The local school district, which happens to be my employer, posted something about self care on their Facebook page last night.
I’m currently laying in bed, engaging in what I call “Dread Care.” 20% of the school’s teaching staff called in sick today. The principal is out as well. This means that today will be yet another day where I’m pulled in every direction yet the direction of doing my actual job. I’m significantly behind on my actual job. I worked a full 8 hours during Monday’s holiday, plus several more hours over the past weekend. I’m not close to being caught up.
I brought these feelings up to my mentor. She suggested self care.
The problem is that between the shitty Facebook post from my employer and the shitty advice from my mentor, the suggestion of self care makes it sound as if I’m the one that’s failing. The issue is that the K-12 education system has so many systemic challenges that land on the individuals within the system to solve.
But screaming self-care means that we can avoid any potential solutions that require any stakeholders other than those doing the work to make any changes.
Thank you for articulating the way "self care" makes burnout feel like a personal failing.
I had a 10-hour workday yesterday and then my boss talked about a wellness challenge during our mandatory full faculty meeting, which I am required to attend but I'm not paid for because I'm part time? (I know.) A step challenge won't make me "well," but getting paid a living wage for the work I do might, you know? I feel like this is worst in education and other caring professions, too - we're expected to care so much about our students (/patients/clients/etc) that we're willing to work outrageous hours for outrageous pay.
One of the similarities between those professions is that they are often described as a “calling” which, in my view, is a poor excuse for terrible working conditions.
THIS. My university kept pushing "self-care" during the height of the pandemic in a way that really, really felt like victim-blaming. It made me want to scream. No amount of meditation was going to change the fact that I was suddenly trying thrust into teaching online to students across 10 different time zones while also helping my neurodivergent 2nd grader navigate Zoom school and trying to figure out how to safely navigate a pandemic in which my spouse and I are both high risk. And I *am* a mindfulness meditation teacher (I teach a class once or twice per semester in addition to my normal academic classes). I've got nothing against meditation, I think it's great, everyone should try it, but it doesn't suddenly make having 4 full time jobs worth of work to do at the same time less body-and-soul-crushing.
And all I could think of was how from the university's perspective, recommending "self care" to us was them checking off a box. They got to self-congratulate, say, "look how much we're showing we care!" while also putting out policies that were incredibly hostile to faculty. They got to admonish us constantly to do more to accommodate struggling students while pretending that "have you tried self-care?" was a legitimate "accommodation" they were providing for us, when it was really just another thing we had to provide for ourselves. And the overwhelming vibe was "if you're having a hard time right now, that's your own fault and it's your job to fix it...and it's also your job to fix what's hard for your students and for everyone else." I'm still mad about it.
I had the same experience, exactly, at my university. They were very quick to admonish faculty to have grace for our students, but we were always the ones giving it, never the ones getting it.
My College was exactly the same. I'm a union rep for our faculty and I kept commenting to the administration in our meetings that "Management is expecting faculty to be incredibly flexible and accomodating to students and in turn, is not giving faculty even a smidge of flexibility and accomodation towards us and our jobs. We're expected to bend over backwards in unending ways with our students, and management is becoming even more rigid towards us and our work." I'm with you - I'm still mad about it.
I work for a public library, and we constantly are sent emails about "self-care", and "self-care sessions". The sessions cannot be attended on work time, are not in any of our locations, and are always scheduled midday on a week day. When I have attended an online presentation from my employer on "self-care", it's been insulting. Drink water! Get some sleep! Spend time with loved ones! None of these address the real problems causing staff harm in the branches, and administration refuses to discuss them. We have branches where staff are on high alert all day long, who are exposed to fentanyl or meth fumes, who are dealing with folks who are falling through society's cracks, and I'm sorry, but "take time to meditate" doesn't make up for "had to call 911 due to an overdose and then close the public restroom due to fumes".
I feel this. My last workplace alternated between self-care and resilience workshops while our executive wished out loud for improved technologies (.... which would have allowed her to drive the workload from maniacal to full-on death throttle).
Exactly. Our “self care” is supposed to be the individual solution of a systemic problem. And if we are burned out it’s our own fault. (I’m healthcare not education but my employer shares similar messages about self care)
I hear you and appreciate your understanding. One of my closest friends is a nurse. We often commiserate about the similar crisis states of our respective fields. We also share the same frustration that we aren’t seeing any of the pandemic-inspired work-life shifts coming to our career fields.
I work hybrid-remote and see the burden of people who do fully in-person work. Today, my kids' have a snow day, but I'm not scheduled. So I don't have to figure out the complicated logistics. But the full-time staff have to deal with the getting there part (which honestly, always seems the hardest) five days a week. That's a lot of stress and I think it's leading to a growing divide between people who can WFH and those who can't. WFH is great for people who have the option. It can save a lot of money and time. It seems at the very least the growing cost of community, including time, should be factored into compensation, especially for lower-wage earners. And especially as more people WFH. But I know, money alone is not the solution.
