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Feeling selfish for self-care

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tin-man

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Just wondering how many people here feel selfish for taking care of themselves. I often feel like I'm letting people down when I put my needs before theirs. Even when I'm on the brink of complete mental shutdown, I feel selfish for putting myself first.

And I'm not even talking about big things, like when someone is in serious need of help. But just declining to go out when I'm in a barely functional state. Or not joining everyone else for lunch because the canteen is a sensory minefield.

I came across the below on tumblr. And I'm trying to embrace that idea, but still have a lot of trouble getting there. Anyone else feel the same?

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I cannot like your post enough ;)

My T puts a huge emphasis on self-care. I guess it was a GIGANTIC red flag when I rocked up for “pain management skills” after 3 accidents in 10 months - resulting in whiplash, torn and frozen shoulder and 10 stitches in my hand - that I took no time off work.

At the moment I’m trying to acknowledge how far I’ve come. The first time I had a dissociative flashback in session I ignored my T’s advice and took my dogs training. Luckily I didn’t have a car accident. I stopped at a cafe for an hour, drove an hour to the grounds, slept for another hour and then pulled myself together. Took me a week to feel grounded. Not pretty.

Last week my new psydoc suggested I take it easy after my initial 1.5 hour session (emotional, triggered dissociation). I spent the entire day in bed, pushed myself to work the next day because I had to but immediately went to bed when I arrived home and slept all the next day as well.

I also cancelled a dog competition next month as no-one else stepped up to help me in my voluntary capacity.

I’m also standing up for myself at work a bit more.

I may not have taken a holiday in 3 years but hey! Baby steps and no one dies is a good result ;)
 
@MyWillow

Ouch. I hope you've healed after all that. At least you now have a cool scar on your hand :p

I get it though. Some days I come into work in such pain and exhaustion, it's all I can do not to pass out. Really not healthy. And then the rare day when I really, really cannot make it in, I feel like a piece of turd. That I'm failing my teammates who are at work.

I suppose that's part of it. Being proud of how much you've done, the steps taken. Rather than just getting caught up in the progress you're not making. Otherwise, you get stuck in a cycle of guilt, where you end up feeling angry with yourself no matter what you do.

Yeah, even if you're moving forward by baby steps. You're still moving forward :)
 
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Yep, I'm with you @tin-man and @MyWillow .

I'm in a constant struggle with myself regarding my guilt that I haven't been able to do any study for my masters these past 6 weeks because it's currently taking all my energy just to make it through each day. Or that I haven't been able to be as emotionally available for others as I have been in the past.

It's so hard to feel ok with myself for the self-care I've taken over those past weeks, but yet I'm sitting here reading both your posts and thinking to myself how proud I am of you both for having taken those steps:happy::hug:.
Subsequently I have no words of wisdom on how to reach that position in regards to yourself, more just the acknowledgement of how tricky our brains can be when it comes to this stuff :)
 
I don’t know how to distinguish between anxiety hiding and self care. Husband wants to go down town for fireworks, I feel like I can’t do crowds, last time we attempted something that involved crowds and trains I was miserable to be around and spent much of the time trying to ground myself.
 
I was struggling with feeling selfish, and even being afraid that I will be abandoned if I take some time for myself. I never realized how irrational that was.

After some time, I stopped feeling selfish, because realistically, I am not. And to ease the feeling, being "selfish" sometimes is okay and even healthy. I'm struggling so much, and I stopped talking to people who can interfere with my recovery, and people who made me feel bad. I have no obligations to like them, to talk to them, or to have them in my life.

Recovery is some serious business, and I took myself and my whole situation very seriously. And usually, when you decide to take some things seriously, you just have to abandon some things, people, thoughts that bring you less good than bad, and to avoid involving any emotions when you think of what should you abandon. So, I'm doing a mental detox in a way, because I'm getting rid of things that won't help me. No matter how much it hurts, or how hard it might be to abandon them, I must do it. And that's what I did. And, let me tell you, be it selfish or not, it made me feel better, relieved and less overwhelmed.

All human beings are just trying to survive, and healthy people are doing what is good for their survival. So, taking care of yourself is a completely normal thing. It will make you feel free and independent.

Give yourself time to adapt to those facts, and don't give up on self-care, no matter what your mind tells you. We were all living in distorted reality for a long time, so everything that's not a part of that reality will feel strange, unpleasant, wrong.

Keep it up.
 
I still have trouble with this one.. I have a person in my life, that we are on the fast track to not being friends anymore. So every time she texts for lunch, I pass. Or texts to say she has this or that fresh veggies... and I pass. As much as I want and need the fresh veggies, it's not worth the stress of being around her... it's taken me a long time to get here. The good news is... I'm not feeling guilty.
 
This.

