Self-Care Isn’t Selfishness
Hi there. Welcome to One Day You Finally Knew: A Podcast For Women Breaking Away. I'm your host, Jessica Chasnoff, and I'm super excited about walking together on this journey, home to ourselves. Let's see where our walk leads us today.
Hello, lovelies. Here we are again. Wow. There is so much to talk about. And, I considered doing an episode on how we're gonna deal with these abortion bans like the one Texas has just gotten away with. But then I sat with it. And I thought about how instead it might be nice to just talk about self-care. Because, uh, we need it, more than ever. Especially weeks like this. Every single person that I have spoken to this week has been in a lot of pain about what is going on.
We really need to make sure that we have excellent self-care. We need to have excellent self care because a lot is going to be expected from us, per us-, around how to, you know, fix the fuck up. And we need to make sure that our cups are full to do this.
So the topic this week is, "Self-Care Is Not Selfishness". That said, how many of us have grown up thinking it was? Feeling like we have to feel guilty for taking care of ourselves. Or that we can't, that we have to put everyone else first. I feel like now more than ever, we are being called to basically self-care on steroids. Kinda how I see it. What we are looking at here is breaking away from the societal suggestion that putting yourself first means you're selfish.
As women, historically, we've been taught that we're supposed to nurture everyone around us. And if we actually, God forbid, put ourselves first, we are supposed to have guilt about that. Which is utter bullshit, but look at how it has kept this system intact, right?
Not a broken system, like so many of our systems. Systems that were created exactly for this purpose. To keep the status quo the status quo. Right? Continually met with guilt when they do anything for themselves, we can't move out of that. We're stuck there.
We have this generation of women, this is certainly the experience of my own mother and women in her generation. They become martyrs. You put yourself last, you martyr yourself. And then what can also happen from this is that because they martyred themselves, if you refuse to martyr yourself, if you decide that you're going to have self-care practices, then, guess whose wrath you're going to feel? I imagine there may be some nodding heads, thinking about being guilted by their mothers for doing self care. It's actually jealousy. I don't feel like I get to do this. So you can't do this. There could be something a little bit healthier.
A next level up would be some envy. Like, "wow, I didn't feel like I could do that, but I'm so glad you're doing it for you". Even better would be, "oh wow. You're showing me what I can actually do. Maybe I don't actually have to make your father all his meals". Right? Like maybe he actually won't die if he has to do that himself.
Right. Or whatever the example is. I think if you have parents over 60, you very well might understand this phenomenon. And even if you have a mother who celebrates your self-care, you very well might see her kowtowing to your father who apparently can't seem to do much by himself. Not because he can't, but because he's been taught he doesn't have to. We have learned from our moms, many of us, watching them do what they do, that we should be doing the same.
When I was married, I definitely set the same precedent that I was going to take care of my husband in that way. And I remember a couple of years into the marriage, I was just like, you know, I realize that I set this precedent by being the one who was going to do the laundry and do the dishes and also do the cooking and this needs to change.
It never really changed satisfactorily. It's part of why I'm not married any longer. I really prefer only cleaning the messes I and my dogs make. But if we learned by watching these patterns, then we often took these patterns on for ourselves. So we have an opportunity to make a different choice and to do things differently, which is actually healing because it's working with intergenerational patterns that can be changed.
The only way these things get changed as next generations come is if somebody along the line changes it, works on themselves, gets a different skill set going, gets more tools in their toolkit and is able to make the change. We really need to understand, as we work with our self-care practices, what our boundaries are gonna be with other people as part of our self-care.
Everybody gets to decide what self-care is for them. For some people that may be activities or treatments that are external. I have massage, I have acupuncture, some kind of body work. As part of our self-care there might be these external things, but we also want to make sure that we are taking care of what's going on inside. Making sure that we are getting rest, making sure that we are nourishing ourselves in all kinds of ways, right?
Talked about nourishing friendships last week. We want to make sure that we're nourishing ourselves in all kinds of ways, whatever we put in our systems. Whether it be food, brain food, how we move our bodies, how we're getting exercise, how we're getting breath.
If we're going and seeing someone to talk to, having a therapist, making sure we're getting some kind of support for our needs. Whatever it is that we're doing, we want to make sure that self-care includes boundaries that we have around other people. We basically have a choice. We can set boundaries with love.