One thing I’ve noticed is that among many white collar workers, WFH or some sort of hybrid arrangement seems to be the default in their mind.
Once, I was lamenting about how incredibly behind I felt at work to my software engineer ex-BF. I felt that I was really busy at work, but not accomplishing anything. He was like, “Why don’t you block your calendar out and say you have meetings?” My response was, “Because they will walk down the hallway to my office, see that I’m alone, and just assume I’m not busy.”
Also, I think the concept of summer vacation stops many proper conversations about balance, self-care, workload, and the like when it comes to education. Summer vacation isn’t permission to abuse employees and it isn’t a solution in February when employees are near the breaking point.
I think one reason why teachers are taken for granted, and told not to complain — besides having summers off — is that most adults think they have easy jobs. How hard could it be to spend a whole day with these adorable faces? Sharing books and ideas with them. But I've spent time in my kids' classrooms. Teaching kids is REALLY hard, requires a full spectrum of complex skills, and physical stamina too. I can only imagine what it'd be like in the majority of schools that are underfunded and have high poverty rates on top of an already difficult job.
I agree with you on the growing divide. my workplace has two sections, customer support and shipping our products. obviously shipping has to be in person, but over the pandemic they switched the customer support team to WFH. I realized the tension inherent there when the managers scheduled a holiday party on a Thursday and my coworkers in shipping were bitterly joking about how the managers would probably take a WFH day tomorrow but they couldn't. they weren't directly talking about me that day but I'm sure they feel resentment hopping on the metro to commute knowing I'm still asleep, and I can't blame them. it's sad that this change has given a lot of people more freedom but has also driven a wedge between two groups of workers.
I think we have to rethink what defines full time work and perhaps think creatively about how new structures can come about to make the world of work better for all.
I think shorter work days for the same pay for in-person workers might be a good start.
Last year I watched a recorded interview with a candidate for principal of my kid's school, and when she was asked about teacher burnout she said something about her role as principal would be to encourage self-care, and I thought "ugh, next," but that was it, they only offered us the recorded interview with one candidate, there were no other candidates. And I'm never not going to be suspicious of this person following that.
As the assistant principal of an elementary school, the question of teacher burnout weighs heavily on me. One of the things I do to protect teachers is trying to take the extraneous work away and also allow some flexibility. This worked well when my district gave school leaders greater latitude in how they run their buildings. Unfortunately, much of that freedom is now gone and it’s becoming harder to protect the teachers from the bullshit. In turn, I find some that I lead blaming me for the changes.
It is a terrible situation for those who actually interact with students, who are too tired/dispirited/unsupported to do the quality of work that they know could be possible, and who know in their bones that systemic change in their district and state is essentially impossible. There is no easy exit if your family is tied down, many educators have done “school” their whole lives and it is hard to envision a new life, plus there’s the societal pressure for martyr status. “The kids need you. You’re making such a difference!” But, from experience, looking back, staying for the kids just made the system as it was stronger and I became far too cynical and lost my zest for many things. Don’t wait too long if the system is taking yours.
What I would have given for an admin who would just be real about all of it. And who would push back on the bullshit. Maybe they did and I didn't know it--but I didn't know because they were never real about the bullshit. The result is a kind of gaslighting that adds to the burnout. (Retired early for my health.)
I’m pretty transparent with my staff regarding the BS and my attempts to say no. They know when I’ve won the fight, but increasingly they are seeing me dejected because I’ve lost.
I'm so sorry. I know how tough that is. I always really appreciated administrators who advocated for their teachers. (I was an instructional coach who worked across multiple buildings.) I guess my comment was more about my supervisors (district-level admin) than the building administrators I worked with. I should have been more clear.
"Self-care" literally the same advice I received for years in response to concerns that took 10+ years and many regulated health professionals to recognize workplace violence. I tried to set boundaries and leave, but my employer always got involved in the hiring process, so I have mixed feelings about the article. Boundaries + self care are great yet they require being in a system addressing systemic issues.
Beyond self-care, women also get bombarded with the message that wine - and alcohol in general - is their refuge. The whole “mommy juice” ethic worries me constantly. (I gave up drinking at Thanksgiving, 2019, so I may notice it more now that I live sober.) Wine doesn’t solve anything; the health effects are canceled out after one occasional glass, and it might even make all that stress worse.
Completely agree! As long as Big Alcohol is making big $, the lies that are told about alcohol as self-care will continue. It is toxic for women especially, disempowers and hides us from ourselves.
Oh my goodness, yes. I'm a lifelong non-drinker (the smell of alcohol is actually a migraine-trigger for me) and I cannot tell you how disorienting it was as a new parent to hear so much messaging around "wine" as the solution to everything. It felt like that was the only acceptable frame for talking about struggle, really - which left me feeling like an alien being judged for inappropriate honesty about the hard stuff instead of just joking it away with a "wine me!". My kid is 11 now and so many of the friends who had kids around the same time are now working on developing a better relationship with alcohol (or quitting it completely).
