Roadblocks to Self-care

Caring for yourself can be tough. Making time and space to care for yourself can feel impossible and even silly. It can feel so much easier and more important to tend to work, to-do lists, and the needs of others. After spending the majority of my life prioritizing work and doing over everything else, I know firsthand how hard it can be to even just listen to what our needs are inside. It’s been a gradual transition for me in the last two years to shift away from that to develop a self-care practice and pay attention to my emotional needs, and it’s something I work on every day.

Our society loves the tangible and external, probably because it feels safer, less vulnerable, and more comfortable. For many of us, it can feel “easier” to make sure we have food, water, clothes, housing, transportation, and a job, than to consider if we’re connected, fulfilled, and living a meaningful life. Listening and responding to our emotional needs, however, helps us to connect more deeply with ourselves and others, and allows us to lead rich lives full of presence and meaning.

We can get stuck in a pattern of prioritizing our work or being busy or caring for others above all else, especially at the expense of our own health, rest, and care. It can feel like no amount of yoga classes we sign up for, healthy foods we stock our fridge with, or intentions to go for a walk instead of spending the evening on the couch watching Netflix can shift us out of it if we’re truly stuck.

How to know if you’re stuck

This is certainly not a comprehensive list and not all of these will apply, but here are some behaviors I’ve experienced and observed to help you start paying attention to the patterns in your life:

It’s tough to take time off work to recover when you’re sick
You feel like you don’t have time to eat lunch during your work day
You don’t have time to exercise or prepare healthy meals
Your idea of rest is watching TV until way past your bedtime
You are well-known for being available to work outside of your job’s working hours
Sometimes, the little things can feel so overwhelming and cause you to “overreact”
It’s hard to follow through on the promises you make to yourself and those most important to you
You just don’t have the energy to do the things you really want to do

All of these behaviors are okay, and in fact, they actually serve a purpose: to protect you! Your brain is working hard to protect you from uncertainty, change, and depending on your attachment history, your emotions. What we avoid and how we go about avoiding it always serves a purpose. I invite you to thoughtfully consider what patterns you notice around your current capacity for self-care. Notice how you make time and space to tune into you needs and care for yourself.

After you’ve had the chance to reflect on where you are now with self-care, let’s go deeper and look at some potential roadblocks to self-care that might be stopping you from responding to your own needs.

Model of self-care from your childhood

As young children, our primary caregivers have an enormous impact on us. The model of care we experience from our caretakers is what we internalize and often replicate when we care for others, including ourselves. If you had parents/caretakers who never made time for rest, then it will probably be hard for you to make time for rest. If your parents always put the needs of others before themselves, you will likely see that pattern in your own life. Pause for a moment and consider what model of self-care you had as a child and how this might impact your ability to show up for self-care in the present.

Not feeling worthy of self-care

It can be nearly impossible to slow down and care for yourself when your value and worth as a human being depends on your success or quantifiable productivity. This can also stem from our childhood experience by how your parents responded to you when you were young. Did it feel like you got the most connection when you accomplished something? Did your parents keep your schedule packed with activities and no downtime? Did your parents have beliefs about people who were “selfish”, “lazy”, or “indulgent”?

If there is a voice inside of you always saying that you’re not enough, then it will be really challenging to slow down and care for yourself. The crazy part is that that voice is needing some love and care, more than anything! Your worthiness is NOT on the table. You do NOT earn worth and value. You are not money; you are not a commodity. You are a living being and your worth is inherent.

Hefty limiting beliefs

Not feeling worthy of care can also be closely connected to some seriously limiting beliefs about yourself and how you should move through the world. If you have some deeply rooted beliefs like these:

Work should be hard and exhausting
I should be busy
I’m lazy if I’m not working
Taking care of myself is selfish

then it will be tough to find time for rest and care. The most helpful way I’ve learned to work with a limiting belief is to first understand where it comes from (where did you learn this?), and then consider how it shows up in your life. The next step is to challenge if the belief is true. Collect all the evidence you can think of that challenges the belief, and then edit it to a more fitting belief you want to welcome into your life.

