April 21, 2021 • 54 mins
What actually is self-care, why has it been gendered and why does it matter? Anney and Samantha dig into the ins and outs of self-care and the danger of gendering it.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha. I welcome to Steph.
I've never told you production I heart radio. So for
today's question, Samantha, I'm not sure you know the answer,
but do you remember when you became familiar with the
idea of self care? You know? I honestly, I don't
(00:30):
think it was until recently that I learned of this.
And when I say recently, the idea and concept of
self care was not something in my Christian upbringing. Sure,
so that was not something especially as a woman who
was supposed to be the caretaker of the nurturer. That's
not a thing. For my mother. I definitely never saw
(00:51):
that from her. She's constantly going. She is still constantly
going to this day and she is sixty five. So
for me, I don't think it really came into play
until I literally had a panic attack, anxiety attack that
shut me down for a week in when I was
working as a child abuse investigator and I had a
(01:13):
pank attack in the middle of Longhorns. Yes, I did,
to the point that my friends were like, are you okay?
Are you okay? Like the coworkers and they're like, don't
look at it. Don't look at it, because they knew
it made it worse, and so it wasn't until then,
so out of college in my first job, that I
truly figured out, Oh, I'm trying to kill myself through
(01:35):
doing too much and not taking care of myself because
I'm putting the responsibility of the world on me. So
I feel like it really wasn't until about two thousand
and six, so pretty a pretty long time that I
understood the concept without knowing the term right, And that
included a lot of hiking and exercising, and that was
my like form of self care. And don't get me wrong,
(01:56):
I already started therapy, but that was trauma related, So
self care is really different delving into trauma. Yeah, as
we all know, as we all know people who listen
to this show certainly, I actually don't think I knew
about self care because I feel like, you know, you
(02:18):
know about it in terms of taking care of yourself,
but the term and the idea of like prioritizing it
and that it's important. I don't think I knew until
we've talked about it before on this show in several
different instances. I am really bad at it. I think
a lot of women are, so even when I was like, Okay,
(02:42):
I'm gonna do this self care thing. My attitude around
it was the opposite of what it needed to be.
It was like another check box that made it in
another stressor and like, oh, I have to do this thing,
so we are going to talk about that. But I
it's still something I struggle with. I mean, I think
for me, yeah, the term was not self care. It
(03:04):
was mental health day, which I know we talked about
in my industry where I came from, especially with like
government jobs or service jobs. We talked about mental health
days and trying to get them. And it's so frowned
upon in that industry. Like they tell you to do it.
They tell you to do it, they tell you to
shut off your phone, they tell you that, you know,
you take you a week of vacation. And a few
people have and I love and admire that, And I
(03:27):
think a few people have because they had to, you know,
like they had families or whatever whatnot, and it costs
a lot of problems and marriages or problems with their
children because a lot of people would put their job first.
But we were told to take our mental health day,
but made sure to be told don't say it's a
mental health day, tell him you're sick. It's just kind
of that level. So for the longest time, and I
(03:47):
know I think people think it that way still, that
term is really really it's definitely become a little more
of a fad, the term not necessarily a practice. So
to me, it's kind of a newer idea, and it
does feel really else fish to say you need that, Yes,
And we're going to talk about that that feeling, and
and today we're we're also going to talk a lot
(04:09):
about how self care has been feminized, how seen as
sort of this purview of women, and as it's been
in all the news a lot lately for a variety
of reasons. But I didn't want to bring this up
that Pinterest recently announced guidelines to I guess, foster a
healthier environment on their platform, to be kinder and to
(04:32):
be more positive in general, which I find interesting because Pinterest.
To me, there's a lot of great things that can
happen on Pinterest, but I see the negative of almost that,
like wishful, you know, your pinboard. If I want to
be what is that called in inspiration? We want to
be this thin and I'm gonna do this and this
and this and like that perfect life that you build unhealthy. Yeah,
(04:57):
I'm not really into Pinterest, so but I'm definitely seeing
the boards and that sounds horrifying because also people can
look at this, right, they can, but you can put
it on private. I think all of mine are on private,
except for my random nineties board. I was going to
a nineties theme party with costume, of course, but all
(05:20):
my like you'll find out soon enough. You know what
that makes me panic? Let's not, I know. So back
to this Interest thing is they have this creator code
that says I agree to be kind, check my facts,
be aware of triggers, practice inclusion, and do no harm,
(05:43):
which I'm curious how they will re enforce those. But
we're seeing more social media platforms trying to do these things,
which is something else we've talked about a lot. And
I remember when I first came on as a host
of this show, some people would write in and say
(06:06):
why they get like trigger warnings, why they thought they
were like useless and actually harmful, and I would argue back,
like my side of it. And I feel like it's
shifting towards people being more aware of why you need
to think about those sorts of things, right, I mean, honestly,
that's kind of why we how that conversation about trauma
(06:27):
series began is everybody was so leaning to oh my god,
everybody's so PC that are so sensitive, blah blah blah,
and we're like, no, but this is why we need
these things, because it has for our entire lives. We
didn't have this, and I really wish we did, and
that is okay to have those warnings, but why it
(06:48):
was important and why we need to respect them. But yeah,
that's interesting to see because we have kind of gone
all up back and forth and back and forth of
is this a problem or is this a solution or
is this adding on to the problems, And it's kind
of I'm really glad to see that it's sticking. It's
becoming a thing, aren't you. Yeah? Yeah. And I remember
(07:09):
in particular, one person was a professor and they wrote
in and they were like, I just feel that giving
trigger warnings it means that topics that need to be
talked about won't be talked about. And I was like,
I hear you, but I think it doesn't mean I
won't show up to whatever lesson. It just means I'll
show up knowing I need to be prepared for this,
(07:29):
and I obviously you and I don't think. That doesn't
mean don't talk about something. It's just giving puple that
like warning if they need it to take care of themselves.
And speaking of let's do a brief definition, like we
like to do, what is self care? According to the
World Health Organization, it is quote, self care is what
(07:51):
people do for themselves to establish and maintain health and
to prevent and deal with illness. It is a broad concept,
encompassing hygiene at general and personal nutrition and type in
quality of food eaten, lifestyle, sporting activities, leisure, etcetera. Environmental
factors that living conditions, social habits, etcetera, as socia and
economic factors, income level, cultural beliefs, etcetera. And self medication.
(08:13):
This can include things like yes, nutrition, hygiene, or seeking
medical care. It is often described as something that brings
you joy. And this definition is pretty old. I think
it's from actually and it's been updated and various outlets
like the World Health Organization. To me, this makes sense,
but I think of self care is a much more
(08:35):
like find something, yeah that brings you joy and do
that thing, right, But I do think that large definition
that makes sense as well. Right. Some have put self
care into categories like emotional self care, taking dedicated breaks,
physical self care, getting enough sleep, eating well, and spiritual
(08:56):
self care, which can include spending time in nature. Um
break it down even further into temporary versus enduring, so
like a one time self care thing or something that
is an ongoing self care thing. And also I really
recommend looking up. Actually it's not. I don't know. I
thought it was funny, but the World Health Organization has
(09:17):
a self care hippopotamus diagram, which did bring me joy
and I did laugh quite heartily at it. Well, I
love hippopotamus so even though they're quite dangerous, Samantha, I'm
sure I also like many other things that I would
rather not hang out with, you know, right, it's fair
just saying so. It can manifest many ways, like writing
(09:41):
or journaling, meditating, yoga, hiking, listening to music, stretching and
crafting a long bath with some wine one of my favorites.
Taking time on social media, which I yet to be
able to do, enjoy a nice cup of coffee, a
facial allowing yourself to say no or cancel plans which
I'm a at happy hour with friends, which oh my goodness,
(10:03):
we've gotten vaccinated, so we can do that again. Yea. Um,
still safely, of course, and basically a way for you
to make space to relax, check in with yourself and recharge.
And as an introvert, I definitely have to do this
on a consistent basis. Uh. Self care goes hand in
hand with mindfulness of being aware when you're engaging in
unhealthy habits or behaviors and asking yourself what triggered that? Right,
(10:27):
and quarantine has made self care more difficult in a
lot of ways, which sounds like that doesn't make sense.
But if you're thinking, but all I've been doing is
watching Netflix on my couch during the pandemic, isn't that
self care? Why do I need self care? It does
not necessarily count. Unless it's a mindful decision to take
(10:49):
care of yourself, It doesn't really qualify as self care.
It might be a coping mechanism. But if that's all
you're doing, you're buying and mine won't thank you for it.