I went to Trader Joe looking for a generic greeting card. I counted nine birthday cards that mentioned alcohol. I could see two or three, but the messaging was blatant.
My first thought in reading even the beginning of this interview was to remember how it felt when one of my daughters came home with a dramatic, frightening, and life changing illness that would require lots of experimentation, crises, and set-backs for the rest of her life ... and a friend of mine told me what I needed was a good massage. The level of misunderstanding of the situation, of what pain is, the trivialization, were shocking and painful to me. Please no one ever offer this kind of advice in such a situation!
It's so helpful and validating to see self-care reframed within the context of systemic oppression. I loved Emily and Amelia Nagoski's book BURNOUT for the same reason: it's feminist self-help. They go so far as to say that people don't need self-care, they need community care. If you want a taste, their excellent, conversational podcast The Feminist Survival Podcast breaks down a lot of the evidence-based strategies they offer.
Thank you for this. If you don’t mind, I may start using that term feminist self-help when I’m talking about the book! There was a question in this conversation that had to get edited out for length. It was about gender and the word woman so I’ll say here that I’m borrowing Silvia Federici’s definition of woman, which is that it is a political category. We know feminism only works when it is intersectional which I think means that self-care and community care most go hand in hand (the section in the book on power discusses that). And- I also love the Nagoski’s work esp Emily’s Come As You Are! Did not know about their podcast so will check it out. Thank you for engaging here!
This is perfect. Literally just the other day, I said, "I always read self-help books and then I get mad because they focus exclusively on individual solutions to systemic problems, like that isn't right there in the name of the genre." Then along comes this interview and this book! I put in a purchase request at my local library immediately.
I really appreciate the framing of self-care as the internal work behind the external activity. That yoga can be truly self-care, or maybe not so much. And that all the self care in the world isn’t going to change/heal one’s systemic barriers. This interview (and I’m going to have to read the book!) helped me put a finger on why I find bath bombs/scented candles/face masks so unsatisfying as offerings to achieve “wellness.” (I actually, weirdly, find bath bombs enraging as a thing that exists, probably because of all this).
I totally get that about the bathbombs! Made me laugh out loud. Baths are actually one of my most favorite calming, grounding practices, but I too rebel against the bathbombs!
Such an important topic and insightful interview! I appreciated Dr. Lakshmin's wide-angle view on self-care. There is one side to the traditional self-care model that’s about empowerment and self-efficacy. And there's some good to that, but I'm glad to read about it being challenged. Because it seems the other side is rooted in responsibility and blame culture. If you’re able to help yourself, then it must be your own fault if “you alone” can’t fix it. And it’s always been used to convince people, especially women, to buy crap they don’t need and most likely won’t help. Now in microtargeted ways. And I know I've been one of them.
As a pharmacist, I also think about self-care from a healthcare perspective. There’s so much evidence that shows what people need are healthy communities, rather than lists to-do and things to buy. Living a generally healthy lifestyle, should be the default. But that’s so not the reality. It takes an enormous effort— and privilege — to do so, and we’re seeing that lead to declining generational health. And even more concerning, good health and wealth are becoming more closely linked than in recent generations.
The good news is that we know we need to shift the focus in healthcare, but I have no idea how long it might take to actually implement systemic changes.
I am highly resistant to therapy as self-care, and that is not to denigrate the inherent worthiness of therapy itself. Yet I strongly feel the current obsession with therapy as The Solution to most modern problems is that an individual therapy practice ignores the social, political and context of so many modern ills. Therapy, and self-care in general, often reinforce a very self-centered, self-conscious and frankly selfish worldview that I personally see as the heart of current American miseries.
We need community. We need friends. We need people to hold us up and hug is hard when we are down. We need to deeply give a shit about other people, and to feel that care around us.
We need a government that sees us as a society and not consumers or productivity producing units.
I have never had a bath bomb bath, and I don't think I am missing much. I fired my therapist, because I accidentally started a group of a dozen women who meet a few times a week to help each other in practical, physically tangible and emotional ways.
There are other solutions out there. Please tell me some of yours.
I totally agree with you. every time I've tried therapy in the past 5 years or so, it's felt like I already know all the tools they could offer and it's just not enough. no amount of therapy can cure my chronic pain and bone damage, or get me better insurance to cover those issues, or give me the money I'd need to stop worrying about whether I can pay rent or what I'll do if my car breaks down. it frustrates me to be told that I have anxiety and therapy is the solution when I'm worrying about material problems that I can't fix with any amount of internal work.
I was fired from therapy after saying that my cleaning lady was the only person I really liked buying a Christmas present for (because she was so deserving). As I could still afford a cleaner, despite a psychologically devastating job loss, I was deemed to be “no longer be in crisis.” Looking back on having a cleaner, I can see it as a form of self-care. It makes your living space better, can genuinely help with mental health. We let the cleaning go during the pandemic and I wonder constantly about starting again despite the expense.