Here’s an example:

Limiting belief: “I’m lazy if I’m not working”
Origin: My dad worked a ridiculous schedule, switching back and forth from nights to days every month, working 12 hour shifts with a 2 hour commute on either end of the shift. Days off were for work around the house. There was no time for rest or fun, and he often started arguments with my mother about being lazy because she didn’t work nearly as hard as he did.
How does this show up in my life? I was a workaholic up until just a year ago, if I’m honest. Work was the most important thing in my life, not fun, not joy, not balance, not play, and I paid for it. I felt lonely, unfulfilled, stressed, overwhelmed, and heartbroken about the time and connections I was missing.
Is it true that ‘I’m lazy if I’m not working”? No, because life is not black and white. It’s not just workaholic or lazy. There are so many levels of gray in there between work and laziness. And what if we could even replace the word lazy with resting?
Challenging evidence: My dad was never lazy, but he also didn’t have time to enjoy life while he was working. He didn’t spend time with family and friends or travel. He had only a couple of hobbies that he never had much time for. Work kept him busy, but certainly not fulfilled, present, or engaged. Many people are more productive when they rest and care for themselves. Getting burnt out is not a badge of honor.
Edit the belief: “Rest and play are just as important as work in my life”

Cultural norms

Culture can definitely be a roadblock to self-care. If there’s a standard for work, rest, and/or play in your cultural groups and values, that will absolutely impact your ability to engage in self-care. I think of mothers and how the general expectation is for them to be back to work full-time 8 weeks after giving birth. The underlying belief there is that work is prioritized over connection with a newborn. If society understood the neurobiological impact of the mother (and father) needing to be present for baby’s brain to grow and develop, we wouldn’t be shuffling mothers back to work after 8 weeks. We also would have paid family leave as the standard for all women who give birth in our country. And just to be clear, there is barely any time for self-care for a new mother with an infant who is working full-time. While this example might not fit your life, take a moment to consider how the culture you live in plays a role in your capacity for self-care.

Our dear friend, Fear

Fear is a roadblock I know all too well, and I would guess that you are likely intimately familiar with Fear, too. Fear has beautiful intentions (to keep us safe, of course!) that can be so limiting. Fear can keep us from trying something new because it’s “dangerous” in it’s uncertainty and newness. We can walk away from a conversation with Fear believing that we can’t do something that we know we can deep down (Case-in-point for me, writing this post! I have spent weeks (I know it sounds so ridiculous!) sitting with this post and coming up with every distraction possible to prevent me from writing this because Fear still says I can’t have a blog).

If you’re thinking the Fear might be a roadblock for you, pause a moment to consider why. Is it that you’re afraid there will be too much need there to ever meet? Could it be a fear of the unknown and change? Is it a fear of being different than the people you surround yourself with? I know we’re taught to avoid Fear, but I’m going to challenge you to open the door and let Fear in for a visit. Get to know Fear, validate Fear’s concerns, and offer reassurance, just as you would for a dear friend or family member. Fear isn’t going away and you’re probably not going to make a great team together, but avoiding Fear certainly won’t move you forward.

Feels overwhelming and too new/different

Sometimes we hesitate to make changes when it feels like too much. It would be too different from the life we’ve always lived, and what would that mean about expectations for ourselves for the future? What if we couldn’t keep up? Or maybe even worse, what if we don’t like caring for ourselves because we’re not deserving?

Change can be really hard, and with that, I will leave you with one of my favorite quotes on change:

The risk, of course, is that we can change too much to the point where we don’t recognize ourselves. Finding our way back can be difficult. There’s no compass, no map. We just have to close our eyes, take a step, and hope to God we’ll get there.
Grey’s Anatomy

How to move through roadblocks

No matter what roadblocks you’re encountering, offer yourself compassion and the space to be vulnerable. Make time to reflect and understand what’s going on for you (this is self-care right here! And remember that every moment counts!). Wherever you are is okay, and you don’t have to stay here. You can move through these roadblocks- look at all the things you’ve done in your life that you didn’t think or know you could do. With some time, persistence, and the intention to show up for yourself, you can make changes. You’ve got this.

If you’re eager to start on self-care, take a gander at this post and this post for some ideas to get you started!