Why Taking Care of Yourself Isn’t Selfish: How Wise Selfishness Strengthens Family Relationships

Episode 190: Why Taking Care of Yourself Isn't Selfish: How Wise Selfishness Strengthens Family Relationships

Is taking care of yourself selfish—or is it the very thing your family needs most?

In this episode of Coaching Your Family Relationships, Family Conflict Coach, Tina Gosney, explores the belief so many women were raised with: that self-care is wrong, selfish, or indulgent. Using the story of “Sarah,” a mom running on empty from years of self-sacrifice, Tina unpacks how burnout, resentment, and guilt often come from ignoring our own needs.

You’ll discover the concept of wise selfishness—a perspective that transforms guilt into grounded self-care, boundaries into deeper love, and personal well-being into stronger family connection.

If you’ve ever felt invisible, resentful, or guilty for saying no, this episode will help you see self-care in a new way: not as selfishness, but as the foundation of real connection.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• Why the belief that “taking care of yourself is selfish” quietly sabotages family relationships
• How wise selfishness (a Buddhist teaching) reframes self-care as essential to love and connection
• The generational programming that teaches women to disappear in service of others
• What happens when you suppress your needs—and why they eventually leak out as resentment or burnout
• Practical ways to start honoring your needs without losing closeness with your family

Resources & Next Steps

Ready to go deeper? Join Tina for a 1-day training on October 9: End Family Disconnection and Create Relationships That Last.
This isn’t just another workshop—it’s a space to reconnect with yourself and your family in powerful, practical way

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

Tina Gosney is the Family Conflict Coach. She works with parents who have families in conflict to help them become the grounded, confident leaders their family needs.
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Tina is certified in family relationships and a trauma informed coach.
Visit tinagosney.com for more information on coaching services.

