When Self Care Feels Impossible

I love to work with people who struggle with codependency issues, not only because I relate so much to what they are going through, but also because I think that codependency issues are one of the “negative” parts of people that ironically bring us all together. They are part of what make so many of us simply human.

“Codependency issues” might sound like a bit of a technical term in the sense that some people might look at it and not know exactly what it means. Hell, I don’t even know exactly what it means. When I think of codependency issues, though, I just think “issues with giving too much or taking too much.” Most of the clients I see in therapy are the “giving too much” type. While that may be slightly over-simplified, I think it highlights, at the very least, the starting point of codependency for a lot of people. From there it can easily become a slippery slope of symptoms that accumulate until a person is flat out burned out on life, and that is a situation that I think we can all agree sucks to be in.

I find that a lot of people with the best of intentions seem to get sucked into the cycle of giving and giving until they burn themselves out, and then when they hear “take some time for yourself!” it just becomes another thing to internalize. It’s as though the suggestion is almost insulting, because of course people know they need time for themselves. This is not some kind of great revelation that they just haven’t thought of. If it were possible to take time for themselves, they would have done it by now! And that’s where this notion of “self care” can get sticky for so many.

The other day I was sitting across from a client who was facing this very conundrum. I asked her, “What if you put self-care at the top of your to-do list instead of at the bottom?”

She looked at me, the wheels of her mind obviously spinning, and then she finally said, “I don’t know why, but it feels almost impossible to do that.”

For a lot of people, giving too much stems from a deeper issue of damaged self worth. Somewhere, deep in our subconscious, we think to ourselves, “If I do enough good deeds for other people, it will compensate for all of the areas I’m lacking in and they will have to appreciate me.” To those of you out there who may have this belief about yourself, I ask you to ask yourself, What if you were already worthy of appreciation as soon as you woke up in the morning, before having done anything at all?

Imagine that you have a day that incorporates enough time for you to enjoy a quiet cup of coffee, to read a chapter out of your favorite book, to go for a walk, to reflect on everything you have to be grateful for, or (ha) to reflect on everything you’re not grateful for. Self-care can be as simple as an internal self-affirmation for doing something you’re proud of, or it can be as elaborate as an entire, uninterrupted hour to yourself. One of the sweetest things about self-care is that it doesn’t have to fit in a box. It can be whatever you need it to be, as long as it is serving you (and not all of those other people that you are so good at serving!).

Imagine that, as you’re getting into bed at night, you feel like your needs have been met.

You know what the best thing about self-care is? Everybody wins. When your needs are being met, it has this incredible butterfly effect, and all of your loved ones who you have been working so hard for will benefit from your self-care as well.

It feels good to see someone you love getting what they need, right? Sometimes it can be too easy to forget: to many people out there, you are that someone.