No blame, no shame at all. Um. There is an
end it in my couch that was not there before
this quarantine. Oh, it's just an odd space to navigate
(11:10):
our thoughts on self care and productivity when you are
confined inside. At least that's been my case. I've definitely
given a lot of thoughts and mindfulness and I think
I've gotten better at it. But by getting better at it,
I've learned I have a lot of other issues that
I need to get better at. I think this is
(11:33):
the problem with reflecting too much on yourself. You're like, well, well,
when they check in, oh crap, Like there are so
many things, especially for a person like you who's on
the go all the time. For me talking about the
Netflix thing, do not think about those things. I consistently
watched the same things over and over and over against
at least I can just drift off, but it's all
(11:55):
the time. And for me, the practice of self care
is actually meditating. I've talked about the colmat before, and
I've talked about how much I enjoy it, and I
don't use it as often as I had, like meaning daily,
But when I do, it is a self awareness of knowing, Okay,
I need to do this to focus a little bit.
That's not Netflix, you know, And so I think, yeah, definitely,
(12:16):
But having those moments is very RESTful to me to
be able to sit and not do anything and just
hear nice water sounds. Yeah. But yeah, also those tubs
are like, why can't I do this all the time?
What is going on? And like you said earlier, Samantha,
though self care is often painted as selfish or indulgent,
(12:39):
it's really important to our health. Research shows practicing it
promotes better health, longer life, less stress, higher self esteem,
and more productivity. Actually, um, not practicing self care can
have negative impacts on your mind and body, leading to
things like burnout, not just professionally but personally. And we've
seen a lot of converse station about this recently in
(13:01):
the activist space. It can also be costly in terms
of doctors visits that might be necessary if you're not
looking after yourself, or even the loss of work when
it comes to burnout. Right, and also with burnout, we
could also talk about the new term is fatigue, and
we're talking a lot about now because we're talking about
COVID fatigue or quarantine fatigue or any of those things
(13:23):
and try to go back out. It's a whole thing.
So yeah, it's definitely something that actually helps you care
for yourself in a way that seems selfish, but it's
actually not. And then think about self care. It's not
just about you, but how you impact the other people
in your life and how you can serve your community
and do your job. As the importance of self care
(13:45):
has been largely recognized in many ways, it's been co opted, yes,
by beauty companies and feminized, of course it has. And
if you search for self care kids, you'll see an
I will say this because I actually try to find
one for a friend who was going through a really
hard time, and all, my goodness, you see a lot
of small related items and chocolate and the entire time, like,
(14:07):
I don't know if she likes to do a to
you things that like Michael likes to ride motorcycles and
you know she likes to go to target practice. There's
no need for this, don't get me wrong. If you
love it, that's great too. Absolutely, I love chocolate, Give
me my chocolate. If you specifically search for men's self care,
it is almost always black and red accented grilling stuff
(14:30):
and or alcohol which by by women like alcohol twos.
But that's not always a solution for self care. And mileness.
Just put that out there. And grilling is great. Grilling
is great if you like that, great boss stuff is great.
Once again, I love that. But clearly, this is a space,
like many others, that has been very, very gendered to
(14:52):
even the point to say the words like mental Health Day,
it seems weak, and so people don't want to say
it when it really does not need to be. In
a lot of ways, the gendering is unhealthy. Oh yeah, yeah,
and more and more people are getting in on self
(15:12):
care from Google, trends indicate that searches for self care doubled.
But yeah, there is this unhealthy gender split, and we'll
get into that, but first we're gonna pause for equip
break for word from our sponsor. Hey we're back, Thank
(15:39):
you sponsor, and we're back with self care for men.
Would I see this? I keep wanting to say, just
for men, like the hair product. Yes, I mean that's
a that's a space where the companies have tried to
like masculine eyed self care. It's like, hey, manly man
smells good, so you can get cute lady over there.
(16:01):
Look at this gray bottle is obviously for you, the
dark gray and the only clear with the red top
almost always old spice. Really, they have specifically brought in
a woman to tell her she can't use it because
it's not for her for their newer products. Why because
it smells too nice. So she's like, that's obviously for me,
right right, But he's saying, no, it's mine, don't touch it.
(16:24):
I can't do it's whatever product is available. So men
are not as involved in the self care space as women,
and there are a couple of reasons why. One reason
is that there are more entry points into self care
for women, whether it is Friends of Yours or magazines
or Instagram. It's generally more accessible and acceptable for women. Um.
(16:49):
Some of that is the beauty industry trying to capitalize
off women, no doubt, but it is more acceptable. In
our very warped society. Taking care of yourself is sometimes
viewed as yes, a weakness or selfish, and because we
view women as the quote weaker gender, it's more acceptable
for them to do it. And beauty was a space
(17:09):
that was already dominated by women in a lot of ways,
so it was an easier transition. Not at all self
care is beauty based, not at all, but a lot
of it When we see it advertised. A lot of
it is. There's a lot of dismissal of self care
is being for snowflakes, are vappish women, indulgent women, things
(17:29):
like that, right, which is hilarious because when we look
at the job industry and we talk about the working
from home, how it's doubled women's workfload, and yet we
want to say this is weak. Makes me laugh again.
This is a big deal for a lot of reasons.
We've talked in previous episodes about the rates of mental
health issues and suicide for men. American men are three
(17:50):
point five times more likely to die by suicide than women,
and men are more likely to delay help if they
seek it at all, and they typically don't have that
strong of a part system as women. While self care
obviously it's not going to make these things go away,
it can be an important part of someone's mental health.
But again, the Internet seems to indicate that self care
(18:13):
for men is generally not taken seriously or outright mocked
as weakness. And of course, again this is kind of
that conversation of self care has been kind of hijacked
by the beauty industry, and so therefore that type of
level of spawn. Massages and going to salons so feminized
that men cannot be associated with that, we know, even
(18:35):
though they should. If you want to do that stuff
as a man, it should be acceptable. Massages are are
when I mean, they freaked me out on one level,
but at the end pandemic has kind of care. Yes, yes,
it's gonna take a while, and then we can talk
about the hyper sexualization of the fact that massages are
(18:57):
double entendre right when it comes to red in thing
for men. So that's a whole other conversation that I hate,
just to put that out there. And when self care
does exist, it's often hyper masculine. Eyed even in proponents
of it use a lot of wars like manly and
masculine and all those stupid words. Yeah, I read several
(19:19):
of these articles that had a lot of uses of
manly and masculine, And this really is I think it's
easy to dismiss, but this really is a huge part
of what we're talking about when we're talking about like
toxic masculinity and mental health, and it has it ripples
out and touches all kinds of things. But there was
a part of me that was almost like, I this
(19:43):
feels like the weakness to me that someone has to
pander to you and be like, hey, manly man, You'll
still be a manly man if you like do this thing.
And I'm not, like, I don't. There's not a weakness
there of like recognizing you've need to take care of yourself, right,
And I get why these articles are doing that, but
(20:06):
it just feels very sad that this is the point
that we're at, right, I mean, And then when we
talk about self care, a lot of it is done
in isolation. And then, as we were saying previously about
how oftentimes they don't have support system. When we see
people talking about self care for men, whether it is
having a step of scotch, sitting by yourself in your
(20:28):
lounge share looking out the window, like that's the idea
of self care, and that's not always the most healthy either,
the whole like the private din, the man cake, it's
all very isolating, and to have time with men is
to be with the boys, but that's not necessarily for
self care. Once again, and so it's kind of that
question of why are we so determined to isolate men
(20:52):
as well as to look down on women when they
do need support when everyone needs support. We know this,
We know this, and I do I don't want to
put it in here. America is not the only place,
by any means, where this ideology exists, and because of
the pervasive attitude, there are frequently more crisis resources available
(21:14):
to women. Right before we recorded this, I found a
really fascinating and upsetting article from Australia about a very
similar thing of high rates of suicide among men, but
not a lot of resources dedicated to giving them help.
So that's another issue, like on a even a governmental level.
And when you think of in the past of men
(21:38):
being breadwinners and that idea of like the scott the
mad Men, you know, it's almost sexy that you are
alone with your Scotch in a dim lighting why your
family is like shadow. So if you look at that
idea when being a man basically meant working all of
(21:59):
the time him and not really making time for your family.
Self care doesn't fit into that. It's an athetical to
that whole idea. And we've talked about that on the
show about particularly here in the United States, the idea
of a workaholic and how it's in fact been painted.
It's such a good thing when it is unhealthy. And
obviously times have changed from like the mad Men era,
(22:24):
but a lot of that toxic cultural stuff is still
baked in there and we haven't gotten rid of it.
So that's a part of this whole conversation. I did
see when I was researching this some sites calling for
men to prioritize self care. But they did it. A
lot of them did it by blaming women for feminizing
(22:45):
the space. Basically that because women and female influencers that
they got a lot of blame dominate in quote self care,
they've kept men out and up men need to get
in and take it over, which is wild to me.
