as a personal failure. When we look at self-care as something else to be championed. When we believe that if we feel too bad (or too good) we must not be doing enough of the right things. When shame and guilt in response to rest starts to feel expected and familiar, capitalism wins. When discomfort, panic, anxiety and an undeniable sense that we should be doing something better with our time is triggered the moment we take our foot off the case, capitalism wins. When “making ourselves a priority” requires pulling out our credit card to buy the rose quartz water bottle and yoga membership we think will change it all for us, capitalism wins. So not only is self-care culture gaslighting us, it’s then creating products to sell back to us that promise the feeling of wholeness we couldn’t give to ourselves…which forces us back into the same cycle of self-blame and striving. Self-care culture is basically fucked.

I mean, maybe exhaustion is the appropriate response to a world centered around profit. Maybe numbing ourselves with new lulu and 21 seasons of Grey's Anatomy is a really wise way to keep ourselves from crashing. Maybe we rely on materialistic versions of self-care because they’re the only ones that feel available in the limited time that we have. And besides, maybe we do deserve it. Maybe we did earn it. Maybe we strive and reach and crave for more because standing still actually feels worse than burning out. And maybe it feels good to think that there really might be something better, something easier over there. Even if we know that it’s just an idea that’s being marketed to us really really really well.

So how do we navigate this? How do we care for ourselves effectively without reproducing the systems and structures that uphold the 5.8 trillion dollar wellness industry that is acting to oppress us? How can we be well in a world that makes it our responsibility to somehow be okay when our hearts are struggling with things beyond our ability to fully understand, never mind change?

Well, since we cannot possibly separate ourselves from it, what would it be like to challenge the way we relate to it? What would it be like to allow ourselves the grace and space to break apart before we try to hold it together? What would it be like to make contact with the part of us that wants to lay on the floor instead of clean it, and grant her permission without adding “so you can” to the end? What would it be like to stop reaching for bliss, for wonderment and success and all the things promised to us, and instead grant ourselves access to contentment. The sweet, gentleness of being okay with where we are. What would it be like to stop trying to make something happen, to stop planning and hoping and organizing and pushing - and just be. But in that being, to also notice; what feels wrong about this, where does that live in me, and can I very gently turn towards it and cradle it like I would a child who has lost its way.

What would it be like to stop placating ourselves constantly? To stop trying to manifest something extraordinary, as if the smallest most natural things aren’t also the most treasured in the end. What if self care is knowing what isn’t for us just as much as it is knowing what is, and finding the courage to set those things aside even if it feels something like failure. Even if it doesn’t make sense to the rest of the world. Even if you see other people still holding onto the things you put down and it feels like we should still be holding on too. And then what if you just carry on living without them, but maybe with just a little more space than you had before. Maybe with a little more compassion for the hard days, with a little more room to turn towards what feels so bad and wrong instead of distracting and numbing and pushing past. Maybe the deepest form of self care is allowing ourselves our humanness. To feel. To be honest about what we feel. To share what we feel with others without comparing to-do lists or ranking hardships.

So clearly I have a lot of maybes and no actual answers. It feels confusing because it is. This whole thing was designed to confuse us. It was designed to make us distrust ourselves, to compete against each other and to chase something bigger than who or what we are right now. It was designed to make being well feel perpetually just out of reach, for some even more than others. It was designed to raise wellness up on the same pedestal as financial freedom and “having it all”, a deep and precious privilege rarely even acknowledged by those who do attain such a status.

I guess I just wonder what would happen if we stopped looking only to ourselves as being both the problem and the solution, and we turned instead towards our collective experience? If we began, very slowly and tenderly, redefining what being well actually means for us? If we paused for even a moment before using something external to shift something internal, and asked ourselves what our relationship even is with the thing inside we’re trying to change? And what would happen if we started questioning our experiences of shame and guilt and fear that come up in response to rest and ease and stillness, rather than believing the elaborate and convincing narrative we spin around those emotions.

I guess for now my hope is that this will inspire you to ask your own questions. To notice where you abandon yourself for the promise of something better, and to wonder if perhaps the thing you’re chasing already exists inside of you? Perhaps we keep those truths hidden not because we choose to, but because there is no money to be made from caring for ourselves by simply being with ourselves, and with each other, more fully.

x - laura