Real Self-Care Buchzusammenfassung - das Wichtigste aus Real Self-Care

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Zusammenfassung von Real Self-Care

Name: Real Self-Care
Rating: 4.2 (296 reviews)
Author: Pooja Lakshmin

Pooja Lakshmin

A Transformative Program for Redefining Wellness (Crystals, Cleanses, and Bubble Baths Not Included)

4.2 (296 Bewertungen)

17 Min.

Themen

Rassismus Mentale Gesundheit Selbstfürsorge Alternative Perspektiven Gender- und Sexualitätsstudien

Inhaltsübersicht

Real Self-Care
in 5 Kernaussagen verstehen

Audio & Text in der Blinkist App

Kernaussage 1 von 5

What’s in it for me? Ditch trendy wellness hype to embrace true self-care.

The global market for personal development was estimated at around 42 billion dollars in 2021, and growing rapidly. But for many, the latest diet and exercise program, wellness retreat, or crystal healing water bottle isn’t just a drain on the wallet – but also on their self worth.

Aspirational marketing is happy to sell you the latest self-optimizer or motivational book, but these quick fixes fail to address systemic inequality or marginalization. They also gloss over the important systemic causes of stress and burnout like unequal access to child care, health care, affordable housing or mental health care. Not even the social pressure placed on many women and non-binary people to keep silent about the mental load, unequal household or emotional labor, and lost time or wages due to child rearing. Even worse, when your life fails to transform into happiness and rainbows after that expensive mindfulness retreat, you might even blame yourself.

In what amounts to victim-blaming on a grand scale, many wellness books or products emphasize surface changes to lifestyle or diet, rather than the deep work of connecting with yourself, setting boundaries, cultivating mental flexibility, or clarifying your values to help you make good choices. This kind of change is a marathon, not a sprint, and must be sustainable for a lifetime.

So whether you’re new to the idea of self-care and want a practicing psychiatrist’s take on the subject, or you’re burnt out on a million self-care approaches and products, this Blink is for you. It will uncover why so much of the self-care industry ignores the real impact of things beyond individual control — like the costs of racism, sexism, ableism, unequal access to housing, education, and even fresh food sources. Then, we’ll explore concrete strategies that actually empower and nurture you.

It’s the system that’s broken, not you.

If you’ve ever been drawn to a self-care program to help manage your stress, or burnout, or fatigue, you’re not alone. For many faced with overwhelming tasks like managing home and family life while working or attending school, quick fixes that promise more energy, or to end your messy home, are incredibly seductive. If you can just follow the plan, you could wake up refreshed, have that summer-ready body, get ahead at your jobs, or be a better parent. Whatever the goal, if you could just get it right, life would fall into place. Right?

But more often than not, it fails. Even if you follow it perfectly, you may feel just as burnt out and stressed as before. That’s because you have good reason to feel this way, especially if you aren’t one of the privileged few with access to great schools, high-paying jobs, low cost health and child care. Or perhaps all that self-care hasn’t addressed the real aftermath of an abusive childhood, or the ways you learned to survive in the past that are no longer serving you.

To be actually effective, self-care has to fit your individual needs. It has to account for what you’ve been through and what you’re going through right now. It must adapt to what you are able to accomplish despite the difficult circumstances that confront you.

Even more, it must start at your innermost core: the way you think and speak to yourself. For too many, particularly marginalized or traumatized individuals, the inner critical voice is overpowering. It may be the loudest inner voice there is, and dominate thinking to the point that they feel worthless, inadequate, or unlovable.

True self-care must also admit its own limits. It is not a substitute for medical or mental health intervention, so knowing when to seek professional help is key. We’ll explore this more in the last section.

To be transformative, real self-care is based on four core principles. The first is setting boundaries and confronting guilty feelings to help you feel less stress and more ease. Next, it’s about treating yourself with kindness and compassion. Life is too short to be bullied from within. The third is that it must connect you with your core values and bring you closer to your goals. Finally, to be real, self-care is an assertion of power. The power to take control of your life and your time, and take up space as someone whose needs, health and wellbeing matter.

For some, accepting that they deserve to take up space, time, and consideration might be a revolutionary notion. But when they embrace it, this notion has the power to change the world.

Boundaries aren’t optional, or negotiable.

Think about a time when someone asked you to do something you weren’t very happy about.

Maybe it was an urgent email from your boss over the weekend asking for an immediate response. Or a close friend asking to spend time when you were exhausted. Or perhaps it was your spouse, who asked you to come home early from a rare night out with friends because the kids were having a bedtime meltdown.

Stop bullying yourself: self-care is self-compassion

If you took a moment to imagine how you’d advise a friend facing the same challenging situation you are, did you notice a distinct difference between how you’d talk to them, and what you say to yourself? If you sounded kind and supportive to your friend, but not yourself, it's time to change that.

For many, beating themselves up mentally has become so commonplace, so second-nature, they barely even notice it happening. Some even chalk up their success to brutal self-talk and harsh discipline, but it’s uniquely damaging in the long run.

Identify your values, assert your power

When you’re able to tame the voice of your inner critic, and separate yourself from the reactions around setting your own limits, you may notice something interesting. When you stop taking responsibility for backlash from others, the internal chaos that arises from living by someone else’s values or ideals subsides, and you can begin to connect with yourself.

True self-care should bring you closer to your authentic self, not away from it. When you are successful in setting limits and sticking to them, you free up time to reflect on the things that bring immense value to your life. You may find that most of your stress actually centers on a few people or situations, rather than how perfect your home looks, or how quickly you’re advancing at work. Giving yourself permission to limit your exposure to these stresses isn’t just good self-care, it stops you from enabling toxic behaviors, or supporting discriminatory systems that go on to oppress others.

Final Summary

Real self-care isn’t about spa retreats or juice cleanses, but how you treat yourself. It’s built on four principles: creating healthy boundaries and challenging guilt, treating yourself with compassion, identifying and aligning yourself with your personal values, and asserting your personal power to fight for your own self-interest. For many, especially women and marginalized people, the system is stacked against real self-care, often advocating self-sacrifice in the face of oppression. Real self-care, by contrast, seeks to empower individuals to navigate the rigged system and thrive in living their authentic selves by setting limits, and taking up space.

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Worum geht es in Real Self-Care?

Real Self-Care (2023) exposes the dark side of the global self-care industry by connecting the systemic inequality faced by marginalized groups like women and people of color, and the stress, burnout and chronic illness faced by so many. It offers a science-based alternative and cognitive strategies for living with ease and purpose.

Wer Real Self-Care lesen sollte

Frustrated self-carers who feel they’re somehow doing it wrong
Tired life-optimizers who wonder why they still feel behind
Those looking for kinder, gentler transformation from the inside-out

Über den Autor

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin is a board certified psychiatrist with both a clinical and private practice. She is a contributor to The New York Times and speaker on topics of gender and mental health, as well as the founder of Gemma, an education platform for women’s mental health focusing on equity.

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Achtsamkeit & Glück Gesellschaft & Kultur Psychologie

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