Self-Care or Selfishness?

what is up you guys I am Tyler you're wandering therapist here with another a couple of tips for you to think about today on our wandering therapist podcast I I just spent the weekend in Los Angeles at the LA rugby sevens event and the weather was about 40 degrees warmer there than it is here and it was an absolute beautiful time some really interestingly dressed people there a lot of good culture and had a really good time in LA and then coming back to the cold weather here it's kind of a shock to the system but it is actually warmer than it's been in our last few episodes it's a beautiful day out here we're out here in Vaughan bear Park in Providence Utah you can kind of maybe hear the creeks going by it's really pretty bit Matt it's pretty serene right now and pretty beautiful so today's topic is on the topic of self-care and we're going to be talking a little bit about what self-care is but also how to draw the line between self-care and selfishness it's frequently it comes up in my practice when I start teaching the concepts of self-care people push back on it and say for a number of reasons they don't want to do it but the biggest reason that comes up is is that I feel selfish if I follow through on doing my self-care so we're gonna talk a little bit about why and how self-care would become selfish and why it's not selfish and it's actually really helpful in the context of relationships if it's done properly so first let's talk about self-care when I'm teaching people about self-care in my practice we talked a little bit about the need to make sure that we're doing something every day to try and feel our tank to try to build ourselves emotionally so that we have emotional energy to burn in the context of the way that we live our lives in other places and other other facets of our lives and so when I start introducing the topic of self-care allows people when's the last time you did anything for yourself like take a hot bath or go for a walk or even just do your personal hygiene just because it's good to take care of yourself when's the last time you went and did some type of hobby or interests that you have and I'm stunned by how often people say Oh don't do that or I don't have any hobbies I used to have hobbies but now I don't and I go what do you do with your lives and I go to work and then I come home and River just patted our podcast or our tripod so thanks river she's back in the picture now she's trying to try to make a name for herself so but but but I but they say yeah I wake up in the morning I go to work I come home I do whatever I need to do to take care of the kids if I have kids or my other responsibilities I'm gonna do my church duties I do whatever else I do and then I go to bed and I start all over again and and a lot of people are kind of in this rhythm in this motion where they get up and they kind of go through the motions but they feel Hollow they feel empty they feel shallow they feel burned out they feel like ever I call it greyscale everybody feels like life is in greyscale there's no vibrance and color and and one of the reasons for that is is because we've gotten so mundane in the way that we're living our lives we've kind of cubic alized our lives and we're not doing anything to actually enhance the quality of it by taking care of ourselves so one of the first challenges I get most of my clients is I want you to do three to five things every day simply just to take care of yourself simply just to fill your tank emotionally I want you to do whatever those things are take a hot bath read a good book go on a walk spend some time with your kid or your dog do some of your hobbies go fly-fishing go for a hike do some painting listen to music there's a whole plethora of things that can be done but it has to be done intentionally or else it won't happen in our day to day lives and so I introduced this concept or asked people to do it and usually within a week's time when they come back into my office and I follow up and I say hey how'd you do on your self-care they go I did good for like a day but then I stopped I felt selfish I felt like I was taking too much time away from all these other things that are too important and I'm I need to give my time to my kids I need to give my time to my spouse and you give my time to my boss so I didn't really want to take that time for myself I actually felt kind of bad about myself while I was doing it so if you feel that way that's a really normal thing that's a common thing that most people feel I want to I want to make an argument that we need to shift the way that we look at it and so if you feel selfish when you do your items of self care think of it in a broader lens in a bigger context and if I'm needing to be good for all those other people in my life if I need to be have the energy that I need to be a good dad or a good husband or a good therapist I owe it to the people in my life to take care of myself in a way that I have something to give when you've got nothing to give there's nothing to give so you can't really give of yourself and that's where we get burned out that's where we end up being resentful that's where we feel like people are using us and we would do ourselves and everybody else in our lives a favor if we put first things first and we made sure that we were putting something into the tank so that we have something to give during the course of the rest of our day so personally for myself I typically try to save about two hours in the mornings and that sounds like a lot to a lot of people before I go into my appointments and I do what I call my day leaves are my self-care which usually consists of something spiritual some type of physical exercise usually some time spent with my dog training her and I'm often in the mountains hiking or going for a walk or enjoying nature for the purpose of charging my heart up and getting ready to go in and give myself to my clients all day and it works and I noticed that for myself that if I miss a few of those days then when I go into my office I have less energy I have less clarity I don't think quite as straight I have less motivation to be helpful to my clients and so it becomes really important for me to be a good therapist to make sure that I'm putting those things in place first in order to give it now there's the possibility of going too far with it and I'll explain where it goes a little bit too far often times and this gets me in trouble with people as I'll be talking to a couple or I'll have a like say a man come into my office who's just starting the recovery and I'll introduce self-care to him and he'll go home to his wife and he'll say yeah my therapist said I need to go fishing all day or I need to go play basketball with the boys every night and of course a wife who hears that especially if there's been betrayal involved and she's gonna be like no like that's the last thing you need to do is go spend more time on yourself if there's an addiction involved it's even worse because addiction by nature is so selfish that when they're told to do self-care then they want to go overboard and it becomes all about self-care to the point of spending extra money that they don't have to spend or spending extra time that they should be spending in other areas of their life that will also produce results for them and so it becomes selfish when you take it overboard and what I mean by overboard is that if I'm gonna do self-care and say my hobby is fly-fishing if I'm going fly-fishing every night when I get off work until dark and I have a wife and kids at home at the end of the day I'm gonna have a really good time every day going fly-fishing but it won't feed my soul it's not gonna feed my spirit to know that I'm neglecting my wife and kids at home every single day so I probably need to taper that one back and go on an occasional weekend or for an hour - per week instead of every single night so that I can also still fulfill my responsibilities and enjoy my life in the context of those other relationships if I am under the context of self-care now going shopping every single week which is a form of self-care but you want to be careful with it because it fuels some of those same sort of like brain mechanisms that go along with the pleasure centers of addiction if I'm going shopping every single weekend and I'm spending money that I don't have in my budget I'm gonna feel really good while I go shopping but in the aftermath when I get home and see everything that I bought and think I should return all that stuff which happens frequently then that's probably gone a little bit overboard and so of course we want to keep our responsibilities in line but we also need to make sure that we're taking time to do some of that so in the case of the shopping maybe I'm gonna be doing some window shopping without taking my credit card with me if I if I'm needing to stay on a budget but I'm still gonna go out and enjoy that and remember that this is for the other people that are in my life so that I have something to give so that we can be alive all of us want to feel alive and if we don't do something on purpose to feel alive we end up doing habits that give us that little shot and that's where you're you're drinking comes in that's where drugs that's a pornography that's where you know addictive shopping that's where even Netflix comes in two two extreme is is that we're looking for a way to feel something but we end up in a pattern of an addictive behavior or a compulsive behavior that doesn't actually really produce the color and vibrance that comes from living a wholehearted life that's connected and so one of the ways that we do that is we take the time on purpose to set up the habit of intentionally going after and cultivating our hearts in some way every single day and that sometimes comes in the form of self-care through all those things we mentioned self-care could also include an act of service or a thank-you note to somebody else because at the end of the day we end up helping ourselves when we spend time in service of other people but we have to do it because we're willing to give instead of doing it because it's based off of guilt and shame so hopefully that's a helpful tip today three to five things every single day they can be different things each day thanks river they can be different things each day as long as we're on purpose doing something to fuel our tank hopefully that's helpful to you guys wish you the best Thanks [Music]