Self-Care in the 21st Century –
Musings from a Clinical Psychologist

We return now to the idea of self-care in our contemporary lives. Why is self-care such a notoriously elusive concept, and why does it feel so bad when we cannot ‘do’ it as intended. Well, to understand this phenomenon a bit better, and, hopefully in so doing, inject into our plight a dose of much-needed empathy, let me first paint a picture for us to reflect on with the following vignette:

A man (or woman) has a disturbing, inexplicable dream that wakes him at ‘witching hour’. He realizes in this moment that this has been happening quite frequently of late, which is an unsettling realisation. Ruminations proliferate over his overdue tax returns, which keep him awake as he tosses and turns for the next hour and a half trying to get comfortable. Just as he’s about to nod off again, he receives a poke in the face from his beloved little boy who, in the early hours of the morning, comes wandering through to his bed after wetting his own (he has the little one for this week, his ex-wife the coming one, much to his relief). The next morning, after readying his little one and dropping him at pre-school, he notices the petrol light on his dash come on (again!) for the third time this month. Fortunately, however, he recalls with some satisfaction that the fuel price is due to go up by 17c a litre at 23:59 this evening. In his mind’s eye, he mentally plans a trip to a nearby garage after work to capitalize on this timely thought. And to kill time in the traffic, he does some mental arithmetic to calculate the potential savings that he will likely earn by filling up today. ‘It’s not much, but it’s something,’ he concedes. He arrives at work to the familiar feeling of a boss who doesn’t appreciate him, and, what’s more, a colleague who’s clearly ‘better’ than he is at everything. ‘Doug is definitely due to receive the upcoming promotion ahead of me,’ he thinks begrudgingly to himself, ‘even though he’s only been at the company half the time that I have!’ By 16:00, he can’t quite recall if he skipped lunch or not in the business of the day, but his cigarettes are by now really helping with the hunger pangs. After clocking off from work an hour later than usual (trying to leave a good impression on his boss), he nearly rear-ends a car on the drive home because he was preoccupied with lingering anxieties about his tax returns from the night before. He attempts to refocus his attention by listening to his latest podcast recommendation, ironically, on self-care. Unable to focus, he turns it off and thinks to him that he can listen to it again on his drive to work tomorrow, maybe when he is feeling a bit more ‘refreshed.’ Frustrated by his own disinterest, he drives past his favourite watering hole for a pint or two with an old ‘friend,’ whom he has not the energy nor the inclination to reconcile with, before swinging past his parent’s house to collect his son. He is grateful to them for their assistance, but he also feels guilty in relation to his son, and his parents, for his repeated request to watch over his little boy. Now at home after dinner, dishes filling the sink, he bathes his son before they both fall asleep in his bed after story time (he hasn’t had time to wash the sheets yet, of course) only to wake up at 23:55 realizing that he’s fraughted his chance of capitalizing on those fuel savings that he, somewhat ashamedly, so desperately needed.

The above vignette, sadly, represents not an over-exaggeration of contemporary life and is one which I am all too familiar with as a clinical psychologist. I am sure you can glean from this vignette that it is a great challenge – dare we say an even greater one (compared to our ancestors) – to decipher from this 24-hour snapshot of modern life what our survival mandate, today, actually is. There is so much ‘noise’ on the go in this man’s life, so many thoughts, feelings, and everything in-between, that it makes it a much harder task to remain focused and feel like we are getting anything done. This despite that fact that, compared to millennia gone by, today’s survival mandate, at least on paper, has never been ‘easier’ to achieve. It has, relatively speaking, practically been handed to us on a silver platter, yet the disillusionment that seems to accompany our modern lives is palpable, spawning a whole host of epiphenomena that call on us (or on somebody else) for resolution. It is no wonder the concept of ‘self-care’, strained under the weight of these modern times, may have lost its way a little bit, or was caught promising more than it could realistically deliver. This is where self-care, I feel, has been elevated to heights that it should never have found itself, and, in so doing, has had its utility siphoned.

I still whole-heartedly believe in the inherent ‘goodness’ of self-care’s message: namely, take an active interest in, and responsibility for, looking after yourself, but I am most disappointed in its ‘throw-away’ delivery today – check-list style – which I feel has cut away at its potential for learning how to create pockets of sanity we all desperately need (i.e., actions that promote necessary noise reduction). The self-care of today has served to corral our impulsive, tacitly searching selves, frustrated by its diminishing returns. Conceptually, it has become another echo-chamber rather than a repository for those lessons gleaned from the wisdom of the past which should instead serve to remind us of the most salient and important ways in which we survived.

Bryn O’Reilly is a South African-born clinical psychologist living in the Central Algarve, Portugal. It is from there that he runs his private practice, offering both in-person and online services. Should you wish to contact Bryn, please click here