The Self-Care Lie: Why Comfort Won’t Solve Your Problems

I’m not one to tell people how they ought to think. Folks have the right to think whatever they want. I do, however, like to challenge perspectives and make people think. I believe getting someone to say, “Huh, well I never thought of that way.” is one of the most powerful gifts we can give to another person. That’s my goal here. I don’t want to tell you how to think about self-care. But I am about to, hopefully, help you consider it from a different, potentially, better perspective. Because from my point of view, it seems like a lot of people fuck it up.

Self-care, as it’s popularly described, seems cheap and easy. Instagram will have you believing that it’s a “little treat” or a “bubble bath.” It’ll tell you that it’s a strange brand of self-centeredness that motivates you to disregard all that doesn’t feel good. Again, I’m not here to tell you how you ought to think. But I will tell you that from where this ginger is sitting, that perspective sure doesn’t seem to bring about the best outcomes – in the short, or long, term. And better outcomes are what we’re after, aren’t we? – better outcomes and an increasingly growth-oriented, better life. If that’s what you’re after, hang with me a bit. Let me bend your ear and do my damndest to strengthen your self-care perspective in part 1 of this two-part series.

Self. Care.

How about we start by removing the hyphen and letting each word stand alone for examination.

Self: a person’s essential being that distinguishes them from others, especially considered as the object of introspection or reflexive action.

Care: the provision of what is necessary for the health, welfare, maintenance, and protection of someone or something.

A person’s essential being sounds pretty substantial, doesn’t it? That sounds like something that requires more than bubble baths and little treats to maintain. And how about that maintenance, that care? It’s the provision of what is necessary. Well, then. Necessary is not a fluffy word. Let’s slap that hyphen back in there and find a definition that fits.

Self-care: the provision of what is necessary for the health, welfare, maintenance, and protection of someone’s essential being.

That fits. But we want our definition to be more than just a string of nice words. We must give it life; we must act. Self-care is caring for self. We’ve defined it as a noun, but we must use it as a verb.

Where do we begin? We start with our mistakes, where we are missing the mark on the essential and the necessary.

Essential and Necessary Mistakes

Many folks conflate self-care with creating comfort. That’s one big mistake that people make which disregards the essential and ignores the necessary. Because they’re relaxing and they feel good, it seems as though they are truly taking care of themselves. I’m not saying there isn’t a place for relaxation and doing things to feel good as a part of taking good care of yourself. There certainly is. But it is only one part of self-care – a tiny sliver. There’s much more to it, and that much more is far more important than the relaxation aspect of self-care. And if you appropriately handle that “much more,” you’ll feel less of a pull for the comfortable aspect of self-care. We have more mistakes to cover before we get deeper into that.

One of those mistakes is lack of purpose. Another is a lack of defined values. And a third, which is contributed to by lacking purpose and lacking defined values, is caring about shit you just shouldn’t care about that steals your energy.

Lack of Purpose

We’re sold the vision of a care-free life. Advertisers bombard us with visions of a seamless day-to-day sponsored by things like wearing the right clothes and using the right appliances. Gurus tell you not to worry, just release your fears and your agitations. They’re messages we all like to hear because they make life sound easier. And you think, how nice would it be to not have any concerns, to just not care quite so much? But there’s no escape from caring.

We’re humans. We are wired to care. You do not get a free pass to skip the caring part of your existence. The problem is when we don’t clearly define what we’re aiming at, we get bullshitted into caring about things that don’t truly matter to us. That disparate way of living, that misalignment, causes us stress because we either don’t know how to act, or we are acting in ways misaligned with who we truly are and who we truly want to become. Each condition feels like shit. But the feeling is so often hard to define. It’s just a general something’s not right.

When I follow this line of thought, I’m reminded of Victor Frankl’s quote from his book Man’s Search for Meaning:

“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.”

That, friends and companions, is a description of what it means to find purpose. If we follow Frankl’s advice, we find that life is not a care-free endeavor, it is an endeavor to care about the right things. That is an act of self-care.

As we caringly and carefully state our purpose(s), we define the values that help us live it out.

Lack of Defined Values

Carl Jung said, “You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do.” A lot of folks don’t like to hear or read statements like that because it’s a truth that sits in their craw and burns. Those folks typically don’t have defined values that drive their actions. They like to believe the nice thoughts in their heads about who they are, but they fail to see how those thoughts are fictions. The reality is that they are nothing like that.

I understand that was a spicy lead into this section, but it was necessary. People without defined values often move through the world with a misalignment between their perceived self and their true self. That rift creates a subsurface stress that sometimes rises to a person’s awareness, but many times creates a murky sense of unease that they can’t quite get their mitts on to sort out. Now, that sounds deep, but it’s practical, too. Values, true, understood, lived, values, drive action. Values-driven action offers a sense of contentment, even, and especially, when things are hard. And there is nothing more practical than having the internal beacon that values provide to guide us through thick and thin. What’s more, defined values guide us to act in our best interests when we don’t feel like it.

