‘True self-care in this frenzied world comes from that precious commodity, time’
It’s become a buzzword in recent times, but there are signs that self-care has now evolved into an very expensive excuse tool, writes Edel Coffey
Last week, I was reading about a woman who admitted she spent a whopping one-third of her salary on fitness (that figure included everything from gym membership to extras like fitbits and vitamins and sweat-wicking leggings). Expensive habit, I thought, but there are worse things you could spend your money on. As she pointed out, at least her expensive habit was keeping her fit and healthy. Plus, it fell under that beautifully permissive category of “self-care”.
Self-care has become a buzzword of the last decade, one that has grown in popularity alongside our twin epidemics of anxiety and depression. It’s also one of the most bulletproof justification tools we have. Uncork a bottle of wine, call it self-care, and nobody is going to say a word about the fact that you might be drinking too much. Open that bag of sweets and keep going until you hit the end of the packet, and there’s no need to worry about the sugar content and how it will ravage your system. It’s self-care.
But how do we actually define that gauzy term self-care? Is it anything that makes you feel better, however temporarily? Or must it be good for us long-term, on a physical, emotional and mental scale? That’s closer to the World Health Organization’s understanding of it, which defines self-care as “the ability of individuals, families, and communities to promote health, prevent disease, maintain health, and to cope with illness and disability with or without the support of a healthcare provider”.
For me, self-care is about managing stress and maintaining well-being, but self-care looks different for everyone, I imagine. For some, it’s a walk by the sea every day, for others, regular Botox injections or hair extensions. I’m a busy mother of four, so for me, it often looks like getting some alone-time, however pathetic a form that might come in – sometimes it is getting to go to the supermarket by myself with my noise-cancelling headphones, or in the 45-minute period between pickups for the children’s activities where I find myself alone with a coffee, a book and the sound of silence.
I really wish self-care for me took the form of fitness because I’ve had an on-again, off-again relationship with exercise my whole life, a vicious cycle of intense commitment followed by falling off the wagon. I have gone to expensive one-on-one personal trainers, budget gyms, group classes – I’ve drawn the line at joining a Zumba class – but I’ve never managed to catch the gym bug. So I aim for a walk every day instead and try not to beat myself up about failing to do a Couch to 5K. That’s the other great thing about self-care: it is very forgiving of our failures.
Ultimately, I suppose, self-care is meant to be about taking care of ourselves (the clue is in the name), and valuing ourselves enough to do that. The catchphrase “because you’re worth it” comes to mind. And of course, every one of us is worthy of the care we offer easily to others, yet seem to find it so difficult to extend to ourselves.
The more I thought about it, the more I felt that dedicating some ringfenced money to self-care was a good idea. But how much should a person spend on self-care? One-third of a salary felt a bit over the top, punitive even, not to mention unmanageable. If you ask a committed disciple of self-care, they’ll tell you that any amount is justifiable. It’s an investment in that most important of commodities, after all: yourself.
I asked the oracle, Google, instead, which told me that self-care should take up only 5 per cent to 10 per cent of your salary. It seemed like a more reasonable, not to mention achievable amount. I did a quick mental calculation of how much I spend on self-care every month. It was humiliatingly small. I don’t get my nails done, I don’t get facials or Botox or therapy. I am a member of a gym (but if I never go, does it even count?). I don’t get manicures, eyelashes or tanning. Does pizza on a Friday count as self-care, I wondered, especially if you factor in that I don’t have to cook dinner or do the washing-up afterwards? Absolutely.
I’ve come to the conclusion that self-care is not really about how little or how much money you spend on it. It doesn’t have to cost anything. It can be something as small as a five-minute meditation, a walk, keeping a gratitude journal, gardening or turning off your phone for an hour. In fact, the best self-care for me comes from that most precious commodity that money can’t buy – time, the biggest gift we can give to ourselves in our frenzied culture of micro-scheduling and overwork. I couldn’t help but wonder, if we carved out one third of our time rather than our salaries for self-care, how much better off would we be?
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EDEL IS . . .
Reading: Lisa Jewell’s unputdownable thriller The Family Remains (out in July)
Streaming: Bosch on AmazonPrime
Watching: Everything I Know About Love, the BBC adaptation of Dolly Alderton’s debut book