But I figure if I am at the bad ends, I cannot throw others rope.
If I try to help and I’m off, the advice will be off, the attempt will not go where and as needed, and all around ineffective, worse than not trying.

And: The people I really care for in my life, know. They would know if I did skip a million meals with them, if I ghosted off to another continent without a word for a few years, if I told them I hate them because I failed them so many times and just cannot do it right, never was there in person, always caught up only in weird patches of our lives... and still would read it as *something* being there. That relation is not just about all the skipped things and declined invites and silence I am able to see.
 
After being raised and heavily programmed to ALWAYS put others before myself, self-care has been one of the hardest things to wrap my head and heart around. I was convinced the time I spent on myself was much better used doing for others, so I often put myself on a shelf to stay busy doing for everyone else. It's taken many serious personal issues that took me completely out of commission and eventually became emergency medical incidents for me to finally put myself first.

Convincing myself and continuing to believe that I'm worth the time and effort after feeling worthless for at least 4 decades of my life has been quite tricky and just flat out damn difficult, but more than worth the struggle. Trying to avoid/hide/suppress/postpone/etc my feelings/nurturing necessities is what greatly contributed to the physical breakdowns requiring emergent attention, so it's all definitely connected within our biological make-up in a major way.

Becoming more aware of the previously unexplainable and supposedly untreatable symptoms (after years of being a medication guinea pig and such) that arose from each attempt to actively avoid my own needs so I could just carry on for others has literally been a life saver in my world. Looking for the answers outside of my cell-ph for so long definitely held up my particular progress potential, it seems. Best wishes in finding the paths that feel genuine and nurturing to you in your pursuits of wellness.
 
A recent session with my T made me realize just how much people pleasing I do. I always knew it, but it didn't really sink in until she pointed out all the ways I warp myself just to make others feel comfortable. It's become second nature to me. Almost every action I take comes with thoughts of how this affects others. Just driving a bit slower, or taking a few seconds longer to park make me worry about the inconvenience to others. It's incredibly messed up behavior.

So I'm trying to become a bit more mindful or this. Be more aware of my distorted thoughts, without judging myself harshly. It's tough, because this has been hammered into me all my life. Literally, by my father, and figuratively by my mother, and by people in general. But it's worth the effort. People are never going to be happy with the way I act, and spending so much time and energy dedicated to pleasing them is a pointless. So all I can do is act in a way that makes me happy. And to heck with the rest of them.
 
I don’t tend to feel selfish about self-care...I sometimes do if I think my partner is missing out on something because of me not feeling up to it...but that doesn’t happen very often.

Usually, it’s not a feeling of selfishness I experience. Usually, I just feel bad about myself...that I’m pathetic and/or lazy for not feeling up to going into somewhere really crowded or for wanting to come home from something early or for spending a day doing nothing because I feel overwhelmed/anxious/numb etc etc.

So, that’s not really the same as what you’re talking about...but it’s a different sort of struggle with self-care that’s probably tied up with other distorted thoughts/unhelpful beliefs about self.

ETA as I’ve just read your people pleasing post above: my partner is quite a people pleaser and it always looks very stressful and exhausting to me!
She bends over backwards to help people, show them kindness, make things easier for them (usually inconveniencing herself in the process). And she temporarily feels good about herself because she feels that she has been a good person and been kind. And often people (work colleagues, for instance) will tell her how brilliant she is and how kind and how helpful, which also makes her feel good to have that acknowledgment.

The downsides I see with this behaviour though - aside from the obvious impact of always putting others before yourself and therefore maybe not looking after yourself too well - is the difficulty of defining your own self worth when you are constantly looking for others to validate it as opposed to being able to look inside yourself for that reference point. And also how resentful she sometimes gets herself...that, sometimes, she bends over backwards for others, volunteers to do something that inconveniences herself in order to help them, goes out of her way to do them a favour etc...and they haven’t asked her to and haven’t expected her to or perhaps they don’t even notice that she has...and instead of getting praise and acknowledgment and getting a boost from people saying thanks and telling her how great she is, she ends up feeling very bitter and resentful and upset when there is no acknowledgement and no thanks. Because without that external validation, she feels bad. So, for her, people pleasing is more about how she feels/wants to feel about herself than about helping others...others get helped along the way by her people pleasing tendencies but, as she has said herself about it, it’s not an altruistic behaviour. Ultimately, she wants the boost of receiving other people’s praise, respect and thanks.

This may not be your experience of people pleasing so I’m not trying to put this same thing on you at all. But I do think people pleasing is pretty universally exhausting! And it doesn’t always feel good to the people pleaser even though they are often trying to do good. So, it’s great that you are able to recognise this more tangibly in yourself and that you are trying to be mindful about it showing up.

Good luck!
 
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