Taking Care of Oneself

Selfishness is a real paradox, especially as it applies to therapy. So many people are averse to the idea and the practices of taking care of themselves, because they believe it is selfish. And yet without taking care of yourself you become exhausted, or drained, or burned out, and then there's nothing left with which to give to others anyway, at least not in a healthy way; in a way that does not require becoming a martyr, and literally sacrificing yourself to illness or depression or resentment for example.

This is a very individualistic point of view of course, one which says in effect, be selfish enough to get your own needs met first, so that you will be strong enough and full enough to have surplus left for others. It's like the instructions on airplane flights where we're told to put our own oxygen masks on first in an emergency, and only then help our child or neighbor. At first this might sound selfish. Wouldn't a mother's first reaction be to save her child, for example? Perhaps it would, and the best way for her to realistically be able to do that in an emergency - to sustain that, we might say - would be to make certain that her survival needs are taken care of first. If she dies from lack of oxygen she won't be of any use to her child.

This may sound like an extreme example, and therefore not applicable to so-called everyday life. I would suggest however that it is not. Or, I might say that so-called everyday life often involves more extreme circumstances than we recognize. Most people operate at the extremes ordinarily, without even knowing it. The buzz words for this are things like, either/or; black and white; all or nothing. You can probably recognize some of the ways you do this in your life. It's really quite "normal", although it's not at all healthy.

Taking care of oneself therefore is about moderation rather than extremes; the grey's rather than the blacks and whites; the some for you and some for me rather than the all or nothing; the both/and's rather than the either/or's. True, it's not as dramatic, or possibly not as exciting - at least not at first, but it is a whole lot more sustainable and substantive, and satisfying.