A lot of it can't coexist in any way, so
(23:05):
it has to be us versus them, and it literally
becomes the whole man explaining situation of no, no, no, no,
let me show you how we're going to do it,
and this is how we're gonna do it, and it's
our space, don't touch it, how dare you? And maybe
they can talk about that being with like video gaming
or any of that, being like it used to be comfortable.
(23:25):
Now women are doing it too, and I'm like, what
is this divide that it has to be one or
the other. I don't understand. Of course, we also have
a lot of pushback with the whole we're losing our masculinity,
we're losing real men, so we have to claim the
space in a different manner to take back what was
(23:45):
our which is any attention. I guess yeah, I mean
that whole perceived loss of power and and we've talked
about that before, to you of the d of feminization
of the Democratic Party in our country and the masculinization
of the Republican Party, and the Republican Party very much
(24:08):
being like no snowflakes, while at the same time being
extremely sensitive, Uh, cancel culture. That's a different thing I did.
I was reminded of that Gillette commercial where they were like, dudes,
it's not cool to mistreat women, which you can argue
back and forth about when companies do that the benefits
(24:28):
in the town side, but people were so upset about, like,
how damn you tell men with mystat women ridiculous? Anyway,
I don't remember that commercial commercial. It came out I
think the twenty nineteen Super Bowl, and it was just like,
you know, commercial about like it's not cool to make
(24:52):
these comments to women or the cat call. You know,
sexually assault someone not cool and people freaked out about it.
Um god, dare you say I can't assault someone? This
is very like loose memory. So if people are like,
actually it was about this, I just I just remember
that what we're talking about has tried to been tackled
(25:15):
in age lit commercial and so that's the where we're at. Well, yeah,
speaking of commercials, obviously we see this in beauty hygiene
projects a lot, usually a big Yes, it's a big
muscular dude selling this idea and that he uses X
y Z product and he is the dudeliest of dudes,
(25:39):
usually in a humorous manner. Of course, I think the
yoga commercial comes to mind. I'm like what And then
then the food. Everything has to be bigger portions or
bigger sizes for the hungry. Okay, cool, cool cool. We
talked about the old spice and I'm still trying to
(26:00):
figure out what's happening there. They're not letting that go,
and we know acts trying to turn it a little bit.
I don't know if it's worked well for them. Has
it worked well? I don't know what you're talking about,
but knowing them I'm going to say no, but that's
a very acts trying to be all like, I'm a
sensitive dude. This is the smell I have. I think
(26:23):
maybe I'm thinking about this wrong. Even a long time since,
I've seen a lot of commercials. My favorite is want
there it does That's my favorite, but dessert commercials, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
I got you. I I still thought to that. And
then there are some areas traditionally viewed as self care
that men do take part in, especially when it comes
(26:44):
to physical looks. Everybody looks a good trim beard. We
know this. However, this is frequently more to me, to
standard and less about taking care of themselves, you know,
maybe being mocked constantly. Like the whole level of metrosexual
came out and right was very either into it or
not into it. So the lumberjack sexual came in as well,
(27:06):
which is kind of along those same lines. I just
find that funny. Do we have that for women? What
meterosexual level? Yeah? I don't think we do. I'd be
worth investigating the whole episode on. Yeah, I don't think
we do. I think you are either. It's like the
flip of I guess being slightly more masculine. I don't know.
(27:33):
I think that's the whole level of needing to identify
men as manly or not their sexuality, That we have
to know their sexuality, whether or not it's it benefits
for whatever reason. Whether so if he's metrosexual, that means
he's heterosexual, but has style, right in that sense, So
we have to know, Okay, okay, just because he has
style doesn't mean he's gay. We must classify this, which
(27:56):
is a whole level of homophobia and itself that we
could talk about, which again kind of goes down to
this whole gender idea that we have to label it
and make sure we know that something is masculine in
order to prove manliness. Yep, and at the detriment and
the health of everyone. Yeah, there's definitely a layer of
(28:16):
homophobia involved in all of this. Despite all this native stuff,
men's self care market it is growing. According to Allied
Market Research projects it will be worth million dollars two.
That's not necessarily a good thing, but uh, I guess
it shows that at least companies they're they're making movements
(28:37):
in those areas capitalism, capital Indeed, we didn't want to
talk about self care and women for a little bit
as well. But first we're gonna pause for one more
quick break for word from sponsor, and we're back. Thank you, sponsor.
(29:05):
So a lot of people have written and spoken about
self care when it comes to women, us included, but
we did want to talk about it a little bit
over at Huffington's post, Lindsay Holmes wrote, self care shouldn't
be reduced to a fleeting activity or dispensable product. It
shouldn't even just be considered a wellness phenomenon for women.
(29:25):
It's a difficult but necessary act that helps us survive
in a world with work demands, family pressures, duties at home,
rampant incidents of sexual harassment, a relentless news cycle, financial worries,
and more. In our reflection, takes time and energy. Resources
were already lacking. Self care is hard work, and I
wanted to include that quote because I think people forget
(29:45):
when we're thinking, oh, it's this selfish, indulgent woman. It
is hard work, and it's something that you have to
prioritize and take the time for, which in itself can
be difficult when you do have all of these things
that she listed them more, I think a lot of
people do view it as sort of a hippie dippy
wellness phenomenon, and absolutely companies have capitalized on that, and
(30:12):
some people do treat it that way, But what at
its core, that's not what it is and that's not
what it should be. Right Religiously, it was a whole command.
It was a whole day. Whether we're looking at traditional
Jewish cultures or and or just Western Christian ideas that
Sunday Sabbath. You know, people get very upset about this sometimes,
and some people don't take it seriously at all, however
(30:33):
you want to say it. My parents got upset when
alcohol sales happen on Sunday and they're like, what's the
world going to? But it was a religious thing, and
it's somehows changed for a lot of the cultures, and
not that you have to do it and you have
to set a date. It shouldn't be a command by
an overlord, essentially, for the lack of better words, but
it was there for a reason. And yeah, talking about
(30:55):
the fact that most of the times, for women, this
is the first thing to go out the wind. You
have to take something off your list. This is it
and we know this, We know this, which again part
of that is if we're not doing something, that we're
not doing it right, and that had this level of guilt.
It is this idea that productivity is the morality of
(31:17):
your life, point blank, um. And a lot of us
measure success by productivity, whether it's how many hustles you've got,
how many things are doing, what are you've gotten by
a certain age, Like I still have it in my
head that I am not successful, I am not adult
thing because I did not hit these markers that you
and I talked about so many times. That's yeah. The
(31:37):
other day I think it was very fairy. Somebody called
me an adult, which I am, but I was like,
I mean, just listing off the things that I haven't
done is one of the first things that I do, like,
oh no, I haven't done this and this and this
and that does not And then comparing myself to others
(31:58):
who are fifteen years longer than me, twenty years after
than thirty years younger than me doing it better, I
don't like, what have I done with my life? But
I mean that's the kind of thing is we define
ourselves that way, which is detrimental. Yes, in the end,
and I you know back to good old capitalism. I
think there's a big part of it actually is that
(32:20):
idea of the workaholic and that that's somehow a good
thing and that is what you measure success by. And
then on top of that this idea, especially in the
United States, that if you hustle hard enough, you will
succeed no matter what obstacles, systemic obstacles are in your way.
(32:43):
And in that way, you're blaming yourself, whether you know
it or not, for issues that are really beyond your control,
and others blame others. I can't understand the systemic level
why it can't be like this. So it's like cautionary
till is like early bird, get the worm. All this
bs has really been ingrained into our head that we're
(33:05):
not successful if we do not follow these things and
have all of our savings and all of these things
saved away so that we can enjoy the easy, relaxed
life which is very quickly disappearing for a lot of
our generations, that whole level of social security, we know,
that financial stability that doesn't exist where we talk about
no living wages. Starting as a freshly graduated college student
(33:30):
with some loans under my belt because my parents could
not It's not one of those had everything saved away
from me. So I had to pay everything as best
as I could, and that included some loans, including the
fact that I had to live on campus, all of
those to say, and then going to a job that
only paid me twenty five thousand a year to live
by myself, to take care of my myself for the
(33:52):
first time ever. And that doesn't include the fact that
they take away money for insurance, that take away money
for all of these benefits that I did not understand,
you know, like all of these things. And to the
fact that we are supposed to pretend like we know
what we're doing. And then realizing that my loans went
from this to twenty times that because of something that
(34:14):
was out of my controls, Like, what the hell just happened?
This became more than my wishing for the four years.
