What Self-Care Looks Like Sometimes (The Downside)

To be honest, life has been great since I discovered the word "self-care". I remember just how much I used to push myself over the limit and most times just to please other people. Neglecting myself (feelings, etc) was a norm and I thought that was okay. I didn't know better.

Then I started thinking about starting my own blog. Slowly, I read up on self-care and it's been a game changer! I started thinking about my old habits, I knew I could do better. I have been practicing self-care and I'm happy to go and read up on how others practice it. Like I said before, I define self-care as taking good care of yourself so yourself can take better care of you. Again, it makes sense, I promise.

As I started to practice self-care, I realised that it isn't and won't always look pretty. Here's what self-care can look like sometimes:

"A bad friend"
When you've been a people pleaser for quite some time and the people are kind of used to it, once you take away that privilege to become better for yourself, you may be seen as a bad friend. People become so used to having you however they want that when you start "switching up", you become the villain. Don't be discouraged by this, put those healthy boundaries in place.

"Distant"
Of course you'll be a little distant. You're starting to make things about you and not others. You're making time for the things you actually want to do and not imposing other people's stuff onto you.

"Negligent"
When you leave one thing for the other, for instance, when you decide that today you won't be doing any cleaning because you want to rest, some people can see that as negligence. Others are invested in society's believe of "a house must always be clean, especially a woman's". So when you decide to skip on that and replace it with some self-care, some may not get it. You may get a "find a way to squeeze both in" lesson. My point on this one is, there could be those who believe that self-care is a temporary solution to what could be an even bigger problem that could require medical attention instead. The truth is you know you more, if something needed medical attention I believe you'd know, but putting self-care on hold and associating everything with medical emergency sounds off to me.

There's so may opinions regarding self-care. It's an ongoing conversation but I strongly think that it is very necessary and needed. Pushing yourself too far just to make someone else happy sounds very unhealthy. I've been there. What are your thoughts on the conversation of self-care?

Disclaimer: views expressed in this post are my own and do not eliminate the need for medical attention. Be sure to talk to the relevant people should you need help regarding your health.