Self-care is Unfair

Mental health gurus often emphasise the importance of self-care and talk about being “selfish” sometimes. Conservatives, and especially those of the old guard, understandably roll their eyes at the seeming self-centeredness of these well-meaning folks who have really failed to come up with a decent justification of self-care to Christians.

I’ve wondered about this quite a bit myself. With an extreme mental illness it is getting easier to take care of myself – because it is a necessity – but what about the steps along the way? Surely, we don’t think that people should only care for themselves at a crisis point. So, when is it ok to put ourselves first?

I don’t have any grand philosophical answers to this, but I would like to change the perspective on this issue in order to show how I’ve come to terms with it. At one point when I was trying to get through some pretty serious trauma I stumbled across a meme (yes, a meme! Intellectual, I know) that said that you are responsible for your own healing. It seems obvious, but I think a lot of human pain continues because the universe deals us a blow and we therefore expect the universe to fix it. Even though schizophrenia wasn’t my fault, I had to figure out a way to heal myself. I could accept help – but not expect it. This isn’t fair, but it is essential.

Taking care of yourself actually means not burdening another with your pain.

Maybe you say that you can take care of people while going through a lot and not needing to take care of yourself. Sometimes that is true. Prudence should decide if it is. However, ask yourself honestly, are you often taking out your frustration on others passive aggressively? Do you hold resentful feelings frequently? Do you people please and expect a return? All of these I do. I vent way too much and expect to get better.

This is why self-care isn’t selfish. Some pain in life is an obvious effect of sins we’ve committed and sometimes we endure difficulties with no answer. A lot of things are not directly our fault, but we still have to fix them. No one owes you healing. Self-care is unfair.