Unless you’re an occupational therapist, or work in healthcare or social services, self-care likely hasn’t been a term you used readily until about 2016 when self-care became VERY mainstream. Up until that point, self-care has been used primarily in the medical system as a way to measure how well someone can take care of themselves from the basics of bathing and dressing to the more complex tasks of maintaining work and their mental functioning. I have found it fascinating to see the evolution of self-care from medical based to cultural over the last ~8 years.
Unfortunately, the popularity of this term has also heralded a lot of misconceptions and even turned people off of the term because of how it has been used culturally. I think it must have been some genius ad executive who had a family member who was an OT that kickstarted the term from the medical world to the mainstream. It has been an epic shift from OTs conversing with MDs regarding a patient’s ability to take care of themselves independently at home to commercial brands pushing “self-care” as a way to sell more face masks. On one hand, it truly was a genius move on the part of brands but on the other hand it’s popularity has brought with it a narrowed down view of self-care.
If “self-care” were a category on Family Feud, I guarantee the #1 answer would be massage, followed by pedicure and I would hope walk or meditation are on the list. What do you think?
With this more narrowed view and the mainstream misunderstanding regarding the variety that is included within the term self-care, I think many are missing the benefits that can be reaped from a robust self-care practice. Self-care is anything from simply brushing your teeth to complicated things like making a new friend.
My wish for the term self-care is that it would be understood on a spectrum. Not all self-care is created equal and there are optimal types of self-care at various times of the day, week and even our life. When we engage in the ideal type of self-care, at the ideal time for great reasons it will leave you feeling like a new person. Unfortunately, when we succumb to pressures (internal or external) and engage in misaligned self-care for our current situation, needs, time availability, financial capacity, etc we can be left disappointed, anxious, frustrated and depleted.
I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who has gone for a massage, yet the whole time I was just thinking about how much it was costing, how mediocre it was, and how I should be doing something else with my time? This is the perfect example of a misaligned self-care choice.
Well, I know moms don’t have the time to be getting lackluster results out of their precious self-care time. You deserve to walk away feeling like your cup is full and you’re returning to your usual routine as the best version of yourself! Unfortunately, that can be difficult to figure out and takes waaay too much planning and thought, so you end up just skipping it or doing the first thing that comes to mind… like watching the latest episode of your favorite show… and then you feel like you wasted time and it spirals from there. STOP!!
I have a way to begin getting the most out of your precious time and I have outlined it ALL in my Elevated Motherhood Workbook! In this free workbook I…
- Provide the 8 types of self-care
- Offer a perspective shift for viewing your self-care
- A self-care quiz for those moments when you just want to be told what to do
- Visualization practice to further your understanding of what an optimized self-care routine would look like for you
- Journaling prompts to go deep into your self-care preferences and understand how to identify the optimal type based on these preferences
- Strategies for making self-care a priority
I invite you to DOWNLOAD Elevated Motherhood today and start up-leveling your self-care practice!
