Self Care: Beyond Wine and Netflix

Like all buzzwords, “self care” has begun to devolve into a variety of meanings. So much vague and confusing information is going around, it’s worth defining the different things people REALLY are saying when they use the word self care.

Self soothing

We’ll start with self soothing since it requires the simplest explanation. It can overlap with self care, but it is primarily self-care that focuses on your present needs and is particularly attuned to the needs of your body (a bath or a hug, for instance). Sometimes self-soothing is needed before we can make good choices about self care, since when our body’s stress responses are activated, we can only make choices out of self-preservation. Self soothing can be as simple as deep breathing or inhaling lavender oil. We can actually raise our serotonin levels just by rubbing our own arm for 30 seconds. This is what the kind parent does when they see their child is at the end of their rope after an overstimulating party, “ I’ll hold you tight and let’s go some place that’s quiet and take some deep breaths.” You are well aware that the child can’t function unless you make some effort to re-regulate them.

Self-Numbing

This category can’t be addressed without first addressing the shame inherent in the less culturally appropriate self-numbing behaviors. If you hear yourself in this category, please don’t hear judgment, because all of us have been here, but if your addiction is heroin or Netflix, you may feel more shame than the person whose addiction is perfectionism or achievement, but all of them can be self-numbing. There is a reason we are wired to numb, as there are circumstances that demand it for us to survive. Numbing can be a priceless gift for victims of trauma and ACE’s (adverse childhood events) and often is the only option available as a means of coping with crippling pain. Addictions nearly all fall into the self-numbing category, and Dr. Daniel Sumrok, director of the Center for Addiction at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center’s College of Medicine calls addictive behaviors “ritualized and compulsive comfort seeking” and stresses that the correlation between addiction and ACE’s is well over 85%. Since many are reading this and thinking that the words “trauma” and “addiction” don’t apply to them…do you mindlessly turn on Netflix at the end of a rat-race workday? Do you yell at your bickering kids and then escape to the pantry and inhale three pop-tarts without even tasting them? Whether your addiction of choice is a substance or Netflix or food or rage or control or achievement, what makes it self-numbing, is the degree to which it allows you to disengage with your own body and therefore your own emotional experience. Where self-soothing helps you to re-regulate so you can better “tune in” to what your experience is and what needs are voicing themselves, self-numbing helps you to “tune out.”

Self Care

So what is self care then? It’s both very simple and infinitely complicated. Self-care means doing the next right thing. And not right as in “should,” because I can already see your shoulders slumping as you think of how you ought to be waking up early to do some yoga, and Marie Kondo your space this weekend, and maybe it’s time cut sugar…or start a celery juice cleanse…(So the shame and defeat spiral starts). When I say right I mean it as in “what is right and good for me in this moment?” This is fundamentally different for each person and for each moment. Perhaps I should say no to that party, or maybe I should say yes when invited to girl’s night. Maybe I should make myself a cup of warm tea, or take a nap, or maybe I need some sunshine and movement. Self care is the voice of a kind parent that might say “you don’t feel well today? Let me get you a cool cloth for your head and care for you while you rest,” but might also say, “I know it feels a little scary to try something new, but you really love to dance and this class is a the best way to learn. Let’s try it and see if you feel more comfortable by the next time.” A kind parent will certainly push you to do some things you aren’t comfortable with. A kind parent also KNOWS YOU intimately, what your needs and inclinations and hopes and dreams are. So when they help you script a hard conversation with a friend who hurt you, it’s because they know how dear that friend is to your heart. And when they say “let’s stay in and do a soup and movie day,” it’s because they know just from the touch of your forehead that your body needs rest and care. This is easier said than done. You may not know your body well enough to sense its need for rest, or movement or sunshine. You may not see when you’re sabotaging what is dear to your heart because to hope and desire for something that might disappoint is terrifying. Even more so, when the driving voice in our head has for decades motivated us through “should” and “have to,” it is immensely difficult to change it to “I can” and “I choose to.” This is what makes the same activity (say, a morning run) self care for one person, while for another person it is a Pavlovian bell for the shoulds and the have-tos. If you are the latter, you cannot take that run and have it be self-care, because your voice is unkind.

But if only it were as simple as “be kind to yourself.” The reality is that self care must exist in a culture of community care. To learn to be kind, we need to have experienced kindness, to let go of the “should” and “have to” voice in our head, we need to know that we have the acceptance of others and not just their approval. We need support (emotionally as well as financially and physically and culturally) to slow down the breakneck pace required in a culture that considers productivity the only form of worth and consumption the only form of care. We’re sold the myth of “balance” where we can infinitely increase productivity on one side as long as we pile enough “self-care” on the other side of the scale, which only makes us despair that it is our fault we are not well. No wonder so many settle for the most “efficient” form of emotional regulation: self numbing. It may be all our culture and community supports and all our lives allow margin for. The journey toward a lifestyle and community that has margin for us to be kind to ourselves is a costly and counter-cultural one, but it may feel freeing to know that it isn’t just our fault for not trying harder to weigh down the self-care side of the scale when we are in a culture and lifestyle that make that an exercise in futility.

So, are wine and Netflix self care? A glass of wine, smelled and savored, can be self-soothing. A glass of wine desperately inhaled to “take the edge off” (aka, help dull my emotional experience) is self-numbing. Mindless Netflix binges that have to put you to sleep because you couldn’t bear to sit in the silence that would come if you didn’t press “next” are self numbing. Watching a movie that delights and fascinates and humors can be self care. The time and money and support to do either of those things with kindness can be hard to come by and take time and effort to build. So I’m sorry to say it’s more complex than looking up Goop’s latest “self-care tips for a busy lifestyle.” It is very personal and requires a great deal of self-awareness and self-kindness, both of which require intentional care, cultivation, and a village to come alongside.