Self-care and “Soul Sundays” has dominated our Instagram feeds for what feels like forever.
Influencers preach to the converted about taking time for yourself in the form of bubble baths and baking, but is it really all that positive for your mental health?
Taking a day to yourself is okay. Disconnecting from social media and spending time relaxing and meditating is completely fine. But nothing is good for you if you do so excessively.
It is so easy to fall into the trap of using “self-care,” as an excuse to over spend, over indulge or completely neglect your obligations under the guise of it being for your own mental well-being.
So, when does self-care become self-destruction?
Caoimhe, a 23-year-old student from Kildare, said that she repeated a whole year of college because she avoided her work on the grounds of “looking after herself”.
“It started with avoiding assignments when I became overwhelmed. It was my first year and I really struggled with getting into the swing of thing when it came to getting things in on time or studying,” she said.
After a while Caoimhe stopped turning up to class and it became a downwards spiral.
“I think that I was listening to a lot of self-help podcasts and I was seeing a lot of posts on Instagram about how it’s important to take time for yourself. Instead of dealing with the anxiety I was feeling around college I just pretended it wasn’t happening. Failing that year was a huge wake-up call,” she said.
Toxic self-care can come in many other forms other than avoidance. It could be isolating yourself from others, spending money that you don’t have frivolously or eating bad food and giving yourself a wealth of health problems. All under the guise of “helping your mental health”.
The breakdown of relationships at your own hands can also be a form of toxic self-care.
People give themselves a pass for not answering their friend’s text, missing their loved one’s birthday without any notice or letting somebody down without any explanation whilst telling themselves that they need to put themselves first.
It’s something that is hard to balance. Of course, you are so entitled to taking the time for yourself. You shouldn’t feel the need to explain. There shouldn’t be any shame around it.
But there should also be some thought as to how you would feel if your loved ones were seemingly being careless in their treatment towards you. It is a fine line to balance, that’s for sure. But common decency also prevails.
Communicate why you feel the way you do. Talk about how important it is for you to look after your mind and why you might need to take a pass on an event to recharge your batteries or turn your phone onto airplane so that you can let your brain switch off for a while.
The breakdown of your relationships because you blurred the lines between taking time for yourself and isolating yourself is not self-care.
Self-care is more than tea and takeaways. It’s knowing your limits. It’s getting enough sleep. It’s getting dressed on your day off even though you don’t want to.
Putting yourself first is not selfish. Self-care means being responsible in how you treat yourself.