"Hey, this isn't going to work for me", or we can do the thing and then have resentment while doing it. There's a quote. I don't know if it's one quote that got ripped off or if it's a couple. I certainly think that people can have similar thoughts with all the people on the planet.
This quote is from Nelson Mandela, "Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies." And then Malachy McCourt. "Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die." I know I've found myself saying that one. I don't really know who said it first or if they both said it, but they just said it differently.
But yeah, I think this is so true that resentment is like taking poison and hoping the other person dies. Self-care means that we don't do that to ourselves. Self-care means that we put a boundary in place before the resentment starts, or if resentment has started, we back up from the thing and regroup and decide to do something different, right?
Because remember, from episode one, we can always change our minds. Consent is not a constant. If you haven't listened to that one, go back and have a listen. That's a goodie. If I may say so myself. It's my most listened to episode, so far. So, yes, consent is not a constant and you can change your mind.
Setting these boundaries. You know, it doesn't help the other person, if you do something for them, when you actually need to be doing something for yourself, instead. It could be enabling them to continue to misbehave. And if not, misbehave, it could just be enabling them to do something that could be done differently. Or you're doing something for them that they can do themselves.
So keeping in mind that you being willing to do something for someone who's actually capable of doing it for themselves. You're not helping them at all by doing it for them. And then it certainly doesn't help you to be doing it because your cup gets less full and less full until it's half full. And then it's quarter of the way full.
And then before, you know, it's just backwash. You know, there's just nothing left in there. It isn't just in the case of doing this for people who really could be doing it themselves. This is when you could be offering help to anyone, even people who can't do something on their own. Even people who really need the help.
It really behooves us to still first be thinking about whether we have the energy to be offering that help. I do more self-care than most people I know; a shit ton of self-care. Because I do a shit ton of caring. If I did less self-care, I would have more of my student loans paid off and I would be driving a car around that was newer than 21 years old.
And all those things, they will come down the pike. I spend a fair amount of money on my self-care. I have to. I have to make it a priority because of what I do to make a living. My J O B. And what I do to make a life. Getting clear on ways that we can be of assistance, ways that we can care, ways that we can help are important, right.
Being really clear about what we can do and what we can't. If a friend of mine were to need to go somewhere and needed childcare, you know, I'm not the childcare person. I don't do kids. I just don't. But I will watch your dog. I'm not going to be the one who can sit with the friend in the ER, holding a bucket while they're throwing up.
I don't have the nervous system for that. I am however, the one to hold the container while they word vomit, their emotional process. That I was made to do. And if you're sick or you're down and out, or you're injured or something, whatever's going on with a friend, I can also make you, or your family a meal while you're ailing and recovering. Okay. That I can do.
So being really clear about what you can do and can't do. That is caring for others. It's also your self-care. It's setting boundaries around your self-care so that you don't wind up being resentful. Yeah. And by the way, many years ago, my own father, I was visiting my family. And this is when, what was that drug? It was an anti-inflammatory and they took it off the market because there were heart issues associated with it.
I think it was Vioxx. Anyway, it was an anti-inflammatory. You weren't supposed to take other NSAIDS with it. And my father did and wound up having major GI distress while we were out at a Chinese restaurant and we were there with my parents' friends who were morticians. They didn't drive a hearse exactly. It wasn't like being with the Munsters. But they drove a big van that, they'd like tricked it out, like a hearse. And my dad winds up becoming violently ill at dinner. And my sister and mother are driving him to the emergency room because he's having pain going down his left arm.
And, I'm like, I'm fucking out of here. Take me, just take me home in your hearse. So yeah, I mean, I'm like that with anybody. It does not matter how much I love you. I'm not going to be able to be around you if you are projectile vomiting Kung Pao chicken. It's just, it's not going to happen. Yeah.
So know what you can do and what you can't do and set those boundaries with love. Yeah. Okay. Ya gotta fill your cup first and here's the paradox. When it's full, that is when it overflows to others. Some people talk about it as putting your oxygen mask on first in the plane.
I like to talk about it in this way, filling your cup. When you are running on fumes, when you are trying to give tea from an empty cup, this creates problems. It's going to create problems for you emotionally, psychologically, and potentially physically. I have seen this over and over and over again with precious clients of mine.