And to say, oh, but you should have done it better,
you should have planned ahead. How do you tell the
nineteen twenty two year old to plan ahead? Yeah, yeah,
and you know, we that's a whole separate conversation, but
we really don't train people for that kind of stuff,
like young people. And then we're like surprised when they
(34:36):
don't know what to do, Like, Okay, you're expecting this
eighteen year old to make the wise financial decisions. Great,
but that's the thing is like that means you have
failed because you are not to this level. But you
better not take care of yourself because you will never
get to that level. Yeah. Yeah, And I think a
(34:57):
part of that too, which we're going to talk about
a little bit in a second, is self esteem related.
Like part of self care is you have to say
you're worth the self care. And I think that's hard
for a lot of people, and I think especially marginalized folks.
If you are living in a country that has these
systems in place, are just social events that remind you
(35:20):
that you're not valued as much as say, straight white guy,
it can be hard to tell yourself like, no, I
am and I deserve to take this time. And just
because I didn't understand a very complicated financial system at
the age of eighteen doesn't mean that I don't deserve
these things. I still don't understand. And yes, since domestic
(35:40):
work is still taken on more by women, and studies
show women have less leisure time than men by about
three times, it can be harder for women to carve
out this time to take care of themselves, and perhaps
doing so comes with increased guilts. And there is a difference,
which I do want to say here, between meeting basic
needs and self care. So if you're saying, like, oh,
(36:02):
I've carved out the time to get enough sleep tonight,
that's great, that's not really self care. It can be.
But like if you're talking about a very that's just
your norm as you don't get enough sleep, that's not
really self care. That's that's a basic need that you're
not meeting. And around the world, women don't have access
(36:23):
to health care at the same rates as men, which
does impact self care. So that is another part of
this conversation, right, and we know the pandemic alone has
affected that immensely, immensely. Even though again we've talked about
the fact that you know, we're at home, it's okay,
what we're doing, we can do this constantly. That's not true.
We know this. We already talked about again mentioning how
(36:44):
the fact that majority of the household work falls on
women in general, as well as the stress of being
quarantined and stress of living in a pandemic world uh
causes a lot of that. And then when you can't escape,
so in your usual methods of escaping, such as exercising
with wherever you go to exercise and or traveling or
(37:07):
even just being able to walk out the door, that
is highly affected as well. Again, we talked about the
fact that a lot of the money that was slowly
going towards women to help with care has disappeared because
other issues have come rise. And we know that when
it comes down to it, it's secondary for women to
get the care that they need. Yes, around the world.
(37:30):
That's a whole different conversation and recognizing that you, again
as any said, that you actually are worth that, that
you are worth the time to run away from your
family for two hours. Maybe I don't know, it's okay,
I mean I think for me, and this is very
very general. We went to your beach house and I
(37:53):
have not been so excited. And it was like six seven,
eight months after quarantine began, because we were I think
we went it was labor day and it started in
Mark and I hadn't left and I was losing it.
I was losing it and just being able to be
in a car to drive somewhere was such a phenomenon
(38:17):
at that moment that the minute we got in the
car and we started driving in like realizing we were
on a trip pulled something from me that was it
so like to me, like stuff like that, being like,
oh wow, being so scared and you and I have
talked about this. We are so scared, especially as podcasters,
as people who are sort of you know, seen, I
(38:39):
guess this is the best way to put it. We're
so scared of saying the wrong things, or doing the
wrong things, or being hypocritical and being really cautious because
of course we don't want to talk about that was
a privilege. Had I not known you, I would have
never been able to do that, and it felt like
a privilege. It was amazing and doing things like that
as a privilege. But that's the other part to that.
It's like I don't feel like I can because I
(38:59):
know other people are suffering, so am I allowed to
do this? And that again that builds onto that self
worth and again being a basically the whole different level.
You should be able to have that, and it's absurd
that we don't. Being able to be on living wage,
you should be able to have that, especially when you
work your ass off trying to provide for your people
that you love in the story. But things like that,
like the traveling that I got to do for the
(39:22):
first time in eight months, was such a glorious moment
that felt like self care, but felt so guilty that
I was doing it. Yeah. Yeah, I thought about that
a lot lately because I think a lot of women
do this, um, a lot of marginalized people do this,
But I do that a lot where I'm like, well,
is it worth I don't have it as bad as
(39:42):
this person or whoever, so I'm just being a big
baby or whatever it is like because I don't have
it as bad. And I think that is a part
of what holds people back when it comes to self care,
is that guilt around that whole idea. And when we're
talking about social media as part of this, it has
(40:04):
been a great space for normalizing self care. But if
it becomes competitive or performative, that's defeating the purpose, and
a lot of self care can get caught up in
reinforcing tropes around beauty and weight. So going back to
what I was saying at the beginning about pinterest, to me,
that's what a lot of pinterest is is people kind
of showing off that there because they eat this and
(40:28):
they exercise as much these this is how they look
in these the clothes they can wear, and and that
can be healthy. But if you turn it, it's so
like a fine line. And that's a problem I have
a lot is I turn it into something that is
not self care anymore. It is like a competitive thing.
And speaking of that, I think there's a hijacking of
(40:48):
self care too in this self help productivity workspace that's
basically selling it as a tool to do more work,
which it does help productivity, but it's not about that.
It's not about doing more work necess fairly. And it's
not some magical way to become a CEO. If you're
like good, if you really crush it, it comes to
self scare, it's not that's not what it is. Look,
(41:12):
I admire and respect the people who are on here
talking about their fitness and getting these workouts and then
having the whole why aren't you doing it? That makes
me want to throw my phone across the room like that,
Like I see that constantly and I want to be
like because I'm depressed and my anxiety is really high,
And all I really want to do is carl up
in a fetal position under my blanket while my dog
(41:33):
sits on top of me until last suff Okay, I
mean that's some of the level that I'm at. But
the thing is, if it's for them, that's great. But
to turn it around and accuse people of not being
able to hit your mark is really damaging. And when
you do that as a way of getting likes or
getting promotions what like promotional benefits from other companies, that's damaging.
(41:57):
And what you're doing is causing more harm than than
anything else. And I say you, I'm just saying the
general in all all aspects, because let's be honest, this year,
it's been a year of collective trauma. I want to
talk about this later. It could be a whole other
episode about women and collective trauma, especially in the marginalized communities,
(42:17):
and we're gonna talk a little more about the intersections
of this. But the level of trauma that has happened
this year, the fact that anyone got up congratulations. There's
a debate about drinking water. It's absurd. If you're doing it, wonderful.
If you're not, you do you be healthy, though, be
healthy again. We have to recognize how self care looks
(42:40):
different for people of color and for the LGBTQ community
or any other marginalized groups. Let's be honest politically, what
we've been seeing it's horrible. And I think we're coming
through the upswing, but the constant back and forth, the
constant back and forth, it's traumatizing. I maybe because I've
(43:00):
been so focused and been so isolated that that's all
I focus on. But these past few years feel disgusting.
Whether it's I've lost friendships, I've lost family members, I've
lost trust in people. There's so much that we have
to talk about, and we have talked about, and we
continue to talk about, and then we put on people's
(43:20):
shoulders to explain it's been a hard damn year period,
and self care may just mean I'm not going to
talk to you today, i might not see my family
for a year. I'm okay. Things like that have happened.
And then the amount of death and the amount of
(43:42):
heartache that we've seen on a consistent basis, and maybe
it's just because we're seeing it for the first time.
Also because our administration allowed millions of people to die
all of those things way, So when we talk about
what's happening in the marginalist commun unities, when we look
at all of the politics that are having even today
(44:02):
with the trans community, l g b t Q plus community.
I just saw a new a law allowing for organizations
to discriminate against the l g B t Q plus
community to allowing them to be part of the group.
I see consistently the bills that are trying to block
that community from adopting, which I have a lot of
fields on. We know this. We consistently see the bills,
(44:26):
the injustice that has happened on all the levels, mats shootings,
just this freaking weak a loan has made one of vomit.
This last month has been awful. So when we talk
about self care, it may just very well be I
don't want to talk to anyone in the story, and
(44:47):
that's okay. So to try to place this whole line
of buy this, do this, be this is damaging in itself.
I'm done. Yeah, And UM, when I was researching this,
there are a lot of resources out there for that
are for specific marginalized groups. And what I was reading
(45:10):
from people who were writing about it and they were
talking about the value of community support and camaraderie and
finding those things. So certainly if you need those resources,
they are out there. Also, much bigger conversation, but the
whole mass shooting thing, like some of that is what
we're talking about here with men can't get mental health care,
(45:33):
much bigger conversation. We also need to talk about accessibility
and cost here, because of course, when companies got involved,
prices went up for things items that have been in
this self care space, like like skincare, beauty they can get.