FWIW, I haven't never had a bath bomb, but I do pay for a house cleaner whenever I can afford it. Now that I am vaccinated and have a better handle on covid risk abatement, it's something that absolutely makes my psychological health better.
I cried several times reading this. I feel so seen and validated in the last 3 years of blowing up my life and slowly piecing it back together, in a way that is very, very rare.
Thank you for this wonderful, insightful interview! These words from Dr. Lakshmin really stuck out to me: “In other words, it’s not really about the Thing — it’s about the process you take to get there.” I think that wisdom sums it up so perfectly, or at least has been the “aha” work for my own journey with self care over the last 10 years. I look forward to reading more of Dr. Lakshmin’s work!
I once fell into the trap of teaching mindfulness workshops for my federal government Department - being a big believer in meditation given that it has greatly enriched my life and reduced my anxiety significantly. After about ten months however, I noticed that the people who most wanted me to come teach to their work groups the most were the authoritarian managers with morale problems in their teams. From what I could tell, they wanted to use mindfulness as a way to put the team problems back on employees to solve as individuals by "doing their own work". I removed myself from that project as a result as I have no interest making structural problems or issues of harassment and bullying the responsibility of the individual in my workplace. As this interview points out (I look forward to reading the book) self-care, mindfulness, etc only go as far as the materiality of our situation allows.
You might be interested in the book Hey Hun: Sales, Sisterhood and Supremacy. Emily Paulson weaves all of these themes (self care, cults, white privilege) into her time at an MLM. I will ask her to email you about an ARC!
This gave me complex feelings. I'm glad she acknowledged the significant amount of privileged she has that allowed her step back and rebuild her life. I don't think the the message "we don’t need self-care; we need boundaries” is in itself bad. I just have complex feelings around advice about setting boundaries when my work experience has been characterized by violence, and health care *demands* compliance. Boundaries are important, yet they a more likely to succeed in more power-balanced relationships.
Especially in healthcare, when you are at the bottom of the ladder (med student/ intern), it feels like there is very very little choice. But I think that describing healthcare as demanding compliance actually contributes to a workforce that ends up never learning how to set boundaries and thus, is powerless to the dehumanizing working conditions and being able to enact change from the inside (which ultimately has led to a corporate takeover of medicine but that is another conversation). Yes it’s true the boundaries that you have the capacity to set as a 3rd medical student are different in scale and efficacy than those that an attending physician can set. But it’s still possible and if you believe it is not, then it’s harder to learn 10 years later. In Real Self-Care I give an example that for me as a medical school, my boundary was asking my team to learn my name ! It didn’t always work or happen but in just asking for it, it helped me feel more human in a workplace that is utterly dehumanizing.
My post was a misleading. I meant as a patient regulated health professionals demand compliance from me.
For ten years, I tried setting boundaries at work (or asking for accommodation) led to workplace violence, and IME equivalents (4x). I tried to leave (3x), but that resulted in action to damage my reputation or for internal moves mgt renegotiated my work contract without my knowledge or consent.
The evaluations were passed on to my providers who denied I was exposed to workplace violence, attacked me for being unstable, and insisted my employer and colleagues were the negatively impacted by my severe interpersonal problems (DARVO). For me, setting boundaries with providers meant extended delays for needed ultrasounds, colonoscopy, etc.
3 years ago, mgt forced me into an extended leave. I finally connected with a psych. After two years of appointments, one day he said my health issues were from workplace violence. Everything I described for 12 years to numerous providers is on the (Duluth) workplace bullying power control wheel. I return to work asap as my insurer refused to initiate a return to work in a timely manner while cutting off my benefits.
Boundaries are important, and they rely on others willingness to respect them. Leaving violent situations can be life saving, and people need safe places to go. And yes, learn people's names!!
Here's a thought I had while feeding my barn animals this morning.
You need to "do more self care" is the modern version of:
- you need to go to church more
- you need to pray more
- you need to confess more
I am an atheist, but I grew up in a mix of jewish and christian communities. I'll spare y'all any rants about the downsides of religion, I am sure they are well known to most or all of you.
I will also fully and freely admit that at least religious institutions provide a local tangible community and a free therapist in the form of a priest/rabbi.
I had a policy analysis professor in grad school who got very animated in lectures and would say “WHAT IS THE PROBLEM” loudly and often. His point was that often policy fails because we haven’t really identified the problem so of course the solution doesn’t work.
I really appreciate Dr. Lakshmim for naming the actual problem and addressing the problem.
The local school district, which happens to be my employer, posted something about self care on their Facebook page last night.
I’m currently laying in bed, engaging in what I call “Dread Care.” 20% of the school’s teaching staff called in sick today. The principal is out as well. This means that today will be yet another day where I’m pulled in every direction yet the direction of doing my actual job. I’m significantly behind on my actual job. I worked a full 8 hours during Monday’s holiday, plus several more hours over the past weekend. I’m not close to being caught up.