People without defined values spend a lot of time acting in misalignment, and that creates a rift inside of them. It’s often that they try to close the rift by doing things that provide ease and comfort. They take actions that feel like self-care – a day off, an extra nap – when in reality they aren’t caring for themselves as deeply as they need. Defined values provide a deep self-care because they align your insides and your outsides, your thoughts and feelings with how you move through the world. They light the path for you while also giving you a railing that keeps you on the path even when you want to veer off. That kind of self-care keeps progress rolling while also easing the burn in your craw.

There is, however, a problem with defined values. It feels nice to define them. It is by itself a reward. That’s the issue – people definite them but don’t live them out. They remain aspirational instead of embodied. I’ve seen it first hand. It’s self-illusionment. People trick themselves into believing something is a value (they’d like it to be a value of theirs) but they don’t make the effort to guide themselves through the world by living it. Rather than aligning their insides with the outside world, the disconnect between aspirational and lived values creates a psychic rift. And that rift is distressing. I write this as a word of caution. When you define your values, be sure that you truly value them. Realize it’s not always easy to live them out in the world, but you must make your best effort. Then frequently check in with yourself to determine if you are living them out or if you’ve shifted your values.

Doing so will help you to care only about shit you should care about. Let’s talk about how we end up caring about shit we shouldn’t.

Caring About Shit You Shouldn’t Care About

The fitness industry is a bit of a circle jerk. At least that is true of the internet-based fitness industry. A bunch of folks that don’t truthfully know each other proclaim that they are friends, and they promote each other for reasons they likely shouldn’t. It ain’t for me. That’s a big reason why I withdrew from it.

As I watched with mounting distaste, I’d quip often, “I don’t need this shit. I have real friends.” It’s true. I have friends like Chris who look me in the eyes and tell me the truth when I need it. And there’s my friend Brett. We also deal in truth, and we check in on each other all the time. Big Papa (Mike) Connelly is always there with a supportive ear and levity to balance out the heaviness. It’s relationships like these, along with purpose and defined values, that keep me caring about the right things. I hope you have the same types of people in your life. Many people, however, don’t. Without purpose, without defined values, and without solid friendships, folks often fall into the trap of caring about, well, bullshit.

Caring about the wrong things is distressing. For example, all those fitness industry folks I mentioned care about the opinions of strangers that live, sometimes, thousands of miles away. They hyperfocus on appearances while feigning depth. That, sports fans, is a speedtrain ticket to feeling like absolute guano. And misappropriated caring isn’t reserved by the internet fitness industry, it is pervasive across American demographics.

“Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need.” Chuck Palahniuk said these words through his character Tyler Durden in the novel, and later movie, Fight Club. I’ll add to the statement – to impress people we don’t even like. Toil, toil, toil. Why? Who knows! But it’s the normal way of the present American life.

All that misappropriated care takes a heavy tax from the mind and the body. We feel it as anxiety, overwhelm, and demotivation. And we end up searching for comfort to soothe the pain. The result is often a form of self-care that rides the surface on the backs of activities that look and feel like warm, fuzzy blankies and bubble baths. People need the comfort because it feels centering, even though they’d be much calmer and more centered if they lived in alignment with who they truly are. Do shit you truly care about with people you truly care about. That is self-care.

Essential Perspective

Purpose, values, and caring about things that truly matter gives us something that everyone needs – healthy perspective. The truth is following your purpose and living out your values has a cost. It is a worthy cost, but it’s a cost, none-the-less. You will feel stressed at times even as you take solid, aligned action. Purpose and values give you perspective through the stress and through the struggle. You’ll know why you’re doing what you’re doing, and that knowledge keeps you from getting got through the process of living. Perspective, then, keeps the wrong things from weighing on you and helps you appreciate where you are. That is an act of self-care – one that keeps you grounded and limits the cost of stress.

Thinking Differently About Self-Care

Self-Care is caring for self. And that care is based on the essential and the necessary actions of choosing your purpose, defining your values, and using each to care about what you should while disregarding what you shouldn’t. This is the foundational work of self-care because it helps you live in alignment with your true self, which helps you maintain perspective even when life gets stressful. The result: You stop conflating self-care with comfort, need less comfort-derived activities, and you understand true self-care.

It is caring enough about yourself to define a standard and then making every effort to live up to that standard while you tell yourself the truth about where and who you currently are.

In part 2 we’ll build on this foundation by talking about direct self-care actions you can take, including when it is time for that blankie and that bubble bath.