I worry a lot, less so than I used to but still a lot. Less so than some other people, but what does that really mean? And the in-thing that magazines and ads and YouTube videos and friends often preach is that of “self-care”. Now when I was a younger, even more anxious, my self-care consisted of long solitary walks, long solitary baths, and long solitary hours in the library. Basically, as it transpired, anything that got me away from people for a while.
Then as I learned to actually properly deal with my own mental health, I figured out that self-care, while definitely including long solitary walks, was actually pretty damn difficult. It consisted of creating healthy habits, of not letting myself slip into destructive patterns of thought, forcing my brain into ways of thinking so that I could better deal with life in general. With that comes a certain dismissiveness towards the more… let’s say “frou-frou” self-care that often gets sold to women. The kind of scented candle, face-mask, hot-chocolate self-care.
It seemed to bear no relation to the hard, heavy-lifting work that I and many others were having to do – and still have to struggle through – on a daily basis. It seemed like the kind of thing that exists merely to profit out of people’s fears and anxieties, to rip money out of women especially who find their daily lives hard… a short-term fix not long-term help.
But in the last month, I’ve had a bit of an epiphany, which came in the unexpected form of a new shower-gel (Ritual of Sakura foaming shower-gel specifically). I was given it as a gift, and first used it on a particularly tough day for me, and it turns out that having some fun, nice-smelling, froufrou ritual to start my day actually makes all the tough self-care that much easier.
Who’d have guessed. Maybe we are sold it by magazines who don’t care about us, but the advice isn’t half-bad. Maybe this is an incredibly banal revelation. But self-care, and what it consists of, is a wide inclusive spectrum, that can – and absolutely should – include the whole gamut, long walks, healthy habits, face-masks, bath-bombs and foaming shower-gel included.