I brought these feelings up to my mentor. She suggested self care.
The problem is that between the shitty Facebook post from my employer and the shitty advice from my mentor, the suggestion of self care makes it sound as if I’m the one that’s failing. The issue is that the K-12 education system has so many systemic challenges that land on the individuals within the system to solve.
But screaming self-care means that we can avoid any potential solutions that require any stakeholders other than those doing the work to make any changes.
Thank you for articulating the way "self care" makes burnout feel like a personal failing.
I had a 10-hour workday yesterday and then my boss talked about a wellness challenge during our mandatory full faculty meeting, which I am required to attend but I'm not paid for because I'm part time? (I know.) A step challenge won't make me "well," but getting paid a living wage for the work I do might, you know? I feel like this is worst in education and other caring professions, too - we're expected to care so much about our students (/patients/clients/etc) that we're willing to work outrageous hours for outrageous pay.
One of the similarities between those professions is that they are often described as a “calling” which, in my view, is a poor excuse for terrible working conditions.
THIS. My university kept pushing "self-care" during the height of the pandemic in a way that really, really felt like victim-blaming. It made me want to scream. No amount of meditation was going to change the fact that I was suddenly trying thrust into teaching online to students across 10 different time zones while also helping my neurodivergent 2nd grader navigate Zoom school and trying to figure out how to safely navigate a pandemic in which my spouse and I are both high risk. And I *am* a mindfulness meditation teacher (I teach a class once or twice per semester in addition to my normal academic classes). I've got nothing against meditation, I think it's great, everyone should try it, but it doesn't suddenly make having 4 full time jobs worth of work to do at the same time less body-and-soul-crushing.
And all I could think of was how from the university's perspective, recommending "self care" to us was them checking off a box. They got to self-congratulate, say, "look how much we're showing we care!" while also putting out policies that were incredibly hostile to faculty. They got to admonish us constantly to do more to accommodate struggling students while pretending that "have you tried self-care?" was a legitimate "accommodation" they were providing for us, when it was really just another thing we had to provide for ourselves. And the overwhelming vibe was "if you're having a hard time right now, that's your own fault and it's your job to fix it...and it's also your job to fix what's hard for your students and for everyone else." I'm still mad about it.
I had the same experience, exactly, at my university. They were very quick to admonish faculty to have grace for our students, but we were always the ones giving it, never the ones getting it.
My College was exactly the same. I'm a union rep for our faculty and I kept commenting to the administration in our meetings that "Management is expecting faculty to be incredibly flexible and accomodating to students and in turn, is not giving faculty even a smidge of flexibility and accomodation towards us and our jobs. We're expected to bend over backwards in unending ways with our students, and management is becoming even more rigid towards us and our work." I'm with you - I'm still mad about it.
I work for a public library, and we constantly are sent emails about "self-care", and "self-care sessions". The sessions cannot be attended on work time, are not in any of our locations, and are always scheduled midday on a week day. When I have attended an online presentation from my employer on "self-care", it's been insulting. Drink water! Get some sleep! Spend time with loved ones! None of these address the real problems causing staff harm in the branches, and administration refuses to discuss them. We have branches where staff are on high alert all day long, who are exposed to fentanyl or meth fumes, who are dealing with folks who are falling through society's cracks, and I'm sorry, but "take time to meditate" doesn't make up for "had to call 911 due to an overdose and then close the public restroom due to fumes".
I feel this. My last workplace alternated between self-care and resilience workshops while our executive wished out loud for improved technologies (.... which would have allowed her to drive the workload from maniacal to full-on death throttle).
Exactly. Our “self care” is supposed to be the individual solution of a systemic problem. And if we are burned out it’s our own fault. (I’m healthcare not education but my employer shares similar messages about self care)
I hear you and appreciate your understanding. One of my closest friends is a nurse. We often commiserate about the similar crisis states of our respective fields. We also share the same frustration that we aren’t seeing any of the pandemic-inspired work-life shifts coming to our career fields.
I work hybrid-remote and see the burden of people who do fully in-person work. Today, my kids' have a snow day, but I'm not scheduled. So I don't have to figure out the complicated logistics. But the full-time staff have to deal with the getting there part (which honestly, always seems the hardest) five days a week. That's a lot of stress and I think it's leading to a growing divide between people who can WFH and those who can't. WFH is great for people who have the option. It can save a lot of money and time. It seems at the very least the growing cost of community, including time, should be factored into compensation, especially for lower-wage earners. And especially as more people WFH. But I know, money alone is not the solution.
One thing I’ve noticed is that among many white collar workers, WFH or some sort of hybrid arrangement seems to be the default in their mind.
Once, I was lamenting about how incredibly behind I felt at work to my software engineer ex-BF. I felt that I was really busy at work, but not accomplishing anything. He was like, “Why don’t you block your calendar out and say you have meetings?” My response was, “Because they will walk down the hallway to my office, see that I’m alone, and just assume I’m not busy.”