It can get really pricey, especially when celebrities and influencers
get involved, which more and more male celebrities have been
(45:55):
getting involved in the sun noticed not an option for
everyone and may turn people off who otherwise would participate
in self care. That's what they're seeing, that's what they
think it is. Again beauty, it's not a self care
make a lot of things, but for a lot of
people that is I have friends or that is their
thing of like doing the facial and just relaxing, or
(46:17):
if we talk about physical activities that aren't possible or
comfortable for everyone for variety of reasons. Just keeping those
things in mind too. Of accessibility, and uh yeah, of
course they are predatory products out there marketed as self
care that are like guaranteed to get rid of your
eye bags or whatever it is. That's not I beg
(46:38):
My friend calls them, um baggies, I baggies baggies. I
love it. Yeah. And for those who have been able
to be successful and maybe publish a book or do
some things we kindle, friendships whatever, that's phenomenal too, and
you should be allowed to celebrate. That's the other part again,
as at guilt level. Don't point out all say you're
(47:00):
not doing this like me, don't do that. Let's just
say that. But celebrate what you have been able to do.
Celebrate the good things in your life. I mean, I
do celebrate the fact that I am able to do
this instead of being in the world, which for my
old coworkers who are continually seeing trauma on the outside
(47:21):
and then continually dealing with trauma in their work space,
that's a lot. And I'm very grateful that I I
am in this space where I can process it in
a different manner now. But it's not lost on me
that people are doing these jobs, and people are doing
these things, people are doing this work and it's important
that we allow for them to celebrate the things that
(47:43):
they have been able to accomplish. I just remember one
of my biggest things being in that field, just constantly
thing I just needed one small victory, like crying about
it and how big of a deal it was. Whether
it's to know that I helped a kid rehabilitate and
get off of probation. In general, like I was able
to be like, we're gonna work this out, we're gonna
do these things together in the story, or hooking them
(48:05):
up and able to get them an internship, to be
able to make money, like stuff like that is phenomenal.
We're not gonna talk about the incarceration system, which I
have a lot of guilt about in general. But the
thing is there's a collective amount of trauma that is happening,
and we need to be able to celebrate the things
that can't be celebrated. And for those who have you know,
(48:26):
children in their lives who were able to have babies
and and are living in a place of health, and
that those who are seeing someone for the first time,
that's that's wonderful. Congratulations and we celebrate that with you. Yeah, Yeah,
that's I'm glad you said that, because I do. I
think that is another aspect of this is people feel
like they can't share happy things right now. I know
(48:48):
I don't. That's why I like not on social media,
hardly enter anymore. I don't want to post some stuff,
but I can't post it. The world is on fire.
I like self deprecating stuff like and I tripped and
trust in my angle in a living room. But for
those who are asking, how, how do we even go
down this road? Or should we even go down this route?
(49:10):
So if you're listening to this and thinking I need
to start doing this, you don't have to. But if
you want to, or maybe like I need to do better,
how to go about that? Again, you're better stefferent from
everybody else's just be healthy. So here are some tips.
Choose an activity or activity you enjoy or that relaxes you,
such as playing fiends and trying to beat your coworkers
(49:33):
like Lauren who has yet to reply to my banter.
If that makes you feel better, then do it. Yeah, yeah,
get a get some activities that you like better healthy um,
and then narrow it down to one at first that
you want to start putting into your daily routine. So
here we're talking more about incorporating it more regularly as
(49:54):
opposed to that sort of one time event. Then yeah,
try implementing it every day for a week. After that
week's done, think about how you feel about it, repeat
with another activity, switch out activities, or just to reflect
on how you want to go about it and if
it worked for you and why it did or didn't
work for you. If it didn't, it's okay. It moving on,
(50:14):
It is okay. And speaking of I, I did want
to briefly talk about this because I I, like I said,
I'm really bad at it, and uh, I was working
on this outline the day after I got my second
dose of the vaccine and I ended up getting having
a pretty severe reaction, I will say. And I was
(50:34):
in bed and I was shaking so hard that the
bed frame was rattling, and I was sweating. It looked
like I had gone swimming. I was so cold, and
I felt so bad, and I was typing like women
made to do better at self care? Not bad, but
essentially like how could women be better at self care?
And then I was working away and Lauren, my co
(50:58):
worker and friend, she texted me and said stop working,
and then she sent an email out to like everybody
I was supposed to work with that day to record,
and she said, we're not recording. She's good. And then
you showed up. You're so kind and you bought me fun.
But I felt guilty about it because I was like,
(51:18):
oh no, what if I was, I know, you wouldn't
let me like I'm doing it, damn it. Fine, fine,
this is part of myself here. We've talked about this before,
like for people like me, I love doing things like that,
so I have to do it, So let me do it.
Let me do it. I kept be like, oh no, no,
And then I did have the thing where I was
(51:40):
like so proud of myself, which is very unhealthy because
I was like, wow, I feel terrible, but look at
how much work I'm doing. Yeah, and I did nothing.
I did nothing. I we purposely didn't record. We changed
the date, and I was like, you know what, this
is going to be a rough one for I don't know,
maybe it could be a rough one I've seen store.
(52:00):
And of course my reaction because we ended up getting
our shots at the same day. Hey, we're very different,
Like I was nowhere in your as bad as you were.
We had I had this a little bit of chills
and enough favor, but that was quickly gone. But I
was like, I'm just going to check in on her
and make sure she's alive. But we're not talking about work.
And I purposely did not ask about work. And we
(52:22):
did bring some noodles for you, because you know, this
is all about getting together. And that's the other part
this is you have to recognize when your body is
telling you something because it's telling you something for a reason.
And that was hey, stop it, go to bed, damn it.
(52:42):
It's surprisingly difficult to do that, I feel like as women,
but we are especially I can just speak. In my case,
I've distanced myself so much from my body that it's
I can't basic things like sleepy and hunger, and I don't.
I'm working, honest of that. Yeah. I on the other hand,
(53:03):
I do recognize it, but it's accord to what I
have to do. And if there's just like I felt
guilty because I had a feeling you were working, and
so I didn't know what else to do. But I'm like, yeah,
but I'm sleepy and I'm tired, and we can do
this later. If I do things I don't want to
just laid back. JA. I was like, I'm done, I'm good.
(53:29):
I will do that, but there are days that I'm like,
I have to do more. If it came down to
helping someone else, then yeah, I will do it. But
if it comes down to it's just me, Oh, I
got that. So you and I clearly have work to
do as well. Yeah, I have better at it. And
(53:53):
like the fan ficed, writing fan fiction is something I
do hiking when whenever we can go, when I can
go back out comfortably because I know I could have
always but I was never comfortable. That is a big
one for me. So it is something that I have
been mindful of and have been trying to be better at.
But long ways ago. Still well, listeners, we would love
to hear about your self care. What do you do?
(54:15):
Are are you any good at it? Are you terrible
at it? You can email us our emails, Stuff Media
Mom Stuff at i hurt media dot com. You can
find us on Twitter at most Stuff podcast, or on
Instagram and stuff I've Never told you. Thanks as always
to our super producer Christina. Thank you Christina, and thanks
to you for listening. Stuff I never told these protection
I Hurt Radio. For more podcast from I Heart Radio,
visit I Heartradio app, Apple podcast, or every listen to
(54:36):
your favorite shows
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha. I welcome to Steph.
I've never told you production I heart radio. So for
today's question, Samantha, I'm not sure you know the answer,
but do you remember when you became familiar with the
idea of self care? You know? I honestly, I don't
(00:30):
think it was until recently that I learned of this.
And when I say recently, the idea and concept of
self care was not something in my Christian upbringing. Sure,
so that was not something especially as a woman who
was supposed to be the caretaker of the nurturer. That's
not a thing. For my mother. I definitely never saw
(00:51):
that from her. She's constantly going. She is still constantly
going to this day and she is sixty five. So
for me, I don't think it really came into play
until I literally had a panic attack, anxiety attack that
shut me down for a week in when I was
working as a child abuse investigator and I had a
(01:13):
pank attack in the middle of Longhorns. Yes, I did,
to the point that my friends were like, are you okay?
