I have often heard people categorise self-care as selfishness. Some even go as far as tagging it as a new brand of this generation’s constant desire to shed responsibility towards others. Self-care is not repackaged selfishness, it’s not selfishness in any way. Let us take a look at these two examples.
A Case of Selfishness
I heard the story of Faith who constantly calls on her friends to help her when she needs assistance. She has no empathy for their personal needs and gets angry when she doesn’t get what she wants. But whenever her friends are in need, Faith is nowhere to be found. She suddenly disappears and is very busy. This happens every time.
A Case of Self-care
Let’s reimagine Faith as a person who regularly calls her friends for help when she’s in need. She makes sure she isn’t being a bother, thinks about their personal needs and brings it up to them just to be sure she’s not stepping on boundaries, and graciously understands when they are unavailable.
Faith is equally always available to them except for selective occasions where she feels that their needs at that point are conflicting with her own priorities. She would not put her mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing on the line to meet the needs of others and hope they don’t do the same to meet hers.
The difference between self-care and selfishness
Selfcare Benefits Everyone, Selfishness benefits one
Have you heard the saying that ‘you cannot pour from an empty cup’? Self-care is you filling up your cup so that you can be good enough to pour into the cups of others. Doing things to take care of your physical, mental, and emotional health would do the following.
1. Ensure that you do not become too far gone to be of help to yourself or others (physical, mental, or emotional breakdown)
2. Help you to feel at peace with yourself enough to pursue a healthy relationship with the people in your life.
3. Give you the centring to continue to be the best of yourself.
Selfishness on the other hand would alienate others completely. Whilst you are practising self-care so that you can continue to be useful to others, a selfish person only knows the words ‘I, Me, and Myself’.
Self-care is necessary to fulfil your potential and achieve your goals, selfishness deprives you of that
While self-care is a core part of figuring yourself out, understanding yourself, and fulfilling your core needs in achieving your potential as a person, selfishness robs you of having a supportive community that would aid you in fulfilling your potential.
The intention of self-care is to care for yourself, not like selfishness that harms or takes away from others
We all know that selfish acts tend to take away from others or harm others. Self-care does not seek to harm or take away from others. In fact, when you consider the fact that self-care is about filling up your cup so that you can be able to fill up the cups of others, you realise that self-care is equally for the benefit of others.
In conclusion, although you may not consciously be thinking of the benefits to others when you choose to prioritize self-care, practising self-care is in itself something that benefits everyone and therefore, should not be tagged selfish.
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-Ebahi