I have a drawer full of things I bought to feel better. An LED mask, wooden rollers for my fascia release (I love rolling my thighs, ok), and an expensive hair oil that smells like a forest after rain. And I don’t regret any of it. Some nights that oil is the only thing that brings me back to reality.
So this isn’t an essay about how self-care is a scam, or how you should feel guilty for spending on yourself. You shouldn’t. Pleasure is not the enemy here because I want you to return to the feeling of pleasure.
What I have a problem with is the fact that most of us can buy the oils, run the bath, do every step of the routine correctly, and still not actually be there for any of it.
Mentally, I mean.
I mean, self-care is supposed to be a return to yourself, right? A moment where nobody needs anything from you and you don’t need to be anyone in particular. But the problem is most of us don’t know how to stop being someone in particular. I mean, I’ve had these moments myself.
We continue to spend so much time managing how we come across, at work, online, in our own families, friendships that even alone in a bathtub we’re still performing.
Waiting for something to click. Waiting for something magical to come and tell us, “everything is okay right now.” But your mind is still spinning, thinking, judging, curating, debating, pointing out flaws with this or that.
We can’t stop narrating our moments. We can’t stop wishing to be a different version of ourselves already. That’s why self-care feels like work.
Somewhere in between these routines, I feel many people can’t stop performing the self-care. Performing the calm instead of truly feeling it. And a performed feeling costs more than a real one, because you have to keep it up. It takes but doesn’t give back.
That’s the redefinition I think self-care needs. We get fed that it’s some austere idea, that the only real rest is free. But it’s not.
We need some honesty about the difference between soothing yourself and proving something to an audience, even when that audience is only in your head.
I will shout this from the mountain tops: Real self care asks you to be your actual self, which is a much harder and much stranger thing to sit with. Have you truly tried to sit with yourself without judging yourself?
Your actual self might want to eat cereal for dinner and watch something you’d never admit to liking. Your actual self might not want the elaborate ritual at all. Might just want ten minutes of silence (and permission to not perform gratitude about it). Like I just want 10 minutes to myself. I shouldn’t have to thank the universe for it.
I don’t think the answer is throwing out the products or the rituals because I love all my self-care products, routines, and rituals. I really do. I think the answer is asking, every time, whether you’re doing this for you or for the version of you that you think you need to be.
Those two things can overlap though.
But, you’ll know the difference by how it feels afterward. Real rest leaves you a little more like yourself. Self-care is self-love. And when you do it right, regardless of what that looks like to you, you’ll be more at peace with you.
So keep the oil. Keep the bath. Keep whatever small luxury makes you feel human on a hard day. Just try, once in a while, to actually show up for it. Let your face do what it wants when nobody’s watching. Let the moment be smaller and quieter than the version you’d post. That’s not a lesser kind of care.
-S