Are you okay? Like the coworkers and they're like, don't
look at it. Don't look at it, because they knew
it made it worse, and so it wasn't until then,
so out of college in my first job, that I
truly figured out, Oh, I'm trying to kill myself through
(01:35):
doing too much and not taking care of myself because
I'm putting the responsibility of the world on me. So
I feel like it really wasn't until about two thousand
and six, so pretty a pretty long time that I
understood the concept without knowing the term right, And that
included a lot of hiking and exercising, and that was
my like form of self care. And don't get me wrong,
(01:56):
I already started therapy, but that was trauma related, So
self care is really different delving into trauma. Yeah, as
we all know, as we all know people who listen
to this show certainly, I actually don't think I knew
about self care because I feel like, you know, you
(02:18):
know about it in terms of taking care of yourself,
but the term and the idea of like prioritizing it
and that it's important. I don't think I knew until
we've talked about it before on this show in several
different instances. I am really bad at it. I think
a lot of women are, so even when I was like, Okay,
(02:42):
I'm gonna do this self care thing. My attitude around
it was the opposite of what it needed to be.
It was like another check box that made it in
another stressor and like, oh, I have to do this thing,
so we are going to talk about that. But I
it's still something I struggle with. I mean, I think
for me, yeah, the term was not self care. It
(03:04):
was mental health day, which I know we talked about
in my industry where I came from, especially with like
government jobs or service jobs. We talked about mental health
days and trying to get them. And it's so frowned
upon in that industry. Like they tell you to do it.
They tell you to do it, they tell you to
shut off your phone, they tell you that, you know,
you take you a week of vacation. And a few
people have and I love and admire that, And I
(03:27):
think a few people have because they had to, you know,
like they had families or whatever whatnot, and it costs
a lot of problems and marriages or problems with their
children because a lot of people would put their job first.
But we were told to take our mental health day,
but made sure to be told don't say it's a
mental health day, tell him you're sick. It's just kind
of that level. So for the longest time, and I
(03:47):
know I think people think it that way still, that
term is really really it's definitely become a little more
of a fad, the term not necessarily a practice. So
to me, it's kind of a newer idea, and it
does feel really else fish to say you need that, Yes,
And we're going to talk about that that feeling, and
and today we're we're also going to talk a lot
(04:09):
about how self care has been feminized, how seen as
sort of this purview of women, and as it's been
in all the news a lot lately for a variety
of reasons. But I didn't want to bring this up
that Pinterest recently announced guidelines to I guess, foster a
healthier environment on their platform, to be kinder and to
(04:32):
be more positive in general, which I find interesting because Pinterest.
To me, there's a lot of great things that can
happen on Pinterest, but I see the negative of almost that,
like wishful, you know, your pinboard. If I want to
be what is that called in inspiration? We want to
be this thin and I'm gonna do this and this
and this and like that perfect life that you build unhealthy. Yeah,
(04:57):
I'm not really into Pinterest, so but I'm definitely seeing
the boards and that sounds horrifying because also people can
look at this, right, they can, but you can put
it on private. I think all of mine are on private,
except for my random nineties board. I was going to
a nineties theme party with costume, of course, but all
(05:20):
my like you'll find out soon enough. You know what
that makes me panic? Let's not, I know. So back
to this Interest thing is they have this creator code
that says I agree to be kind, check my facts,
be aware of triggers, practice inclusion, and do no harm,
(05:43):
which I'm curious how they will re enforce those. But
we're seeing more social media platforms trying to do these things,
which is something else we've talked about a lot. And
I remember when I first came on as a host
of this show, some people would write in and say
(06:06):
why they get like trigger warnings, why they thought they
were like useless and actually harmful, and I would argue back,
like my side of it. And I feel like it's
shifting towards people being more aware of why you need
to think about those sorts of things, right, I mean, honestly,
that's kind of why we how that conversation about trauma
(06:27):
series began is everybody was so leaning to oh my god,
everybody's so PC that are so sensitive, blah blah blah,
and we're like, no, but this is why we need
these things, because it has for our entire lives. We
didn't have this, and I really wish we did, and
that is okay to have those warnings, but why it
(06:48):
was important and why we need to respect them. But yeah,
that's interesting to see because we have kind of gone
all up back and forth and back and forth of
is this a problem or is this a solution or
is this adding on to the problems, And it's kind
of I'm really glad to see that it's sticking. It's
becoming a thing, aren't you. Yeah? Yeah. And I remember
(07:09):
in particular, one person was a professor and they wrote
in and they were like, I just feel that giving
trigger warnings it means that topics that need to be
talked about won't be talked about. And I was like,
I hear you, but I think it doesn't mean I
won't show up to whatever lesson. It just means I'll
show up knowing I need to be prepared for this,
(07:29):
and I obviously you and I don't think. That doesn't
mean don't talk about something. It's just giving puple that
like warning if they need it to take care of themselves.
And speaking of let's do a brief definition, like we
like to do, what is self care? According to the
World Health Organization, it is quote, self care is what
(07:51):
people do for themselves to establish and maintain health and
to prevent and deal with illness. It is a broad concept,
encompassing hygiene at general and personal nutrition and type in
quality of food eaten, lifestyle, sporting activities, leisure, etcetera. Environmental
factors that living conditions, social habits, etcetera, as socia and
economic factors, income level, cultural beliefs, etcetera. And self medication.
(08:13):
This can include things like yes, nutrition, hygiene, or seeking
medical care. It is often described as something that brings
you joy. And this definition is pretty old. I think
it's from actually and it's been updated and various outlets
like the World Health Organization. To me, this makes sense,
but I think of self care is a much more
(08:35):
like find something, yeah that brings you joy and do
that thing, right, But I do think that large definition
that makes sense as well. Right. Some have put self
care into categories like emotional self care, taking dedicated breaks,
physical self care, getting enough sleep, eating well, and spiritual
(08:56):
self care, which can include spending time in nature. Um
break it down even further into temporary versus enduring, so
like a one time self care thing or something that
is an ongoing self care thing. And also I really
recommend looking up. Actually it's not. I don't know. I
thought it was funny, but the World Health Organization has
(09:17):
a self care hippopotamus diagram, which did bring me joy
and I did laugh quite heartily at it. Well, I
love hippopotamus so even though they're quite dangerous, Samantha, I'm
sure I also like many other things that I would
rather not hang out with, you know, right, it's fair
just saying so. It can manifest many ways, like writing
(09:41):
or journaling, meditating, yoga, hiking, listening to music, stretching and
crafting a long bath with some wine one of my favorites.
Taking time on social media, which I yet to be
able to do, enjoy a nice cup of coffee, a
facial allowing yourself to say no or cancel plans which
I'm a at happy hour with friends, which oh my goodness,
(10:03):
we've gotten vaccinated, so we can do that again. Yea. Um,
still safely, of course, and basically a way for you
to make space to relax, check in with yourself and recharge.
And as an introvert, I definitely have to do this
on a consistent basis. Uh. Self care goes hand in
hand with mindfulness of being aware when you're engaging in
unhealthy habits or behaviors and asking yourself what triggered that? Right,
(10:27):
and quarantine has made self care more difficult in a
lot of ways, which sounds like that doesn't make sense.
But if you're thinking, but all I've been doing is
watching Netflix on my couch during the pandemic, isn't that
self care? Why do I need self care? It does
not necessarily count. Unless it's a mindful decision to take
(10:49):
care of yourself, It doesn't really qualify as self care.
It might be a coping mechanism. But if that's all
you're doing, you're buying and mine won't thank you for it.
No blame, no shame at all. Um. There is an
end it in my couch that was not there before
this quarantine. Oh, it's just an odd space to navigate
(11:10):
our thoughts on self care and productivity when you are
confined inside. At least that's been my case. I've definitely
given a lot of thoughts and mindfulness and I think
I've gotten better at it. But by getting better at it,
I've learned I have a lot of other issues that
I need to get better at. I think this is
(11:33):
the problem with reflecting too much on yourself. You're like, well, well,
when they check in, oh crap, Like there are so
many things, especially for a person like you who's on
the go all the time. For me talking about the
Netflix thing, do not think about those things. I consistently
watched the same things over and over and over against
at least I can just drift off, but it's all
(11:55):
the time. And for me, the practice of self care
is actually meditating. I've talked about the colmat before, and
I've talked about how much I enjoy it, and I
don't use it as often as I had, like meaning daily,
But when I do, it is a self awareness of knowing, Okay,
I need to do this to focus a little bit.
That's not Netflix, you know, And so I think, yeah, definitely,
(12:16):
But having those moments is very RESTful to me to
be able to sit and not do anything and just
hear nice water sounds. Yeah. But yeah, also those tubs
are like, why can't I do this all the time?