Also, I think the concept of summer vacation stops many proper conversations about balance, self-care, workload, and the like when it comes to education. Summer vacation isn’t permission to abuse employees and it isn’t a solution in February when employees are near the breaking point.
I think one reason why teachers are taken for granted, and told not to complain — besides having summers off — is that most adults think they have easy jobs. How hard could it be to spend a whole day with these adorable faces? Sharing books and ideas with them. But I've spent time in my kids' classrooms. Teaching kids is REALLY hard, requires a full spectrum of complex skills, and physical stamina too. I can only imagine what it'd be like in the majority of schools that are underfunded and have high poverty rates on top of an already difficult job.
As a fellow teacher, all the yes to this.
I agree with you on the growing divide. my workplace has two sections, customer support and shipping our products. obviously shipping has to be in person, but over the pandemic they switched the customer support team to WFH. I realized the tension inherent there when the managers scheduled a holiday party on a Thursday and my coworkers in shipping were bitterly joking about how the managers would probably take a WFH day tomorrow but they couldn't. they weren't directly talking about me that day but I'm sure they feel resentment hopping on the metro to commute knowing I'm still asleep, and I can't blame them. it's sad that this change has given a lot of people more freedom but has also driven a wedge between two groups of workers.
I think we have to rethink what defines full time work and perhaps think creatively about how new structures can come about to make the world of work better for all.
I think shorter work days for the same pay for in-person workers might be a good start.
Last year I watched a recorded interview with a candidate for principal of my kid's school, and when she was asked about teacher burnout she said something about her role as principal would be to encourage self-care, and I thought "ugh, next," but that was it, they only offered us the recorded interview with one candidate, there were no other candidates. And I'm never not going to be suspicious of this person following that.
As the assistant principal of an elementary school, the question of teacher burnout weighs heavily on me. One of the things I do to protect teachers is trying to take the extraneous work away and also allow some flexibility. This worked well when my district gave school leaders greater latitude in how they run their buildings. Unfortunately, much of that freedom is now gone and it’s becoming harder to protect the teachers from the bullshit. In turn, I find some that I lead blaming me for the changes.
It is a terrible situation for those who actually interact with students, who are too tired/dispirited/unsupported to do the quality of work that they know could be possible, and who know in their bones that systemic change in their district and state is essentially impossible. There is no easy exit if your family is tied down, many educators have done “school” their whole lives and it is hard to envision a new life, plus there’s the societal pressure for martyr status. “The kids need you. You’re making such a difference!” But, from experience, looking back, staying for the kids just made the system as it was stronger and I became far too cynical and lost my zest for many things. Don’t wait too long if the system is taking yours.
What I would have given for an admin who would just be real about all of it. And who would push back on the bullshit. Maybe they did and I didn't know it--but I didn't know because they were never real about the bullshit. The result is a kind of gaslighting that adds to the burnout. (Retired early for my health.)
I’m pretty transparent with my staff regarding the BS and my attempts to say no. They know when I’ve won the fight, but increasingly they are seeing me dejected because I’ve lost.
I'm so sorry. I know how tough that is. I always really appreciated administrators who advocated for their teachers. (I was an instructional coach who worked across multiple buildings.) I guess my comment was more about my supervisors (district-level admin) than the building administrators I worked with. I should have been more clear.
"Self-care" literally the same advice I received for years in response to concerns that took 10+ years and many regulated health professionals to recognize workplace violence. I tried to set boundaries and leave, but my employer always got involved in the hiring process, so I have mixed feelings about the article. Boundaries + self care are great yet they require being in a system addressing systemic issues.
Ugh, I’m so sorry. My husband is a PE teacher in our school district, and it’s been a rough winter.
Beyond self-care, women also get bombarded with the message that wine - and alcohol in general - is their refuge. The whole “mommy juice” ethic worries me constantly. (I gave up drinking at Thanksgiving, 2019, so I may notice it more now that I live sober.) Wine doesn’t solve anything; the health effects are canceled out after one occasional glass, and it might even make all that stress worse.
Completely agree! As long as Big Alcohol is making big $, the lies that are told about alcohol as self-care will continue. It is toxic for women especially, disempowers and hides us from ourselves.
Oh my goodness, yes. I'm a lifelong non-drinker (the smell of alcohol is actually a migraine-trigger for me) and I cannot tell you how disorienting it was as a new parent to hear so much messaging around "wine" as the solution to everything. It felt like that was the only acceptable frame for talking about struggle, really - which left me feeling like an alien being judged for inappropriate honesty about the hard stuff instead of just joking it away with a "wine me!". My kid is 11 now and so many of the friends who had kids around the same time are now working on developing a better relationship with alcohol (or quitting it completely).
I went to Trader Joe looking for a generic greeting card. I counted nine birthday cards that mentioned alcohol. I could see two or three, but the messaging was blatant.
If there are any artisan or craft market type shops in your area, they probably sell handmade / locally made cards that are much less obnoxious.
