Is Your “Self Care” Actually a Form of Avoidance in Disguise?

Posted on by Janina Glass

Parents need to take care of themselves in order to be ready to tackle the next challenge that comes along – which is constantly. How do we even begin to get a moment to ourselves? Most commonly it’s through stolen moments of screen-scrolling, and that is shown to actually drain our capacities, not increase them (Mostafavi, 2016).

Often our smartphone use is really a form of avoidance, and in the long run, avoidance is so stressful. I noticed that for me, the cycle becomes doing what I can get away with in the moment – because I finally have a moment – and my life is so hard that I deserve a moment for myself to do what I want! That’s okay, but it’s important to be mindful about the choices we’re making about how to these moments. If we choose something that just makes time pass, they cause zip toward the next hard thing, especially if I have been using electronics to avoid the hard things for most of the day.

Woman pauses laundry on sofa, distracted by her phone.
Photo by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.com

I read an inspirational quote today. It said “Self-care isn’t about hot chocolate and bubble baths, it’s about having a life you don’t feel like you need to escape from” (Siddique, 2020).

Make life easier by facing the tough stuff!

Productivity and purpose make people happier. But how do we do it? One paradox of productivity is that we must be willing to have some things NOT get done in order to have the most essential things get done. If you’re disorganized, chances are you sometimes feel like prioritizing feels irresponsible. It is about choosing which things you will NOT do. It’s somehow satisfying to get to the end of your day and say, “At least I tried to do it all. Nobody could say I didn’t try!” …. But we have no business trying to do it all! Our business is to figure out only a couple things and learn to own the fact that the things which didn’t get done were ignored intentionally because you didn’t make a conscious effort to focus on them.

But don’t stick to ONLY tough stuff!

Here’s a pro tip: let’s not go too black and white on our thinking here. Don’t plan to only focus on the boring, horrible things or you will give up planning as a lifestyle and go back to being a victim of circumstance! This is where self-care comes in. Can we be real about what we can fit into a day? Can we be sure we have at least one item on our calendar (or option list) that brings a lot of personal satisfaction? It might be organizing one corner of your desk, or chatting on the phone with a friend, or maybe turning on some music and dancing like a fool. My sister feels she has received self-care when she’s had time to do her makeup and look her best. What minor upgrade are you craving today? Let it be something that leaves you feeling better than when you started. That way you’ll have MORE juice for giving to those kiddos, not less.

Mom and daughter ice a bundt cake.
Photo by Any Lane on Pexels.com

We can really find freedom from needing to find freedom by doing the work it takes to create the life that we truly want.

Mostafavi, B., (2016). Plugged in parenting: How parental smartphone use may affect kids. University of Michigan. https://www.michiganmedicine.org/health-lab/plugged-parenting-how-parental-smartphone-use-may-affect-kids

Siddique, H. (2020). Self-care is often a very unbeautiful thing. Embolden Psychology. https://embolden.world/self-care-is-often-a-very-unbeautiful-thing/#:~:text=True%20self%2Dcare%20is%20not,the%20eye%20and%20re%2Dstrategizing.

Ever Feel Like a Hypocrite When You Only Post Your “Best”?

Posted on by Janina Glass

Imagine with me: An artist you know and admire has a big gallery showing. After a successful opening evening, she laments privately to you, “People see my art and they think I’m great, but in reality I make a LOT more half-hearted doodles than I make masterpieces. Some of them are so terrible I just throw them away! My studio is a mess, I constantly forget to clean my brushes or prep my canvas… Last week I was totally late on delivering an order; I’m just a terrible artist! I present only my best to everyone, and it looks as if I’m always nailing it -I might even make it look easy- but it’s not the truth. If people knew the real me, with all my do-overs and mistakes, they wouldn’t be impressed at all. I’m really just a fraud.”

Would you empathetically nod your head and agree? Would you feel disillusioned and think she’s a fake after hearing this? No way! Most likely you would be completely shocked and say, “WHAT!??”

The idea of having such a lowly view of ourselves and backward expectations like the example of this artist seems ridiculous, yet are you doing this to yourself?

Do you give yourself a Pinterest-perfect standard where you aren’t allowed to leave cups on the table and crumbs on the floor (or books layered with crayons and banana peels, depending on your stage of life)? Does your internal voice seem to be saying, “Better Homes and Gardens could pop over any moment for a photoshoot, and girl they are judging you!” I would love to encourage you to have a more authentic standard where you allow yourself to be imperfect, but if you’ve ever cleared off just one corner of the table to take a clean photo of the cute cupcake you made, at least don’t feel guilty about THAT! Go ahead and celebrate what you accomplished, because life is hard enough without stressing about the details you cropped out of the picture.

Was Thomas Edison defined by the fact that he had 999 failed inventions? No, he was praised for his persistence and admired for his success! Baseball players strike out more than they hit home runs. A radio announcer doesn’t always talk in his radio announcer voice (I would hope) in social situations; he needs to be able to relax his voice and and focus more on what he’s saying, not only how he’s saying it. A therapist can’t be expected to practice dedicated therapy with everyone she interacts with, every moment of every day, carefully balancing empathy with impartiality; that would be emotionally exhausting! Remember, Olympic runners still walk from one place to the other way more often than they run. You have to do that, too.

Good parents are still not perfect parents every minute of their lives. It would be fabulous if we could always be an amazing beacon of patience and wisdom and creative memory-making!! The reality is, sometimes you get distracted or irritated and wish you could be doing something else. Children often fall apart after coming home after a long day of barely holding it together, because they are with their family and they feel safe. Sometimes you need to check out and take a break, too, or you’ll burn out and lose your cool. Keep in mind, when you do lose your cool, it doesn’t undo ALL those other moments when you gave it your whole heart. Earlier I used the analogy of a runner; I believe a runner could permanently lose the use of his legs, but he’s still a world record-breaker and Olympic medalist for the rest of his life.

There is hope in being able to create strategies to get to a high performance level more often or more easily, but as humans, we can’t expect to perform all day all the time, then beat ourselves up over an occasional lapse in judgement or performance. Nobody can run at 100% capacity for 100% of the time.

Look at what you’ve created, you should be proud of it! Consider any mediocre efforts as “practice”. We all need practice. Maybe you make doodles and sketches a lot more often than you have masterpiece moments, but that doesn’t mean those moments don’t count.

From bright ideas to dark days, when you have lifted someone else’s burden, or you’ve needed someone else to lift yours, try to accept all those wonderful, complicated parts of yourself. Your impact, like ripples in the water, echoes on and on, first within your circle of influence, then your community, and continues on through time to people unknowable.

Sometimes you may feel like a fraud, the only one hiding your frail humanity, but you’re not alone. You think you’re struggling against the odds to do any good at all, but don’t define yourself by your doodles! Maybe it’s our nature to characterize ourselves by our most undesirable qualities, but if you could take a step back, I wish you could see; You are more than a work in progress, you’re already a masterpiece.