You Should Re-Evaluate Self-Care Often To Ensure It Doesn’t Become An Indulgence Or Excessive 

Self-care is an important part of home healthcare. Pegasus caregivers in Panorama City and elsewhere encourage any activity that improves your well-being. We have observed, however, that sometimes individuals overdo their efforts to their detriment.

Activities that enhance your emotional, mental, and physical health make up your self-care practice. Although it involves placing your needs first, good self-care isn’t selfish. It refreshes you so you can better meet the needs of your loved ones.

Typical suggestions include:

• Eating a healthy diet
• Getting enough sleep
• Exercising regularly
• Meditating
• Relaxing
• Spending time with loved ones
• Laughing

The expert advice is to choose the activities you prefer and schedule a time for them. Say no to activities you dislike. The idea is to make your “me-time” a priority.

Self-Care Helps You Reduce Stress

Self-care is meant to reduce the everyday stress that harms your health. Additional benefits of a calming self-care practice include:

• Increased productivity – you’re spending your time and energy on activities that make you feel stronger rather than those that drain or exhaust you
• Stronger immune system – treating yourself well improves your ability to resist disease
• Increased self-esteem – practicing self-care is a message to your inner being that you are important
• More time – caring for yourself energizes you, and you are more able to give to others

Because you feel better about yourself, you’re less likely to turn to harmful coping mechanisms. 

Self-Care Isn’t Beneficial When It Feels Like An Obligation

In many circumstances, self-care improves how you feel. But it isn’t the solution to every situation. It increases stress if you feel like you have to take time for yourself.

You may start trying to force yourself to stop worrying or feeling anxious. If you don’t keep to your schedule, stress increases. Feelings of guilt and being a failure set in because you aren’t doing what you think you should do.

Self-care is intended to help you feel better. It only does that if you’re doing what you want to do in a way that works for you. Everyone is different, and your self-care doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s.

You may be posting about your self-care efforts on social media. That often includes checking out what others are doing. That’s okay until you start comparing yourself to others.

The pressure increases when you start counting “likes.” Self-care becomes a competition. Then you become more concerned about what others think than you are about what your body is telling you.

Your Self-Care Activities Must Feel Right To You

Other reasons why your self-care activities don’t bring you peace and calm include:

• Following trends on social media – just because something is popular today doesn’t mean it’s appropriate for you. It’s okay to try what seems to work for others. Evaluate whether it genuinely makes you feel better. Stop if you’re only doing it because it’s what “everyone” else is doing.
• Indulgence – yes, self-care means doing what makes you feel better. Sometimes that does include eating a whole box of cookies in one sitting. But on the whole, your choices should be what is best for your overall health. Over-indulging in behavior that’s harmful in the long term isn’t self-care. 
• Impatience – you schedule a selection of self-care practices that you can’t possibly maintain. Then you get down on yourself and give the whole thing up. Start with one activity. If you start feeling better, continue. If it hasn’t helped after a fair trial, discontinue and try something else. Add one new activity at a time. 
• Negative self-talk – if you’re like many individuals, you tell yourself things you would never say to someone else. If you’re doing your best, self-criticism doesn’t have a place in your life. Replacing it with self-compassion might be all the self-care you need.
• Avoidance – you use doing something for yourself as a way of evading your personal responsibilities or obligations to others. It’s easy to cross the line into selfishness. You don’t feel good inside when you carve your “me-time” out of healthy relationships.

Conditions like anxiety and depression sometimes require working with a professional. Self-care can supplement medical care. 

Re-Evaluate Your Self-Care Practices Periodically

Some individuals become so engrossed in doing things for themselves that they shut out everything else. That undermines your well-being as much as ignoring your needs. Good health requires balance and connections with others.

If you’re carrying self-care to excess or indulging yourself in the name of self-care, it’s probably time re-evaluate your practices. Make sure what you’re doing still works for you. 

If you’re a caregiver for a loved one, remember that respite care is part of Pegasus home healthcare services. Respite care in Panorama City and our other locations gives you a break for as long as you need it. 

Pegasus is a licensed Home Care Organization and a Joint Commission Accredited Home Health Care organization. Each individual receives customized care tailored to meet their needs. We encourage the independence that results from good self-care practices.