Right? I did the same looking for a card to send my 16yo niece and had like 2 choices that weren't alcohol themed!
My first thought in reading even the beginning of this interview was to remember how it felt when one of my daughters came home with a dramatic, frightening, and life changing illness that would require lots of experimentation, crises, and set-backs for the rest of her life ... and a friend of mine told me what I needed was a good massage. The level of misunderstanding of the situation, of what pain is, the trivialization, were shocking and painful to me. Please no one ever offer this kind of advice in such a situation!
Oh, so sorry Fritzie. A comment like that makes you feel even more alone ❤️
Oh my! What a misguided response to a terrifying situation.
It's so helpful and validating to see self-care reframed within the context of systemic oppression. I loved Emily and Amelia Nagoski's book BURNOUT for the same reason: it's feminist self-help. They go so far as to say that people don't need self-care, they need community care. If you want a taste, their excellent, conversational podcast The Feminist Survival Podcast breaks down a lot of the evidence-based strategies they offer.
They're so, so great!
https://pca.st/podcast/3a04f590-e0af-0137-b6cb-0acc26574db2
Thank you for this. If you don’t mind, I may start using that term feminist self-help when I’m talking about the book! There was a question in this conversation that had to get edited out for length. It was about gender and the word woman so I’ll say here that I’m borrowing Silvia Federici’s definition of woman, which is that it is a political category. We know feminism only works when it is intersectional which I think means that self-care and community care most go hand in hand (the section in the book on power discusses that). And- I also love the Nagoski’s work esp Emily’s Come As You Are! Did not know about their podcast so will check it out. Thank you for engaging here!
This is perfect. Literally just the other day, I said, "I always read self-help books and then I get mad because they focus exclusively on individual solutions to systemic problems, like that isn't right there in the name of the genre." Then along comes this interview and this book! I put in a purchase request at my local library immediately.
Thank you!
I really appreciate the framing of self-care as the internal work behind the external activity. That yoga can be truly self-care, or maybe not so much. And that all the self care in the world isn’t going to change/heal one’s systemic barriers. This interview (and I’m going to have to read the book!) helped me put a finger on why I find bath bombs/scented candles/face masks so unsatisfying as offerings to achieve “wellness.” (I actually, weirdly, find bath bombs enraging as a thing that exists, probably because of all this).
I totally get that about the bathbombs! Made me laugh out loud. Baths are actually one of my most favorite calming, grounding practices, but I too rebel against the bathbombs!
Such an important topic and insightful interview! I appreciated Dr. Lakshmin's wide-angle view on self-care. There is one side to the traditional self-care model that’s about empowerment and self-efficacy. And there's some good to that, but I'm glad to read about it being challenged. Because it seems the other side is rooted in responsibility and blame culture. If you’re able to help yourself, then it must be your own fault if “you alone” can’t fix it. And it’s always been used to convince people, especially women, to buy crap they don’t need and most likely won’t help. Now in microtargeted ways. And I know I've been one of them.
As a pharmacist, I also think about self-care from a healthcare perspective. There’s so much evidence that shows what people need are healthy communities, rather than lists to-do and things to buy. Living a generally healthy lifestyle, should be the default. But that’s so not the reality. It takes an enormous effort— and privilege — to do so, and we’re seeing that lead to declining generational health. And even more concerning, good health and wealth are becoming more closely linked than in recent generations.
The good news is that we know we need to shift the focus in healthcare, but I have no idea how long it might take to actually implement systemic changes.
I am highly resistant to therapy as self-care, and that is not to denigrate the inherent worthiness of therapy itself. Yet I strongly feel the current obsession with therapy as The Solution to most modern problems is that an individual therapy practice ignores the social, political and context of so many modern ills. Therapy, and self-care in general, often reinforce a very self-centered, self-conscious and frankly selfish worldview that I personally see as the heart of current American miseries.
We need community. We need friends. We need people to hold us up and hug is hard when we are down. We need to deeply give a shit about other people, and to feel that care around us.
We need a government that sees us as a society and not consumers or productivity producing units.
I have never had a bath bomb bath, and I don't think I am missing much. I fired my therapist, because I accidentally started a group of a dozen women who meet a few times a week to help each other in practical, physically tangible and emotional ways.
There are other solutions out there. Please tell me some of yours.
I totally agree with you. every time I've tried therapy in the past 5 years or so, it's felt like I already know all the tools they could offer and it's just not enough. no amount of therapy can cure my chronic pain and bone damage, or get me better insurance to cover those issues, or give me the money I'd need to stop worrying about whether I can pay rent or what I'll do if my car breaks down. it frustrates me to be told that I have anxiety and therapy is the solution when I'm worrying about material problems that I can't fix with any amount of internal work.
