Self-care is a topic that can readily provoke cognitive dissonance — the internal conflict that occurs when new knowledge contradicts an existing belief. On one hand, self-care is widely understood to be important. On the other, there is often little follow-through in practice. Understanding why that gap exists requires looking at the cultural forces that shape how we think about care in the first place.
The Cultural Problem with Self-Care
In westernized societies, particularly in the United States, there is a strong belief in individualism — the narrative that each person authors their own self, with little to no help from others. This can make it seem as if a person’s work is equivalent to their worth. Phrases like “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” or “if you just try hard enough, you’ll succeed” are motivating to some, but they carry a hidden cost: they frame the inability to perform at full capacity as a personal failure rather than a human reality.
Consider this scenario: you work as part of a team and wake up one day feeling ill. Instead of calling in sick, you go to work anyway. Your colleagues notice and encourage you to go home, but you push through. You make it through the day — but at a cost to your performance and to everyone depending on your work. And at the end of it, you feel unappreciated rather than supported.
The motif in that scenario is that our physical and emotional output is a resource to be produced, valued above nearly everything else. When applied on an individual level, this means a person must often generate resources that are only available at their own expense. This makes burnout almost inevitable — and the cultural norm compounds it by encouraging shame for those who can’t perform regardless of illness, fatigue, or depletion.
What Genuine Self-Care Actually Looks Like
Rather than offer a list of prescriptions — and effectively reinforce the norm that self-care is just another task to complete — the more useful move is to change our relationship with the process entirely.
Genuine self-care moves beyond instant gratifications like shopping sprees or spa days toward something more fundamental: creating a life from which we do not frequently need to escape. That’s a different and more demanding project than booking a massage.
It means creating boundaries around activities — even seemingly important ones — that overwhelm us or contribute to undue stress. It means recognizing that self-care doesn’t always feel good: we might dread a medical appointment, but attending it is still a form of care. It means allowing ourselves to rest without requiring productivity as justification.
Changing our relationship with self-care requires a commitment to changing the entire system of care — not just adding restorative activities onto an already depleted life. But when we no longer feel the constant need to emotionally escape from our lives, we may find ourselves more fully living them — practicing self-care without having to think about it.
If burnout, depletion, or the difficulty of caring for yourself is something you’re navigating, our clinicians would be glad to help. In-person in Denver and telehealth throughout Colorado. Call 720-675-7918 or request an appointment online.