What is going on? And like you said earlier, Samantha,
though self care is often painted as selfish or indulgent,
(12:39):
it's really important to our health. Research shows practicing it
promotes better health, longer life, less stress, higher self esteem,
and more productivity. Actually, um, not practicing self care can
have negative impacts on your mind and body, leading to
things like burnout, not just professionally but personally. And we've
seen a lot of converse station about this recently in
(13:01):
the activist space. It can also be costly in terms
of doctors visits that might be necessary if you're not
looking after yourself, or even the loss of work when
it comes to burnout. Right, and also with burnout, we
could also talk about the new term is fatigue, and
we're talking a lot about now because we're talking about
COVID fatigue or quarantine fatigue or any of those things
(13:23):
and try to go back out. It's a whole thing.
So yeah, it's definitely something that actually helps you care
for yourself in a way that seems selfish, but it's
actually not. And then think about self care. It's not
just about you, but how you impact the other people
in your life and how you can serve your community
and do your job. As the importance of self care
(13:45):
has been largely recognized in many ways, it's been co opted, yes,
by beauty companies and feminized, of course it has. And
if you search for self care kids, you'll see an
I will say this because I actually try to find
one for a friend who was going through a really
hard time, and all, my goodness, you see a lot
of small related items and chocolate and the entire time, like,
(14:07):
I don't know if she likes to do a to
you things that like Michael likes to ride motorcycles and
you know she likes to go to target practice. There's
no need for this, don't get me wrong. If you
love it, that's great too. Absolutely, I love chocolate, Give
me my chocolate. If you specifically search for men's self care,
it is almost always black and red accented grilling stuff
(14:30):
and or alcohol which by by women like alcohol twos.
But that's not always a solution for self care. And mileness.
Just put that out there. And grilling is great. Grilling
is great if you like that, great boss stuff is great.
Once again, I love that. But clearly, this is a space,
like many others, that has been very, very gendered to
(14:52):
even the point to say the words like mental Health Day,
it seems weak, and so people don't want to say
it when it really does not need to be. In
a lot of ways, the gendering is unhealthy. Oh yeah, yeah,
and more and more people are getting in on self
(15:12):
care from Google, trends indicate that searches for self care doubled.
But yeah, there is this unhealthy gender split, and we'll
get into that, but first we're gonna pause for equip
break for word from our sponsor. Hey we're back, Thank
(15:39):
you sponsor, and we're back with self care for men.
Would I see this? I keep wanting to say, just
for men, like the hair product. Yes, I mean that's
a that's a space where the companies have tried to
like masculine eyed self care. It's like, hey, manly man
smells good, so you can get cute lady over there.
(16:01):
Look at this gray bottle is obviously for you, the
dark gray and the only clear with the red top
almost always old spice. Really, they have specifically brought in
a woman to tell her she can't use it because
it's not for her for their newer products. Why because
it smells too nice. So she's like, that's obviously for me,
right right, But he's saying, no, it's mine, don't touch it.
(16:24):
I can't do it's whatever product is available. So men
are not as involved in the self care space as women,
and there are a couple of reasons why. One reason
is that there are more entry points into self care
for women, whether it is Friends of Yours or magazines
or Instagram. It's generally more accessible and acceptable for women. Um.
(16:49):
Some of that is the beauty industry trying to capitalize
off women, no doubt, but it is more acceptable. In
our very warped society. Taking care of yourself is sometimes
viewed as yes, a weakness or selfish, and because we
view women as the quote weaker gender, it's more acceptable
for them to do it. And beauty was a space
(17:09):
that was already dominated by women in a lot of ways,
so it was an easier transition. Not at all self
care is beauty based, not at all, but a lot
of it When we see it advertised. A lot of
it is. There's a lot of dismissal of self care
is being for snowflakes, are vappish women, indulgent women, things
(17:29):
like that, right, which is hilarious because when we look
at the job industry and we talk about the working
from home, how it's doubled women's workfload, and yet we
want to say this is weak. Makes me laugh again.
This is a big deal for a lot of reasons.
We've talked in previous episodes about the rates of mental
health issues and suicide for men. American men are three
(17:50):
point five times more likely to die by suicide than women,
and men are more likely to delay help if they
seek it at all, and they typically don't have that
strong of a part system as women. While self care
obviously it's not going to make these things go away,
it can be an important part of someone's mental health.
But again, the Internet seems to indicate that self care
(18:13):
for men is generally not taken seriously or outright mocked
as weakness. And of course, again this is kind of
that conversation of self care has been kind of hijacked
by the beauty industry, and so therefore that type of
level of spawn. Massages and going to salons so feminized
that men cannot be associated with that, we know, even
(18:35):
though they should. If you want to do that stuff
as a man, it should be acceptable. Massages are are
when I mean, they freaked me out on one level,
but at the end pandemic has kind of care. Yes, yes,
it's gonna take a while, and then we can talk
about the hyper sexualization of the fact that massages are
(18:57):
double entendre right when it comes to red in thing
for men. So that's a whole other conversation that I hate,
just to put that out there. And when self care
does exist, it's often hyper masculine. Eyed even in proponents
of it use a lot of wars like manly and
masculine and all those stupid words. Yeah, I read several
(19:19):
of these articles that had a lot of uses of
manly and masculine, And this really is I think it's
easy to dismiss, but this really is a huge part
of what we're talking about when we're talking about like
toxic masculinity and mental health, and it has it ripples
out and touches all kinds of things. But there was
a part of me that was almost like, I this
(19:43):
feels like the weakness to me that someone has to
pander to you and be like, hey, manly man, You'll
still be a manly man if you like do this thing.
And I'm not, like, I don't. There's not a weakness
there of like recognizing you've need to take care of yourself, right,
And I get why these articles are doing that, but
(20:06):
it just feels very sad that this is the point
that we're at, right, I mean, And then when we
talk about self care, a lot of it is done
in isolation. And then, as we were saying previously about
how oftentimes they don't have support system. When we see
people talking about self care for men, whether it is
having a step of scotch, sitting by yourself in your
(20:28):
lounge share looking out the window, like that's the idea
of self care, and that's not always the most healthy either,
the whole like the private din, the man cake, it's
all very isolating, and to have time with men is
to be with the boys, but that's not necessarily for
self care. Once again, and so it's kind of that
question of why are we so determined to isolate men
(20:52):
as well as to look down on women when they
do need support when everyone needs support. We know this,
We know this, and I do I don't want to
put it in here. America is not the only place,
by any means, where this ideology exists, and because of
the pervasive attitude, there are frequently more crisis resources available
(21:14):
to women. Right before we recorded this, I found a
really fascinating and upsetting article from Australia about a very
similar thing of high rates of suicide among men, but
not a lot of resources dedicated to giving them help.
So that's another issue, like on a even a governmental level.
And when you think of in the past of men
(21:38):
being breadwinners and that idea of like the scott the
mad Men, you know, it's almost sexy that you are
alone with your Scotch in a dim lighting why your
family is like shadow. So if you look at that
idea when being a man basically meant working all of
(21:59):
the time him and not really making time for your family.
Self care doesn't fit into that. It's an athetical to
that whole idea. And we've talked about that on the
show about particularly here in the United States, the idea
of a workaholic and how it's in fact been painted.
It's such a good thing when it is unhealthy. And
obviously times have changed from like the mad Men era,
(22:24):
but a lot of that toxic cultural stuff is still
baked in there and we haven't gotten rid of it.
So that's a part of this whole conversation. I did
see when I was researching this some sites calling for
men to prioritize self care. But they did it. A
lot of them did it by blaming women for feminizing
(22:45):
the space. Basically that because women and female influencers that
they got a lot of blame dominate in quote self care,
they've kept men out and up men need to get
in and take it over, which is wild to me.
A lot of it can't coexist in any way, so
(23:05):
it has to be us versus them, and it literally
becomes the whole man explaining situation of no, no, no, no,
let me show you how we're going to do it,
and this is how we're gonna do it, and it's
our space, don't touch it, how dare you? And maybe
they can talk about that being with like video gaming
or any of that, being like it used to be comfortable.
(23:25):
Now women are doing it too, and I'm like, what
is this divide that it has to be one or
the other. I don't understand. Of course, we also have
a lot of pushback with the whole we're losing our masculinity,
we're losing real men, so we have to claim the
space in a different manner to take back what was
(23:45):
our which is any attention. I guess yeah, I mean
that whole perceived loss of power and and we've talked
about that before, to you of the d of feminization
of the Democratic Party in our country and the masculinization
of the Republican Party, and the Republican Party very much
(24:08):
being like no snowflakes, while at the same time being
extremely sensitive, Uh, cancel culture. That's a different thing I did.
I was reminded of that Gillette commercial where they were like, dudes,
it's not cool to mistreat women, which you can argue
back and forth about when companies do that the benefits
(24:28):
in the town side, but people were so upset about, like,
how damn you tell men with mystat women ridiculous? Anyway,
I don't remember that commercial commercial. It came out I
think the twenty nineteen Super Bowl, and it was just like,
you know, commercial about like it's not cool to make
(24:52):
these comments to women or the cat call. You know,
sexually assault someone not cool and people freaked out about it.
