Self-care is crucial to health and happiness. Unfortunately, many people, especially women, don’t prioritize themselves.
Society has led them to believe that taking even a moment for themselves is selfish. How could they practice self-care when their children and husbands need their service?
We’ve been fighting back at the notion that self-care is selfish, teaching women they deserve peace, quiet, and time for themselves.
However, it’s not as cut and dry as we’d like.
When Self-Care Becomes Selfish
Self-care can become selfish. People can get so caught up in themselves and their notions of peace and happiness that they forget other people exist and have needs, too.
You might want to rethink your idea of self-care if any of these sound familiar.
Never an Inconvenience
Some people use self-care as a catch-all to avoid doing anything inconvenient. They won’t watch a friend’s kid in an emergency, disengage with friends going through a hard time, and refuse to do anything that would help anyone unless it benefits them.
Life isn’t always convenient. Sometimes, we have to do things we don’t particularly want to do to help the people we care about.
Refuse to Compromise
If you want social relationships, whether platonic, familial, or romantic, you will need to compromise.
Everyone is different. We all have different perspectives, values, and ideas. We must all compromise with each other to maintain happy relationships.
It’s crucial to understand the difference between never compromising on anything and never compromising on the values that are most important to you.
Perfect Boundaries and No Friends
Firm boundaries are vital for mental well-being, but you must ensure your boundaries don’t morph into an impenetrable stone fortress.
Humans are flawed, and sometimes people make mistakes. You don’t need to cut off a potential friend at the slightest hint of boundary crossing under the guise of “self-care.”
Unable to Take Constructive Criticism
If your idea of self-care involves putting on noise-canceling headphones at the slightest hint of criticism, you might be taking it too far.
Constructive criticism helps us grow. We can’t always see our flaws, so we must rely on others to point out how we can improve. Shutting down at the slightest hint of feedback isn’t self-care; it’s self-sabotage.
Only Joy
There’s nothing wrong with seeking joy. Joy makes us happy, makes life easy, and brings a sense of bliss.
But life isn’t always joyful.
Friends suffer tragedy, family members go through hard times, and cherished loved ones pass away. That’s life.
It’s selfish to expect everything around you to be joyful 24/7.
Toxic Positivity
Your self-care becomes selfish when you embrace toxic positivity.
Toxic positivity is the idea that everyone around you must always have “positive vibes.” If someone is sad, frustrated, or angry, they deserve ridicule and banishment for “crushing your vibes.”
Although we should all strive to be more positive in our lives, we need to accept that everything can’t always be good. Bad things happen, and the more you ignore them, the worse they will be.
Avoiding Conflict
Nobody enjoys conflict, but it’s an essential component of human relationships.
Everyone is different, and those differences will always create conflict. Ignoring them to “keep the peace” or “not rock the boat” makes things worse for everyone. The culprits get a free pass, while their victims are forced to suffer in silence.
If you see someone doing something inappropriate, say something. Don’t use self-care as an excuse to ignore it.
Weaponized Boundaries
A lot of people use the concept of boundaries to manipulate others under the guise of “my mental health.”
Boundaries are about you – not other people. They are about how you will react to situations.
People weaponize the word all the time. Abusers, in particular, use it to keep their victims in line by having boundaries about everything from what their victim can wear to who they can talk to.
Those aren’t boundaries.
A boundary is a consequence of behavior you won’t accept, like you will end a relationship if the partner cheats, or you will end a phone call if your parents bring up a topic you don’t want to discuss.
Treating Yourself
Self-care is treating yourself now and again, not all the time.
Yes, you deserve an indulgence. No, you shouldn’t spend all your family’s savings on one.
There’s a lot of nuance to when treating yourself crosses the line from self-care to selfish. Frequency, cost, and amount of the treat, in addition to your family’s circumstances, all play a role.
Main Character Syndrome
Everyone is the main character of their own life, but that doesn’t mean other people don’t matter.
Your self-care might be selfish if you don’t acknowledge that other people have needs, too.
Costly Self-Care
If you can only have “self-care” by taking costly trips around the world or spending thousands of dollars on spa treatments, you might want to rethink your relationship with self-care.
It doesn’t have to be expensive. A bubble bath, a refreshing walk, or a day at the gym are all fantastic self-care activities.
Don’t break your family’s budget demanding self-care activities you can’t afford.
Ignoring Flaws
Sometimes, you are the problem. It’s not self-care to pretend you’re the most perfect person who ever existed and everyone else is mean for no reason.
Proper self-care is understanding yourself completely, flaws, and all. Acknowledge when you make mistakes and try to do better.
Refusal to Change
There’s a pervasive idea that self-care is always easy, positive, and relaxing, but that’s not true.
The most crucial form of self-care you can undertake is changing yourself for the better. It’s hard, and painful, but you’ll come through the other side a better person.
It’s selfish to pretend you don’t need any work.
Cutting Others Out
We often need to go no-contact with our abusers to thrive.
But we don’t have to cut people out of our lives for making small mistakes.
If you constantly cut people out of your life, consider examining your behaviors. You might be the toxic one.
No Spend No Friend
Friendships should transcend finances, but far too many people only value their friends when they can offer something of financial value.
It’s not self-care to ditch your less-well-off friends who can’t contribute to your wedding. Expecting friends to fund your life for your own “mental health” is selfish.
Booze Culture
I don’t care what social media says. Drinking wine all the time is not self-care. Alcoholism is not self-care.
If you can’t manage your life without a glass of wine every night, you need to get help.
You Don’t Owe Anyone Anything
America’s obsession with rugged individualism makes us all think we’re self-made. We did everything on our own with no help from anyone.
Taken a step forward, we seem to believe we don’t owe anyone anything – not even a lick of gratitude, and they’re the rude ones for expecting something.
Of course, you shouldn’t engage in tit-for-tat relationships, but it’s crucial to acknowledge all the people who helped us on our journeys. Friends offer support, parents offer financial assistance, and the government provides low-cost services. Humans thrive because we build communities that help us through life.
Pretending we’re self-made is selfish.
Feelings Matter More
Feelings are an essential component of the human condition. They allow us to experience joy, sorrow, happiness, and pride.
Humans also have a superpower that no other species (that we know of) has: empathy. We can put ourselves in someone’s shoes and feel what they feel.
Emotions are our biggest asset.
But…some people can’t separate their feelings and opinions from facts and believe their feelings on a subject carry as much weight as researched facts. They refuse to engage with people who disrupt their worldview and think the world should bend to their beliefs even though they’ve been proven false.
Protecting an opinion based on feelings from true facts is not self-care. It’s harmful to both yourself and to other people.
Self-care vs. Selfishness
Each of these examples bursts with nuance. Sometimes, protecting your beliefs from “facts” is okay, especially when your beliefs don’t impact anyone else. Who cares if you enjoy astrology or healing crystals even though they’re not based in science?
It’s okay to indulge in an occasional glass of wine, cut abusers out of your life, and avoid conflict when you know it’s not worth it. You should put yourself first on occasion.
It only becomes selfish when taken too far and negatively impacts those around you. And by “negatively impacts,” I mean for real, not in their worldview where they’re the main character, and everything you do that’s not for them “negatively impacts” them.
Some people will call you selfish for engaging in self-care, but that’s up to them.
Sometimes, your self-care really leans towards selfishness. That’s something you need to explore and resolve for yourself.