Self-Care That’s Not Just Self-Indulgence

Self-care is often seen as an excuse for self-indulgence. Worse, it’s often used as an excuse for self-indulgence—in ways that can end up making us feel worse.

It’s a bit like dietary “cheat days”. If your diet needs cheat days, your diet probably isn’t right for you!

How to recognize the difference between self-care and self-indulgence?

Statistically, the majority of our subscribers are parents (whose children are now mostly grown up, but still, the point is that parenting experience has been gleaned), and/or are or have been caregivers of some form or other.

When a small child is ill, we (hopefully!) look after them carefully:

• We don’t expect too much of them, but…
• …we do expect them to adhere to things consistent with their recovery.

Critically: an important part of self-care is that it actually should be care.

Let’s spell something out: neglect is not care!

How this works for physical and mental health

If you overdo it in physical exercise, it’s right and correct to take a break to recover, and during that time, do things that will hasten one’s recovery. For example:

Overdone It? How To Speed Up Recovery After Exercise

But it’s well-known that if you just do nothing, your condition will likely deteriorate. Also, “a break to recover” is going to be as short as is necessary to recover. Then you’ll ease back into exercise, but you will get back to it.

For mental health it’s just the same. If we for whatever reason need to take a step back, it’s right and correct to do take a break to recover, and during that time, do things that will hasten one’s recovery.

Sometimes, if for example it’s just a case of burnout, rest is the best medicine, and even rest can be an active process. See for example:

How To Rest More Efficiently (Yes, Really)

So the question to ask, when it comes to self-care vs self-indulgence, is:

“Is this activity helping me to get better?”

Some examples:

Probably not great self-care activities:

• Oversleeping (unless you were sleep-deprived, in which case, it’s better to get an earlier night than a later morning, if possible)
• Overeating (comfort-eating is a thing, but your actual problems will still be there)
• Mindless activities (mindless scrolling, TV-watching, game-playing, etc)

Probably better self-care activities:

• Enjoyable physical activity (whatever that may be for you)
• Preparing your favorite food, and then enjoying it mindfully
• Engaging in a personal project that might not be that important, but it’s fulfilling to you (hobbies etc can fall into this category)
• Scheduling some time, and committing some resources, to tackling whatever problem(s) you are facing that’s prompting you to need this self-care.
• Doing the tasks you want to hide away from, but making them fun.

What’s your go-to self-care? We love to hear from you, so feel free to hit “reply” to this email, or use the handy feedback form at the bottom!

Practise Self-Compassion In Your Relationship (But Watch Out!)

Let’s make clear up-front: this is not about “…but not too much”.

With that in mind…

Now let’s set the scene: you, a happily-partnered person, have inadvertently erred and upset your partner. They may or may not have already forgiven you, but you are still angry at yourself.

Likely next steps include all or any of:

• continuing to apologise and try to explain
• self-deprecatory diatribes
• self-flagellation, probably not literally but in the sense of “I don’t deserve…” and acting on that feeling
• self-removal, because you don’t want to further inflict your bad self on your partner

As you might guess, these are quite varied in their degree of healthiness:

• apologising is good, as even is explaining, but once it’s done, it’s done; let it go
• self-deprecation is pretty much never useful, let alone healthy
• self-flagellation likewise; it is not only inherently self-destructive, but will likely create an additional problem for your partner too
• self-removal can be good or bad depending on the manner of that removal: there’s a difference between just going cold and distant on your partner, and saying “I’m sorry; this is my fault not yours, I don’t want to take it out on you, so please give me half an hour by myself to regain my composure, and I will come back with love then if that’s ok with you”

About that last: mentioning the specific timeframe e.g. “half an hour” is critical, by the way—don’t leave your partner hanging! And then do also follow through on that; come back with love after the half-hour elapses. We suggest mindfulness meditation in the interim (here’s our guide to how), if you’re not sure what to do to get you there.

To Err Is Human; To Forgive, Healthy (Here’s How To Do It) ← this goes for when the forgiveness in question is for yourself, too—and we do write about that there (and how)!

This is important, by the way; not forgiving yourself can cause more serious issues down the line:

Self-blame-selective hyper-connectivity between anterior temporal and subgenual cortices predicts prognosis in major depressive disorder

If, by the way, you’re hand-wringing over “but was my apology good enough really, or should I…” then here is how to do it. Basically, do this, and then draw a line under it and consider it done:

The Apology Checklist ← you’ll want to keep a copy of this, perhaps in the notes app on your phone, or a screenshot if you prefer

(the checklist is at the bottom of that page)

The catch

It’s you, you’re the catch 👈👈😎

Ok, that being said, there is actually a catch in the less cheery sense of the word, and it is:

“It is important to be compassionate about one’s occasional failings in a relationship” does not mean “It is healthy to be neglectful of one’s partner’s emotional needs; that’s self-care, looking after #1; let them take care of themself too”

…because that’s simply not being a couple at all.

Think about it this way: the famous airline advice,

“Put on your own oxygen mask before helping others with theirs”

…does not mean “Put on your own oxygen mask and then watch those kids suffocate; it’s everyone for themself”

So, the same goes in relationships too. And, as ever, we have science for this. There was a recent (2024) study, involving hundreds of heterosexual couples aged 18–73, which looked at two things, each measured with a scaled questionnaire:

• Subjective levels of self-compassion
• Subjective levels of relationship satisfaction

For example, questions included asking participants to rate, from 1–5 depending on how much they felt the statements described them, e.g:

In my relationship with my partner, I:

• treat myself kindly when I experience sorrow and suffering.
• accept my faults and weaknesses.
• try to see my mistakes as part of human nature.
• see difficulties as part of every relationship that everyone goes through once.
• try to get a balanced view of the situation when something unpleasant happens.
• try to keep my feelings in balance when something upsets me.

Note: that’s not multiple choice! It’s asking participants to rate each response as applicable or not to them, on a scale of 1–5.

And…

❝Women’s self-compassion was also positively linked with men’s total relationship satisfaction. Thus, men seem to experience overall satisfaction with the relationship when their female partner is self-kind and self-caring in difficult situations.

Unexpectedly, however, we found that men’s relationship-specific self-compassion was negatively associated with women’s fulfillment.

Baker and McNulty (2011) reported that, only for men, a Self-Compassion x Conscientiousness interaction explained whether the positive effects of self-compassion on the relationship emerged, but such an interaction was not found for women.

Highly self-compassionate men who were low in conscientiousness were less motivated than others to remedy interpersonal mistakes in their romantic relationships, and this tendency was in turn related to lower relationship satisfaction❞

~ Dr. Astrid Schütz et al. (2024)

Read in full: Is caring for oneself relevant to happy relationship functioning? Exploring associations between self-compassion and romantic relationship satisfaction in actors and partners

And if you’d like to read the cited older paper from 2011, here it is:

Read in full: Self-compassion and relationship maintenance: the moderating roles of conscientiousness and gender

The take-away here is not: “men should not practice self-compassion”

(rather, they absolutely should)

The take-away is: we must each take responsibility for managing our own mood as best we are able; practice self-forgiveness where applicable and forgive our partner where applicable (and communicate that!)…. And then go consciously back to the mutual care on which the relationship is hopefully founded.

Which doesn’t just mean love-bombing, by the way, it also means listening:

The Problem With Active Listening (And How To Do Better)

To close… We say this often, but we mean it every time: take care!