Transcript

Tina Gosney: 0:09

Hey, friend. Welcome to the coaching your family relationships. I'm family conflict coach. Tina Gosney, today we are exploring this belief that just quietly runs the show underneath the surface of so many of our lives, especially for people who are really who were raised in a really strong family culture or a very high demand religious culture. And this applies, I think, more to women, but I'm not going to just say it applies to women, because I've coached men who have dealt with this too, but I'm going to use the example of a woman today, and so if you're a man and you're listening to this, don't discount it, because this could very well be you too. It's this belief that taking care of yourself and letting yourself have any resources or rest or anything for yourself is selfish. That means investing time, energy or money into you, into your well being, into your peace, into your joy, allowing yourselves to rest, just allowing yourself to do that is the belief that that is wrong. So if this message hits home, I really want to offer you a different way of thinking today, and this way is going to be both freeing and very practical, and it's a way that doesn't just serve you, but it actually strengthens the relationships with your family, the people that you love the most. So to do that, I want to introduce you to someone that I think you'll recognize, and her name is Sarah. Sarah is a 52 year old mom of three. Her youngest just left for college, and you would think, with all the kids out of the house, now, is the moment she finally gets a break, and she gets to do some things for herself, but No, she doesn't because she's finding ways to do something for someone else. She checks in on her married kids daily. She drops everything when someone needs her. She volunteers at church. She runs meals to neighbors. She says yes to every request, especially family requests, even when she is so exhausted. Now, from the outside, Sarah looks like the picture, the epitome of love and service. But what about on the inside? Let's check in to see what's going on there. She's so tired, she's really irritable, and she feels invisible, even though she never says it out loud, she secretly resents her family for not appreciating her more, and she might not want to admit it to herself or anybody else, but she does think things like no one ever checks in on me. They only call when they need something. I do everything for everyone else, and I get nothing in return. Now don't take me wrong, because Sarah believes that she's doing the right thing by putting herself last, because that's what it means to be a good person. You put yourself last. But what she doesn't see is that her self sacrificing is starting to backfire, because, remember, she's irritable on the inside, so she's shorter with her husband, and she avoids her daughter's phone calls. She withdraws from the people that she loves the most because she literally has nothing left. She's running on empty. The truth is, you can't keep pouring from a dry cup and expect to still have something left to give and expect connection to grow. So you know, as I go along this podcast and talk more about Sarah, I want you to notice, does any of her story, any of her life, feel familiar with your own? So if you see yourself in Sarah, you are not alone. I have coached many women, especially those who are raised in religious or high expectation families, they carry really deep programming that they don't even know, but this programming tells them what it means to be good. So good looks like this. You always say yes, you don't ask for help. You put others needs before your own. You swallow your emotions. You avoid conflict at all costs. You believe that love means sacrifice. I could keep going on and on, those are some of the big ones. But if you were ever praised for being easygoing, for not needing much, for going going along, and just being so willing to be helpful all the time. Then over time, you internalize something really powerful. And that internal voice, whether it's conscious or unconscious, says, if I take care of myself, I'm selfish. If I say no, I'm letting other people down, and I will lose connection with them. They won't want me anymore. And it also says, If I invest in myself, I must think that I'm more important than other people, and that's not okay. But here's what the belief doesn't tell you, that the people who love you actually want you to be well, that your family needs all of you, not a burned out version of you. And I want you to really listen to this one, because being endlessly selfish can actually create distance, resentment and emotional disconnection, and that's what's happening with Sarah. But the truth is, and this is such a beautiful truth, that it does not have to be that way. Today, I want to share this perspective that the first time I heard it, I just stopped in my tracks and I said, that is amazing. I have never heard it put that way before. This is from the Dalai Lama. He calls it wise selfishness. Now for most of us, those two words, it doesn't feel like they belong together, right? Feels like they should not be put together in the same phrase. But because selfishness is something that most of us were taught that we had to avoid at all costs, especially if you grew up in this family or religious culture that praised selflessness. But here's the difference, there's foolish selfishness and there's wise selfishness, and here's the difference, foolish selfishness is short sighted. It's me first. It's taking without thinking of anyone else and without giving anything back. It's ignoring how your choices actually do impact others. It's the kind of selfishness that creates a distance and harm and most of us think when we think of selfishness, that's what we're thinking of. And of course, we don't want to be that. But wise selfishness is different. It's understanding that when you care for your own well being, you are not taking from others. You're actually giving to them, because then you can show up with more patience, more compassion and more energy to be that person that you want to be. So think about it every time, when you say yes, when your body is begging for rest, or when you give because you feel guilty instead of actually wanting to give from love, you're not actually offering people your best, because when you're exhausted and guilty, that is not you at your best. When you allow yourself to rest and to receive and to set boundaries, you are practicing wise selfishness. And if this is your pattern, if you have not been practicing wise selfishness, then you're like Sarah. And I'm going to guess you did not invent that pattern. You probably inherited it. Chances are your mother or father, if this is a male listening, they carried it too, and maybe their parent before them carried it. This belief that your worth is tied to being selfless and disappearing has been handed down through generations, and has been celebrated in many parts of our culture. Breaking it is not just about you think about this. You can be a pattern breaker. You can be the one that shifts the story and does not pass that down to the next generation. You do not need to pass down exhaustion and invisibility and resentment and bitterness for disappearing. Here's this question for you, what would it look like to practice wise selfishness in your life this week? You were not born thinking that you didn't have needs or that you didn't matter. In fact, as a baby, you were so brilliant and so good