The Dos and Don’ts of Self-Care

The term “self-care” is plastered all over the web and “self-care Sunday” has become a popular term in our day to day world and media, yet research shows that many people misunderstand the term and what it really means to practice self-care effectively. What is self-care? Are we really practicing self-care when we say we are? And do you need a lot of time and money to do it?

All of these questions, and more, answered below.

What is self-care?

At its core, self-care is about relating to yourself in a way that supports your well-being rather than continually abandoning, overriding, exhausting, numbing, or neglecting yourself.

Sometimes self-care feels soothing and comforting. Sometimes it looks like rest, pleasure, support, play, or nourishment. And sometimes it looks less glamorous — setting boundaries, slowing down, grieving honestly, asking for help, or making choices your future self will thank you for.

In other words, self-care isn’t about perfection or performance. It’s about building a more caring and sustainable relationship with yourself over time.

And, sometimes our drive toward self-improvement can become entangled with shame, perfectionism, or the belief that we need to earn worthiness. Self-care invites a different orientation — one rooted in the understanding that we are already deserving of care, support, and compassion even while growing and evolving.

What does it mean to practice self-care effectively?

Because the term “self-care” is thrown around so much and because we may unknowingly misunderstand it, I figured it’d be best to nail down what it really means by running through the correct and not so correct ways to do it.

So here we go: The dos and don’ts of self-care.

DO

Set boundaries.

Sometimes one of the most meaningful forms of self-care is allowing yourself to say “no,” disappoint expectations, step back, or acknowledge your limits honestly. Saying “yes” to everyone and doing everything you think you should do to be a nice and dedicated person sometimes leads you to engage in the opposite of true self-care.

Spend time with people that feel oh so good to be around.

Spend time with people you can exhale around. People who allow you to feel more like yourself rather than less. People who can hold both your joy and your struggles without making you feel like a problem to solve. Spending time with people who misunderstand, judge, or try to change you is often riddled with stress and is the farthest we can get from true self-care.

Be good to yourself.

Take a break, slow down, let yourself rest. Oftentimes, self-care doesn’t need to look a specific way or be fancy at all. It just needs to allow us to do the thing that we aren’t doing but that we need to do most: take a break.

Listen to your intuition.

Listen to the quiet voice inside you. Rather than doing what others do or what you think you should do to practice self-care, ask yourself what you really need to take better care of yourself right now. Listening inward can be incredibly important… though for many of us, reconnecting to our actual needs takes time. Sometimes our protective patterns, fears, conditioning, or overwhelm can make our inner signals harder to interpret clearly. Self-care often includes gently rebuilding trust with ourselves over time.

DONT

Make it take a lot of time.

If you don’t practice enough self-care or if you don’t do it at all, I bet it’s because you’re busy or you’ve got other priorities. The thing about self-care, though… it needn’t take a lot of time. At all. In fact, like every other habit we want to build in life, it’s best done gradually and incrementally. Spending an hour or two of time on self-care once a week is better than not doing it at all. Spending a half hour on self-care a few times a week is better. Spending 5 minutes a day on self-care every day is even better. It allows you to build the skill without doing too much too soon.

Here is a list of 40 self-care activities that needn’t take a lot of time at all and that can each be done for three to five minutes:

• Get some fresh air

• Reflect on your thoughts and feelings

• Close your eyes and lean back in your seat

• Do something you love

• Read a page of a book

• Stretch or do yoga

• Buy yourself flowers

• Go for a walk

• Give yourself a scalp massage

• Listen to your emotions

• Offer yourself something kind or encouraging

• Breathe deeply

• Make a nutritious and delicious snack

• Splash your face with water

• Let yourself cry and feel whatever you’re feeling

• Sit in the grass and watch the sky

• Scratch off an item that’s been lurking on your to-do list for ages

• Give yourself a foot massage

• Read a positive news story

• Ask for help with something you need

• Dance

• Listen to your favorite song

• Notice a few things that brought you comfort, beauty, or gratitude today

• Make yourself a warm drink

• Show yourself kindness when you’re feeling bad

• Drink a tall glass of water

• Meditate

• Send a text to someone you love

• Watch a funny YouTube clip

• Journal

• Light a candle

• Do something you enjoyed as a child

• Wear something that makes you feel great

• Write down your thoughts

• Do a creative activity

• Do a mini declutter

• Talk to a friend on the phone

• Say ‘no’ when you want to

• Put your hand on your heart and saying ‘I love you’

• Move your body

• Take time to play

Spending a chunk of time on self-care once a week is better than not doing it at all. Spending a smaller chunk of time on self-care a few times a week is better. Spending 5 minutes a day on self-care every day is even better.

Neglect your emotional, mental, relational, and inner life.

When considering how to practice self-care, be mindful not to focus just on your physical self (e.g., pampering yourself with a face mask, getting your hair and nails done, exercising) in order to conform to society’s standards of fitness and beauty. Many self-care activities will naturally be mind-body activities (e.g., getting a massage, doing yoga, exercising) but it’s nevertheless important that you encourage yourself to prioritize your emotional, mental, and spiritual self when selecting self-care activities too.

Make your coping mechanisms your only form of self-care.

Our coping and protective strategies are quite sneaky and can disguise themselves as self-care. So, be mindful not to make your coping mechanisms and forms of numbing and escape (e.g., drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, shopping excessively, eating excessively, binge watching TV, endlessly playing games or surfing social media channels on your phone, etc) your only form of self-care. These protective strategies often develop for understandable reasons — they help us avoid overwhelm, pain, loneliness, stress, shame, or emotional discomfort. But because they rarely acknowledge and relieve the stress and negative emotions you’re feeling below the surface, your stress and overwhelm will likely just be piling up in the background, waiting to explode and make itself known at the first opportunity. Not only that, but unlike self-care— which leads you to feel better the next morning— you’ll wake up doubting yourself and how much of that coping behavior you really needed to engage in.

Our coping and protective strategies are quite sneaky and can disguise themselves as self-care.

Consider hygiene and chores to be the ultimate self-care.

Basic care tasks like showering, grocery shopping, cleaning, eating nourishing food, or responding to emails may not always feel luxurious or restorative… but for many people — especially during periods of burnout, depression, overwhelm, illness, or nervous system exhaustion — these acts can absolutely represent meaningful forms of self-care and self-support.

At the same time, many of us also need forms of care that go beyond simply surviving and functioning. We need moments of rest, joy, connection, creativity, emotional tending, play, reflection, and replenishment too.

Now that you’ve heard the dos and don’ts of self-care, have a moment of truth. Do you really not have time for self-care or can you adjust something in your life to create time and space for it? Are you really practicing self-care when you say you are or are you succumbing to the same old numbing or perfectionistic habits you’re used to? And if you notice yourself struggling with self-care, it’s okay to approach that with kindness and understanding too. Many of us learned to prioritize productivity, caretaking, achievement, numbing, or survival long before we learned how to truly care for ourselves consistently and compassionately.

Note: This article has been lightly updated over time to reflect the evolution of my work and perspective.