Again, as always, when I talk about clients, I am changing details. Even if it sounds really specific. I'm amalgamating so that no one would be able to identify that they are the client that I'm talking about. So just wanting to be really clear about that.
I had a client who had a very unwell father who lived with her and also had a child with special needs, other family members that expected her to do the work. That was her place in the family constellation, the family system. It was no wonder after doing this for years and years and years that she got sick. What got sick? Her heart got sick. So much for her heart to carry because she wasn't making any time for herself. There was no exercise. She was eating food on the fly.
You know, she also had a full-time job. Had a heart attack. Thankfully, ironically, it was the father that was like, I think you need to go to the hospital. You need to go and get seen by somebody. She wasn't even going to go in. You probably know this, but the signs for women of heart distress and heart attack are not so clear. It seems to be much clearer, much more distinct for male bodies. Women have been known to go around having heart attacks and not knowing it .She recovered. And a lot of our work together was about making changes that were necessary because the next heart attack was liable to kill her. That's an example of what can happen.
I have had a client who's so afraid of losing her husband that she bends over backwards for him, does everything. That being the work in the home, all the domestic duties in the home and has work outside the home. This makes her so anxious that she has, over the years, gotten on to so much anxiety medication that she can't get herself off it. In the past when a change has needed to be made, or there's been some discussion about lowering the dosage of the Xanax, that doesn't really ever go well. Right. Trying to do it all. You know, there was a reason why in the 1950s, they called Valium "mother's little helper", because she could make it look like she was doing everything.
She would bring home the bacon, fry it up in the pan and never let him forget he was a man, right? I mean, that actually was not 1950s. That was in the 1980s. When women were into the workforce, thinking that we had been given some kind of gift, because now we could go and work twice as hard for half as much.
Yeah, you know all about this. In the 50s, women still, you know, they were doing the childcare, they were doing all the domestic duties. They were taking care of all the business. Right. And that was still too much for one person to be doing. And so a lot of women wound up taking mother's little helper, which was Valium.
Which is a benzodiazepine, a class of medication. It's an anxiolytic, anti-anxiety which your brain loves. They're wonderful drugs, and we need to have them. They are great for like, if you have a hard time getting on a plane or for me, if I'm ever going to have dental work, I am always going to have some Valium in me when I have a crown done. Maybe I'll do an episode at some point around women and dental phobia. Stay tuned. Spoiler alert: there's patriarchy involved in that.
Yeah. They're wonderful drugs and they're best used PRN, which is, as needed. Again, not a psychiatrist here. Can't prescribe any of these. But , I've taken my psychopharm and I work with many clients on these medications and they really do help for anxiety very, very, very much. But to be taking them regularly and at some of the high doses that I've seen can be very dangerous. So dangerous, in fact, that if you try to get off these medications cold turkey, you can wind up having seizures. It could actually kill you. A client of mine. Yeah. That's what she's done. She's tried to have this life where hubby doesn't know how much she's suffering, because she's trying to make it all perfect for him. But at what cost to her?
These are some things that can happen. So we want to be really careful of this. Why? Well a) because we want to actually be able to live good lives, right. B) because bringing this back to what I talked about at the beginning, we have fights ahead of us. We've already been fighting and we gotta level up because what's happening in Texas is going to start happening everywhere.
If California recalls Gavin Newsom, and Larry Elder winds up being installed, California's not going to be looking so blue anymore. It's kind of purple anyway, but yeah, you're going to have an anti-vaxxer, anti-choice motherfucker in as governor, all right. This is happening everywhere. We need to be taking care of ourselves because we have work to do for ourselves. Okay.
Self care isn't selfishness. I'd like to give you a little practice, which is, if you struggle with this and you have some programming in you that suggests that your self-care is selfishness, I would really like you to work with reframing that thought when it comes up. Self-care isn't selfish. Or self care is not selfishness.
Yeah. This is world work. Taking care of ourselves is world work. We do it for us. We're modeling it for next generations. We're also potentially modeling it for our mothers who, could still make different choices. If they're still making not great choices around their self care. So, the healing can go into the future and into what is past.
So lovelies, try all of this on. See how it feels. As always, you know, I love your feedback. May your week be filled with some rest and some sweetness, some joy, some laughter some ease, some peace. Good cries, if you need one. Cleansing tears that move you down the current. Great self- care. Okay. Until next time.
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