Thoughts on Self-Care

Spend some time reading or researching information on mental health online. Eventually, you will come across articles about practicing self-care or even self-love, though I’m not a big fan of the latter because, let’s face it, we’re all 12-year-olds sometimes.

Nevertheless, self-care is usually, not always, paired with something about mindfulness, meditation, or pampering yourself with spa treatments.

While all those things are excellent ways to treat yourself, they may miss the broader point. What does that mean if we focus on that second term I used, self-love? How do we love ourselves? Do we hold our hand? Do we wrap our arms around ourselves or do something nice for ourselves? Again, if you want to do that, go for it, but it’s still missing the point of love.

Years ago, I heard a sermon at church about love that has always stuck with me. It was based on the classic verse from Paul’s letters that we are all familiar with:

⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

The person teaching from this passage pointed out something that most of us overlook. All things that “love is” require a decision and action. Not only that, but they require a constant, daily, hourly, and even minute-by-minute decision to be made repeatedly. Being kind is not something you decide to do on August 25, and poof, you’re kind. It requires constant reaffirmation. The same goes for persevering, trusting, not envying, etc. You do These things to benefit the person you love all the time.

So, what does self-love mean in this context? It means making a daily, hourly, minute-by-minute decision to do the things you need to do. Loving yourself by meditating is OK, but once you stop meditating, then what do you do? As the teacher explained all those years ago, loving yourself, at its core, is getting out of bed, showering, eating breakfast, brushing your teeth, and so on. It’s deciding on an ongoing basis to do what needs to be done to care for yourself. If you made it through today without luxuriating in a bath or getting the yoga mat, that doesn’t mean you didn’t take time for self-care. I’m betting you nourished your body. I’m betting you went to work so you could pay your bills. I’m betting you took care of at least some of your needs. Those are victories. Those little things are what loving yourself means. If you can do those, you are doing something good for yourself.

That’s self-care in a nutshell: doing what you need to do for your health and well-being. Don’t make it any harder than it has to be by expecting yourself to do all the things suggested in all the self-help resources; pay attention to what you require and allow yourself to do those things.

Mostly, give yourself the freedom to do them and the grace not to do them perfectly all the time. That’s just being human.