Fact vs Fiction: Debunking 5 Common Self-Care Misconceptions

 Fact vs Fiction: Debunking 5 Common Self-Care Misconceptions

Hello and welcome to In The Rising Podcast. My name is Bettina and I am your host. This is the show where I talk about living a life that is full of joy and happiness, excitement, adventure, manifesting your true dreams, and walking away from that shame blame game that. Kind of just encircles us more often lately.

Doesn't it seem that way? I always start off by saying I am not a psychologist, psychiatrist, or counselor, but I am a student of life and love to talk about what makes us tick and how can we just live a better life. You know, I started this podcast as I was working with women going through or having gone through breast cancer, and there's just.

You know, when you, when you are really contemplating your immortality, you get to really evaluate what you have done with your mortality. And having those kind of conversations really just opened my own eyes and I still love to have those conversations. So today I'm talking about the five misconceptions in the self-care area.

What are five things that we. Tend to misconstrue or kinda be confused about. And number one is that we are just too busy to slow down. Like doesn't self care usually involve. A massage and putting your feet up doesn't the image of just letting dinner cook in the crock pot and everything is fine and clean, or everything is a mess, and we're not concerned about it, but our feet are up and we're just sitting there with a glass of wine or a glass of hot tea, and we're just being in our zen zone, listening to some enya in the background and not having a care in the world.

And sitting there for hour after hour, well, that is not exactly what self-care is now. I appreciate when it is. I appreciate when I can sit there, but a lot of times it just involves stopping for a few minutes. You know, do you really need to eat dinner? Standing up while you're, you know, unpacking groceries and doing the next task.

Or can you really just sit down for 10 minutes, either by yourself or with a friend or with your family, and be completely present. Doesn't necessarily have to be for 10 hours and have super in-depth conversation, but just stopping. Just stopping for a moment because we have those 10 minutes, we have those five minutes.

It's all about choice, but under no circumstance does self-care involve an entire day. Every time you're taking care of yourself, so we're not really too busy to slow down. Number two is that self-care involves a lot of heavy emotional and thought laden books. Like you just have to sit and read. You have to read Deepak Chopra, and you have to read, uh, Dr.

Joe Dispenza and Dr. Northbrook. You have to read all these heavy books. And understand a man search for meaning and all about Play-Doh and Socrates. You know, you, you don't have to read books like that to just enjoy the present moment. Now are there books that really, in my opinion, cuz I am a nerd and I am a book Worm Tooth of Max, I love books.

Even if I don't buy books, I'll walk around. Barnes and Nobles. I know I'm not the only one that does that, but I love just being surrounded by books. But that doesn't mean you have to read it to involve self-care. You, you intuitively know what you need. You just maybe have to put in a practice so you don't have to sit at the library or Barnes and Nobles for hours and hours and read books that were written by people.

A hundred or a thousand or 2000 years ago to figure out what you need to make yourself feel a little bit relaxed and not in a fight or flight stance. You know, how can you come out of that? So number three misconception is that self care is really only something you do when you've hit middle age. I have not seen a lot of Instagram posts or read a lot of posts when anyone in their early twenties is talking about the importance of self-care.

I still feel, and I might have a bias view, but I still feel that there's this idea that you don't do self-care until you're much older because by then you really need it. By then, you probably needed it a long time ago. And you know what? Really just self care of self-respect and having boundaries in your relationships.

Appreciating yourself, appreciating other people, knowing when to say no. And of course, knowing when to say yes to something. Helping yourself figure out a choice that you are comfortable with in your soul and in your gut. Those are not circumstances that just hit us. When we're in our forties or fifties, heck, we're already making those sort of decisions what we wanna plan with our life when we're in our teenage years, and we don't self care much at that time.

So it doesn't have to be something that waits can be much earlier. Number four is that self-care is something you do when, when times are rough. Really sad, really bad. Those are the times of, you know, super financial issues. Those are the times of having emotional issues. Your relationships are falling apart, whether they're romantic relationships or friendships, family relationships, you know, when you're just on the floor sometimes, literally just on the floor from things happening.

Yes, those are times when we do self-care, but that is not. Really kind of the, the spark sometimes it does take us being all the way down for us to recognize we need to take care of ourselves. But that does not mean that it is, uh, it's not available to us when we are not on the ground. And number five is that self-care is something that's really new age.

Really woo boo. Really fufu. And it's not self-care and rest and massage. It's hard work. It's all about being strong, and it's all about working endless hours. 50, 60, 70, 80, a hundred hours a week. You know, working pre-work, going to work, post-work. Doing what I mentioned earlier, you know, not even sitting down to eat, but still working.

And then when you, when you sit down and, and you finally get yourself ready for bed, you're still thinking about work. And then when you lay down, go to sleep, guess what? You are still thinking about work. And then you dream about work and you wake up again and you work. That is not, that is not first of all gonna get you much anywhere except burnt, burnt out, but you don't have to.

Self-care only at that time having some sort of balance relationship. We hear a lot about work-life balance and I don't really think that balance is. Something we achieve. I think it's more of a verb. Like some days it's, it's balancing more in the home life and some days it's balancing more in the work life.

It's, it's always doing a little bit of a teeter-totter, but that's what self-care is about, is to teeter-totter because there are times when events in your home life are just super, super heavy, super big, and they kind of overshadow your ability to focus at work. And then we have other times when the reverse is in focus.

So New Ages is not what self-care is. Self-care actually, quite frankly, started if you are Christian, it started in the Bible. Day seven, rest, rejuvenate, forget about it. Stop. Stop working. It is part of our essence. It's part of the entire scheme. It's not just go, go, go. And it stop, and it's not even stopped for 10 minutes.

It's stopped for the whole day. You know, we are really designed to be more functional by taking some breaks, and so self-care can of course look as yoga. It can look as exercise, it can be drinking a hot cup of tea, enjoying your friends, watching football with some friends of yours, anything that brings you joy, you know your hobbies, making jewelry, making art.

Watching Netflix, whatever. But it doesn't have to be new age, but it may be something new to you. So today I talk about the five misconceptions in the self-love area. One is being too busy to slow down. Two is that you have to do all this heavy reading, which is not true. Sometimes you can just listen to some of these books on YouTube.

They can give you a five minute synopsis. It's always a good idea. And number three is that it's something you do in your middle age, which is when a lot of us discover it, myself included. But that's really not when it should be. Starting self-care is not something that you only have to focus on when times are bad.

And last of all, self-care is not new age. It should be today age. It's something that as a human being, We may need throughout our life. So I appreciate you guys listening today. I. I'm completely congested. I had some sort of allergic breakout in the office and I know I am sound very congested, so I wanted to keep this one short, but I also did not want to skip out on what I still felt is important.

So either way, thank you for your time because you know what? Our minutes are precious. Thank you for every single one of the ones that you donated to me today. If you like this show, And my other shows. I don't sound good Justin, but absolutely leave a review. I appreciate it. And also subscribe, listen to some other episodes and always, I'm always available for feedback.

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