I was fired from therapy after saying that my cleaning lady was the only person I really liked buying a Christmas present for (because she was so deserving). As I could still afford a cleaner, despite a psychologically devastating job loss, I was deemed to be “no longer be in crisis.” Looking back on having a cleaner, I can see it as a form of self-care. It makes your living space better, can genuinely help with mental health. We let the cleaning go during the pandemic and I wonder constantly about starting again despite the expense.
FWIW, I haven't never had a bath bomb, but I do pay for a house cleaner whenever I can afford it. Now that I am vaccinated and have a better handle on covid risk abatement, it's something that absolutely makes my psychological health better.
I cried several times reading this. I feel so seen and validated in the last 3 years of blowing up my life and slowly piecing it back together, in a way that is very, very rare.
Thank you for this.
♥️
Thank you for this wonderful, insightful interview! These words from Dr. Lakshmin really stuck out to me: “In other words, it’s not really about the Thing — it’s about the process you take to get there.” I think that wisdom sums it up so perfectly, or at least has been the “aha” work for my own journey with self care over the last 10 years. I look forward to reading more of Dr. Lakshmin’s work!
Thank you so much.
I once fell into the trap of teaching mindfulness workshops for my federal government Department - being a big believer in meditation given that it has greatly enriched my life and reduced my anxiety significantly. After about ten months however, I noticed that the people who most wanted me to come teach to their work groups the most were the authoritarian managers with morale problems in their teams. From what I could tell, they wanted to use mindfulness as a way to put the team problems back on employees to solve as individuals by "doing their own work". I removed myself from that project as a result as I have no interest making structural problems or issues of harassment and bullying the responsibility of the individual in my workplace. As this interview points out (I look forward to reading the book) self-care, mindfulness, etc only go as far as the materiality of our situation allows.
You might be interested in the book Hey Hun: Sales, Sisterhood and Supremacy. Emily Paulson weaves all of these themes (self care, cults, white privilege) into her time at an MLM. I will ask her to email you about an ARC!
Thank you, Celeste!
I can’t wait for Emily’s book either!
<3
Hoooo boy there's a lot here that resonates with things I've been wrestling with/working through over the last few years.
This gave me complex feelings. I'm glad she acknowledged the significant amount of privileged she has that allowed her step back and rebuild her life. I don't think the the message "we don’t need self-care; we need boundaries” is in itself bad. I just have complex feelings around advice about setting boundaries when my work experience has been characterized by violence, and health care *demands* compliance. Boundaries are important, yet they a more likely to succeed in more power-balanced relationships.
Especially in healthcare, when you are at the bottom of the ladder (med student/ intern), it feels like there is very very little choice. But I think that describing healthcare as demanding compliance actually contributes to a workforce that ends up never learning how to set boundaries and thus, is powerless to the dehumanizing working conditions and being able to enact change from the inside (which ultimately has led to a corporate takeover of medicine but that is another conversation). Yes it’s true the boundaries that you have the capacity to set as a 3rd medical student are different in scale and efficacy than those that an attending physician can set. But it’s still possible and if you believe it is not, then it’s harder to learn 10 years later. In Real Self-Care I give an example that for me as a medical school, my boundary was asking my team to learn my name ! It didn’t always work or happen but in just asking for it, it helped me feel more human in a workplace that is utterly dehumanizing.
My post was a misleading. I meant as a patient regulated health professionals demand compliance from me.
For ten years, I tried setting boundaries at work (or asking for accommodation) led to workplace violence, and IME equivalents (4x). I tried to leave (3x), but that resulted in action to damage my reputation or for internal moves mgt renegotiated my work contract without my knowledge or consent.
The evaluations were passed on to my providers who denied I was exposed to workplace violence, attacked me for being unstable, and insisted my employer and colleagues were the negatively impacted by my severe interpersonal problems (DARVO). For me, setting boundaries with providers meant extended delays for needed ultrasounds, colonoscopy, etc.
3 years ago, mgt forced me into an extended leave. I finally connected with a psych. After two years of appointments, one day he said my health issues were from workplace violence. Everything I described for 12 years to numerous providers is on the (Duluth) workplace bullying power control wheel. I return to work asap as my insurer refused to initiate a return to work in a timely manner while cutting off my benefits.
Boundaries are important, and they rely on others willingness to respect them. Leaving violent situations can be life saving, and people need safe places to go. And yes, learn people's names!!
Here's a thought I had while feeding my barn animals this morning.
You need to "do more self care" is the modern version of:
- you need to go to church more
- you need to pray more
- you need to confess more
I am an atheist, but I grew up in a mix of jewish and christian communities. I'll spare y'all any rants about the downsides of religion, I am sure they are well known to most or all of you.
I will also fully and freely admit that at least religious institutions provide a local tangible community and a free therapist in the form of a priest/rabbi.
I had a policy analysis professor in grad school who got very animated in lectures and would say “WHAT IS THE PROBLEM” loudly and often. His point was that often policy fails because we haven’t really identified the problem so of course the solution doesn’t work.
I really appreciate Dr. Lakshmim for naming the actual problem and addressing the problem.