at getting your needs met. You cried, you reached out, you made. Made eye contact and talked and cooed and gooed. You squirmed, you made noise. You did whatever it took. That's what babies do. And then as a toddler, you got even more creative. You added more tools into your toolbox. You got more persistent. Everything was about you, right? I have a toddler grandson right now, and I see this. They're very, very creative in getting what they want. But then around the age four, five, sometimes six, things begin to shift. That's when we start noticing other people. We kind of say to ourselves, oh, look, other people in the world exist, and they're kind of important to me. I want to belong with them. I mean literally. Now we're not saying that to ourselves at four or five. It's probably a much more subtle, unconscious choice that we're doing at that point. But that's really what the what the idea is. There are other people in the world, and I want to belong and connect with them. And this is when our desire for belonging and connection becomes very, very powerful. So we start to adapt. We start to change ourselves. We become aware that if I cry too much, if I ask too much, if I say the wrong thing, then people might not like me. They might pull away. And we for us that feels so threatening, because belonging is incredibly vital, and it feels like if I don't belong, then I just might die. And so we adjust, we tuck away our own needs, we start stuffing things down, and we start focusing on what do. What does that other person need? Who do I need to be so that they like me? So if we were praised for being low maintenance and helpful and quiet, and we learn to associate our value, our value as a human, with being less of a burden. Then we learned that being lovable means being selfless, and that is what has happened to Sarah, and now she's not a toddler anymore. Remember, she's a 52 year old mother of three. She has grandchildren, she has married children, but she doesn't even know who she is anymore. She only knows that she's tired and she's sad and she does not feel connected to the people that she is giving her all of herself to all the time. But I want you to really remember this one thing, whatever we don't express, whether it's to ourselves or to somebody else, we will eventually act out. When we begin and keep on pushing our own needs down, they don't disappear. They just come out sideways, and that's when we start doing things like being feeling really resentful, blaming other people, snapping at people. We can also get chronic fatigue and burnout. So here's Sarah being so selfless, giving so much of herself, and thinking that the problem is that her family doesn't appreciate her, but the real issue is that she stopped appreciating herself. And the good news is, is that, you know, this is something that she created, and so it's also something that she can turn around. We can't do that until we see what it is, though. Sarah needs to start asking herself questions like this, what do I need? What do I want right now? What would it look like in this moment to treat myself like I matter? Those are uncomfortable questions to ask yourself, especially at the beginning, when you first start doing this. But when Sarah begins to start doing that, when she begins to to rest, when her body needs rest, to say no, when she doesn't have time and she doesn't have the energy and the resources, when she begins to take time for herself, that will begin feel like, begin feeling like she's healing. And you know what else is going to feel like? It's going to feel terrible. And yes, I did mean to say terrible at first. It's going to feel terrible because here's what no one tells you about, starting to take care of yourself after all the years and years and decades of self sacrifice that it is uncomfortable, your brain will start talking very loudly to you. It will say things like, You're a terrible parent. You are being so selfish right now. Your body is going to feel anxious. You'll feel all stirred up inside. You might feel shaky because your nervous system has been trained to believe that your worth is tied to how much you give, how much you deny yourself, and how much you disappear, and when you start to challenge that, your nervous system does not like that, and the people who have gotten used to you saying yes all the time, they're going to start pushing back too you could probably expect some pushback when you start saying no, all of this is normal. That discomfort is not a sign that you're doing it wrong. It's not a sign that you need to go back to the old way. It's actually the exact signal that you need to break an old pattern and to step into a new one. And for Sarah, if she keeps practicing her brain, eventually the that alarm in her brain is going to get a little quieter, and then little quieter, and then her body is going to start to calm down, and she's we'll see she's going to start seeing that she can take care of herself and she can still love her family. Well, in fact, maybe she'll even realize that now she can love them better, because now she's not giving from an empty place. She's giving from a place of wholeness. If you have been feeling resentful, complaining, snapping at other people, over, committing yourself, exhausted, feeling like you're invisible, quietly wishing that someone is going to finally notice you and that you need something. I'm going to ask you again, how can you be so effectively selfish that you have nothing left to complain about, not because your life is perfect? Is perfect, but because you are taking responsibility for yourself, for what you need, for your own rest and peace and joy. You're not doing this because you're rebelling, but you're doing it because you love you love them, and you love you. And when Sarah starts to do that, when she decides, you know what, I'm gonna leave my phone at home and I'm gonna go take a walk, when she decides to say no to something that drains her, when she signs up for something to do because she wants it just for her, she does not become a worse parent. She becomes a better one, because she stops resenting and she starts showing up, and she gets her sparkle back. It might have been a lot of years since she saw that sparkle, but that is the power of wise selfishness. If something in Sarah's story has resonated with you and stirred up something for you, and if you're feeling this ache of you know, I want some recognition. I want things to be a little different, then I want you to take I'm just going to invite you to take the next step with me. On October 9, I am hosting a one day training called end family disconnection and create relationships that last. This is not going to be a lecture. It's going to be an experience. It's a space where you will feel supported and understood and guided back towards yourself while you learn how to stay connected to the people that you love. You'll leave with tools. Yeah, you will. But more importantly, you're going to leave with a sense of relief. You know, this relief of this feeling that you don't have to disappear yourself anymore in order to keep the peace, and that will help you to feel lighter and clearer and more at home in your own skin. From that place, you'll just naturally show up differently, with more compassion and more calm energy that leads to real connection. So you do not have to keep running on empty. You are meant to be fully here with yourself and with them, and I would love to walk with you in this training. I'll see you there.