Is Self-Care Selfish? Redefining What Self-Care Means
The first time I heard the phrase “self-care,” I was in graduate school. At the beginning of my first semester, during student introductions, we were consistently asked by our professors, “What do you do for self-care?”
At the start of the first class, I stared at the question prompt and immediately felt stuck. Admittedly, I didn’t really know what self-care was. On some level, I knew taking care of yourself—meeting your basic needs like getting enough sleep, eating when your body is hungry and exercising—was important, but I couldn’t think of anything I did that would classify as “intentional self-care.” I ended up stealing a mix of my classmates’ answers and sat in discomfort as I started to realize intentionally caring for yourself is not a luxury but a necessity.
Self-care can seem foreign if we’ve grown up in environments where we’re taught our needs aren’t a priority. Athletes are often encouraged to ignore immediate needs to achieve their goals. When you’re feeling tired, emotionally spent or in pain during a practice session, you’re often told to “suck it up” to continue training. Needs become inconvenient, and stopping to care for those needs—to care for yourself as a human, not just an athlete—is often incompatible with the athletic mindset many of us have adopted.
Paired with this, many of us who grow up in these environments develop people-pleasing tendencies. We become adept at reading other people, knowing what they need and how to care for them. Others’ needs can start to override our own. Intentionally caring for ourselves? That starts to feel wrong. It’s unnecessary. It’s not for us.
Self-care can feel selfish.
But is it?
When we’re being selfish, we are putting our needs first—without consideration of others’ needs. Our needs are the only needs that matter. We adopt a black-and-white mindset, where it’s us and no one else.
An example I like to use with clients involves the mints in my office. Let’s say there is one mint left, and we both want it. I just had a huge lunch, and I’m not at all hungry; I just want the mint. You tell me you haven’t had time to eat all day and are starving. If I take that mint—just because I want it—without considering that while the mint isn’t going to sufficiently nourish you, you might need it a little more than I do, that is selfish. In this example, I’m not considering your needs at all; grabbing the mint is only about my desire.
Self-care, on the other hand, is not black-and-white. When we’re engaging in self-care, we are considering our needs AND the needs of others. We are aware of how our behavior may impact others, and we conclude that by caring for ourselves, we are not harming another person. No one’s well-being is in jeopardy; we are simply taking care of ourselves in a way that supports our own well-being.
Even if we understand this, self-care can still feel uncomfortable if we aren’t sure what behaviors classify as true self-care. Is self-care what we often see on social media: champagne pedicures, shopping sprees at HomeGoods and hours-long bubble baths?
It can be. But it’s also helpful to identify how we know when we’re engaging in self-care. If part of the criteria for self-care is that we aren’t harming another person through our care of ourselves, we also want to make sure we aren’t harming ourselves through that care. To do this, we want to assess how our current self-care behaviors will impact our future self. We know we are engaging in self-care if the self-care behavior will benefit our future self.
This means if we drink champagne while getting a pedicure but know we always get a headache the day after we drink champagne, that’s likely not great self-care. Or, if our HomeGoods shopping spree means we cannot afford rent, the shopping spree is actually harmful to us.
This criterion can also help us expand our definition of self-care to less talked about arenas like advocating for our boundaries and responding to strong emotions.
For example, if we have dinner plans with a loved one, but we’ve had a long week and need rest, it can sometimes be challenging to know the best path forward. We might feel guilty canceling dinner to stay home, as all the reasons why canceling dinner is “wrong” might swirl through our heads. Because self-care isn’t always black-and-white—in this example, our loved one has a need to see us, and we have a need for rest—it can be helpful to look for the middle ground in situations where guilt presents. Can we find a compromise where we cancel dinner but make plans for lunch the next day? Here, we balance our need with consideration for our loved one’s need.
Self-care is also choosing to get in the car, showing up for work and giving the presentation we’ve been stressing about all week—despite intense anxiety telling us to bail on the day. It’s sitting with our grief after a loss. It’s nurturing ourselves and—most important—listening to ourselves. Self-care doesn’t require expensive items like trips, new cars or luxury skin care; it’s often much more subtle. It’s individualized and nuanced, and it always brings us closer to ourselves—without requiring us to turn our backs on those we care about.
The content on this blog is intended for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for therapy. The content does not replace a therapeutic relationship with a licensed mental health professional.