Self-Care Tip #208 – If for no other reason, get friendly with yourself simply to survive and you’ll see what that means later.
It is not unusual to think of “selfish-care” when we hear “self-care.” I can imagine children gripping their mother’s skirts more tightly, husbands pulling their helpmate’s hands away from this influence, church-folk sniffing over rejections to service-calls or friends personalizing the way their phone doesn’t ring as much as it used to. This is a natural response, although it is a false perception. Think – feeling suffocated by her penance, he’s wearing a martyr’s cross or she’s giving to us from victimhood. Those are the times we would rather not receive the gifts of time, person or anything dripping with that kind of guilt and implied debt. This kind of service comes from someone impoverished, giving on credit.
I’ve been known to say, “We can’t give what we don’t have.” Or as Jasmine said,
You can’t give someone a ride if you’re all out of gas!
So when is self-care selfish? To be true to what self-care is, I’d say almost never. However, because the question comes from such an intuitive fear in any of us, “never” can’t be an entirely fair answer. To answer it best though, we need to turn it over and go back to trying to discover why we wanted self-care first. What brought us here? Jacqui said it well in yesterday’s post-comments:
Ditto about ‘self-care boot camp’. I may steal that one. You’ve given me permission to be selfish if need be. It’s all about self-preservation.
Sometimes we are reduced to self-preservation. It has an intensity to it, a survival mode of live or die, which may be appropriate to a desperate condition in life. Many of us know what that feels like. So in this context, self-care is in part about survival. Alright. But is survival a selfish need? Are we worth that little? Does the life in us hold value only at that level?
You hear the clomping my words are making and can follow that I answer, no. Survival has far reaching significance. I matter. You matter. We have value beyond our own selves and Me booting up to live better also ripples over those same infinite number of connections.
I am confident that if for no other reason than getting friendly with yourself simply to survive, you will still see at least some of what more that means later. Self-care is about more than Me.
Question: When do you think self-care is selfish? Why do you think self-care is not? Please tell me your story.
Related Articles
- 5 Ways Being Selfish Serves The World (monicaricci.typepad.com)
- Take Care of Yourself Better by Knowing What That Means. (friendtoyourself.com)
- Can Someone be Selfish and Kind at The Same Time? (socyberty.com)
- Set Your Self-Care Free. It Is Not A Moral Issue. (friendtoyourself.com)