6/1/2023 0 Comments Eye of termius![]() You may be clear that you do not work past 5 p.m., but when your boss asks you to just do one more thing, that changes. But often they are too easily breached - or too rigid, Dr Lakshmin said. Most people know that setting personal boundaries is an important facet of self-care. The goal is to begin to “set up work and family life in a way that allows for you to live by your values.” Inevitably, that will also mean saying no to activities that don’t align with them. ![]() Or perhaps what she really needed to do with those hours was paint or write, because she valued creative pursuits and wasn’t making time for them. ![]() Maybe yoga would have been more fulfilling for this person if she hadn’t entered the class already worrying about her performance and feeling guilty about taking time away from her family. “If you think of self-care as a goal, it becomes another task to check off the list,” Dr Lakshmin (Pic source: Pixabay) She was seeking self-worth without doing the work to figure out what activity would add more meaning to her life, Dr Lakshmin explained. Going to class became just another thing she needed to do and win at she was obsessing over her progress on headstands and posting selfies in workout gear, waiting for likes to roll in. She describes a patient whose ostensible self-care practice was yoga, but practicing it wasn’t making her feel less stressed. It doesn’t really matter what activity you have identified to help you feel better, she said “it’s how you actually do the thing.” IF IT MAKES YOU FEEL GOOD, TAKE THE YOGA CLASS.ĭespite what the subtitle of her book might suggest, Dr Lakshmin is not anti-bubble bath or spa treatment. Here are four of her pieces of advice to get started. Asking for a flexible work arrangement or parental leave could inspire an employer to rethink its policies, for example. And crucially, she adds, as you align your individual choices and actions with your beliefs, you can help improve larger social systems that hold women back. But rethinking how you take care of yourself can slowly transform your quality of life. (She said she hadn’t planned to write a self-help manual, but the book includes questions to ask yourself and exercises to get started.) The alternatives she suggests are tools for “real self-care” - which requires introspection to find the activities that are most fulfilling to you. Commercialized faux self-care products claim to fill in the gaps in access to health care or therapy by convincing consumers “that if you do more of this one particular thing, eventually things will feel better - when in fact, the only purpose of a juice cleanse or a massage is to keep you buying more of the thing.” “We’re living in a society that makes it really difficult for you to prioritize your mental health and your well-being, so we’re constantly fighting upstream,” she said. The multibillion-dollar industry, which sells crystals and massages as balms for burnout and depression, is not unlike her experience of joining a cult, she says - and she calls it all “faux self-care” because it consists of quick fixes that do not improve individual women’s lives nor address larger societal problems that can create stress and anxiety, Dr Lakshmin explains. She has also just published her first book, “Real Self-Care: A Transformative Program for Redefining Wellness (Crystals, Cleanses, and Bubble Baths Not Included),” which draws on case studies from her practice and research to explain why the “self-care” practices offered to women today aren’t working. Now, a decade later, Dr Lakshmin is a clinical psychiatrist in Austin, Texas, who works mainly with women, including mothers an assistant professor of psychiatry, specializing in women’s health, at the George Washington University School of Medicine and an entrepreneur. “I turned 30 in my childhood bedroom,” she said. ![]() She moved back into her parents’ home near Reading, Pa., and started to rebuild her life. But after nearly two years immersed in the group’s spiritual practices, she felt just as disillusioned as before. Lakshmin’s growing interest in women’s health. With its focus on female pleasure, the cult fed Dr. At the time, she said, she felt “powerless.” “I had gone into medicine with this belief that I was going to help people, but instead, I would have a patient who was unhoused, and the only thing that I could offer them was Zoloft.”
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