Self-care vs Brain Numbing

Self-care vs Brain Numbing

Self-care is good. Very few would argue that. And the activities we choose to engage in may not be self-care at all.

Here are four signs that your self-care isn’t really helping:

  1. The activities you do in the name of self-care allow you to stop feeling. If I feed my virtual cats on Neko Atsume a couple of times a day (yep, still feeding those kitties!), which takes literally a minute, and it makes me happy, that is self-care.

If I am spending every free moment playing games or reading on my phone to the point that I am ignoring my family, that is not self-care. That is numbing my feelings.

  1. Self-care becomes an obsession. At first, a green smoothie may seem like a good idea, but when it becomes “I have to have my green smoothie to feel ok” then it’s no longer self-care.

“Individuals may become so focused on the idea of self-care that they may lose sight of how the emphasis on self-care is coming at the expense of other aspects of well-being in their life,” – Rachel O’Neill, Ph.D. LPCC-S 

  1. It starts to get pricey. Guilty of this one today. I love my happy planner, I love making pretty pages that “reflect who I am” (you know there are cat stickers in there). But did I really need new books of stickers because they were 50% off? (YES, says my inner shopper!!) O’Neill says I need to redefine what self-care means for me. Sigh. She’s right.
  2. You avoid discomfort. It’s easy to fall into the trap of using self-care to avoid discomfort because, by definition, self-care is meant to make you feel better. O’Neill argues there is value in learning to cope with discomfort instead of taking steps to remove or escape emotions (i.e. numbing out). “Coping with discomfort is a cornerstone of resilience,” she said, “and it is important that we demonstrate the ability to deal with daily life stress without trying to escape it.” 

Self-care has less to do with “doing” and more to do with “being.”