Um god, dare you say I can't assault someone? This
is very like loose memory. So if people are like,
actually it was about this, I just I just remember
that what we're talking about has tried to been tackled
(25:15):
in age lit commercial and so that's the where we're at. Well, yeah,
speaking of commercials, obviously we see this in beauty hygiene
projects a lot, usually a big Yes, it's a big
muscular dude selling this idea and that he uses X
y Z product and he is the dudeliest of dudes,
(25:39):
usually in a humorous manner. Of course, I think the
yoga commercial comes to mind. I'm like what And then
then the food. Everything has to be bigger portions or
bigger sizes for the hungry. Okay, cool, cool cool. We
talked about the old spice and I'm still trying to
(26:00):
figure out what's happening there. They're not letting that go,
and we know acts trying to turn it a little bit.
I don't know if it's worked well for them. Has
it worked well? I don't know what you're talking about,
but knowing them I'm going to say no, but that's
a very acts trying to be all like, I'm a
sensitive dude. This is the smell I have. I think
(26:23):
maybe I'm thinking about this wrong. Even a long time since,
I've seen a lot of commercials. My favorite is want
there it does That's my favorite, but dessert commercials, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
I got you. I I still thought to that. And
then there are some areas traditionally viewed as self care
that men do take part in, especially when it comes
(26:44):
to physical looks. Everybody looks a good trim beard. We
know this. However, this is frequently more to me, to
standard and less about taking care of themselves, you know,
maybe being mocked constantly. Like the whole level of metrosexual
came out and right was very either into it or
not into it. So the lumberjack sexual came in as well,
(27:06):
which is kind of along those same lines. I just
find that funny. Do we have that for women? What
meterosexual level? Yeah? I don't think we do. I'd be
worth investigating the whole episode on. Yeah, I don't think
we do. I think you are either. It's like the
flip of I guess being slightly more masculine. I don't know.
(27:33):
I think that's the whole level of needing to identify
men as manly or not their sexuality, That we have
to know their sexuality, whether or not it's it benefits
for whatever reason. Whether so if he's metrosexual, that means
he's heterosexual, but has style, right in that sense, So
we have to know, Okay, okay, just because he has
style doesn't mean he's gay. We must classify this, which
(27:56):
is a whole level of homophobia and itself that we
could talk about, which again kind of goes down to
this whole gender idea that we have to label it
and make sure we know that something is masculine in
order to prove manliness. Yep, and at the detriment and
the health of everyone. Yeah, there's definitely a layer of
(28:16):
homophobia involved in all of this. Despite all this native stuff,
men's self care market it is growing. According to Allied
Market Research projects it will be worth million dollars two.
That's not necessarily a good thing, but uh, I guess
it shows that at least companies they're they're making movements
(28:37):
in those areas capitalism, capital Indeed, we didn't want to
talk about self care and women for a little bit
as well. But first we're gonna pause for one more
quick break for word from sponsor, and we're back. Thank you, sponsor.
(29:05):
So a lot of people have written and spoken about
self care when it comes to women, us included, but
we did want to talk about it a little bit
over at Huffington's post, Lindsay Holmes wrote, self care shouldn't
be reduced to a fleeting activity or dispensable product. It
shouldn't even just be considered a wellness phenomenon for women.
(29:25):
It's a difficult but necessary act that helps us survive
in a world with work demands, family pressures, duties at home,
rampant incidents of sexual harassment, a relentless news cycle, financial worries,
and more. In our reflection, takes time and energy. Resources
were already lacking. Self care is hard work, and I
wanted to include that quote because I think people forget
(29:45):
when we're thinking, oh, it's this selfish, indulgent woman. It
is hard work, and it's something that you have to
prioritize and take the time for, which in itself can
be difficult when you do have all of these things
that she listed them more, I think a lot of
people do view it as sort of a hippie dippy
wellness phenomenon, and absolutely companies have capitalized on that, and
(30:12):
some people do treat it that way, But what at
its core, that's not what it is and that's not
what it should be. Right Religiously, it was a whole command.
It was a whole day. Whether we're looking at traditional
Jewish cultures or and or just Western Christian ideas that
Sunday Sabbath. You know, people get very upset about this sometimes,
and some people don't take it seriously at all, however
(30:33):
you want to say it. My parents got upset when
alcohol sales happen on Sunday and they're like, what's the
world going to? But it was a religious thing, and
it's somehows changed for a lot of the cultures, and
not that you have to do it and you have
to set a date. It shouldn't be a command by
an overlord, essentially, for the lack of better words, but
it was there for a reason. And yeah, talking about
(30:55):
the fact that most of the times, for women, this
is the first thing to go out the wind. You
have to take something off your list. This is it
and we know this, We know this, which again part
of that is if we're not doing something, that we're
not doing it right, and that had this level of guilt.
It is this idea that productivity is the morality of
(31:17):
your life, point blank, um. And a lot of us
measure success by productivity, whether it's how many hustles you've got,
how many things are doing, what are you've gotten by
a certain age, Like I still have it in my
head that I am not successful, I am not adult
thing because I did not hit these markers that you
and I talked about so many times. That's yeah. The
(31:37):
other day I think it was very fairy. Somebody called
me an adult, which I am, but I was like,
I mean, just listing off the things that I haven't
done is one of the first things that I do, like,
oh no, I haven't done this and this and this
and that does not And then comparing myself to others
(31:58):
who are fifteen years longer than me, twenty years after
than thirty years younger than me doing it better, I
don't like, what have I done with my life? But
I mean that's the kind of thing is we define
ourselves that way, which is detrimental. Yes, in the end,
and I you know back to good old capitalism. I
think there's a big part of it actually is that
(32:20):
idea of the workaholic and that that's somehow a good
thing and that is what you measure success by. And
then on top of that this idea, especially in the
United States, that if you hustle hard enough, you will
succeed no matter what obstacles, systemic obstacles are in your way.
(32:43):
And in that way, you're blaming yourself, whether you know
it or not, for issues that are really beyond your control,
and others blame others. I can't understand the systemic level
why it can't be like this. So it's like cautionary
till is like early bird, get the worm. All this
bs has really been ingrained into our head that we're
(33:05):
not successful if we do not follow these things and
have all of our savings and all of these things
saved away so that we can enjoy the easy, relaxed
life which is very quickly disappearing for a lot of
our generations, that whole level of social security, we know,
that financial stability that doesn't exist where we talk about
no living wages. Starting as a freshly graduated college student
(33:30):
with some loans under my belt because my parents could
not It's not one of those had everything saved away
from me. So I had to pay everything as best
as I could, and that included some loans, including the
fact that I had to live on campus, all of
those to say, and then going to a job that
only paid me twenty five thousand a year to live
by myself, to take care of my myself for the
(33:52):
first time ever. And that doesn't include the fact that
they take away money for insurance, that take away money
for all of these benefits that I did not understand,
you know, like all of these things. And to the
fact that we are supposed to pretend like we know
what we're doing. And then realizing that my loans went
from this to twenty times that because of something that
(34:14):
was out of my controls, Like, what the hell just happened?
This became more than my wishing for the four years.
And to say, oh, but you should have done it better,
you should have planned ahead. How do you tell the
nineteen twenty two year old to plan ahead? Yeah, yeah,
and you know, we that's a whole separate conversation, but
we really don't train people for that kind of stuff,
like young people. And then we're like surprised when they
(34:36):
don't know what to do, Like, Okay, you're expecting this
eighteen year old to make the wise financial decisions. Great,
but that's the thing is like that means you have
failed because you are not to this level. But you
better not take care of yourself because you will never
get to that level. Yeah. Yeah, And I think a
(34:57):
part of that too, which we're going to talk about
a little bit in a second, is self esteem related.
Like part of self care is you have to say
you're worth the self care. And I think that's hard
for a lot of people, and I think especially marginalized folks.
If you are living in a country that has these
systems in place, are just social events that remind you
(35:20):
that you're not valued as much as say, straight white guy,
it can be hard to tell yourself like, no, I
am and I deserve to take this time. And just
because I didn't understand a very complicated financial system at
the age of eighteen doesn't mean that I don't deserve
these things. I still don't understand. And yes, since domestic
(35:40):
work is still taken on more by women, and studies
show women have less leisure time than men by about
three times, it can be harder for women to carve
out this time to take care of themselves, and perhaps
doing so comes with increased guilts. And there is a difference,
which I do want to say here, between meeting basic
needs and self care. So if you're saying, like, oh,
(36:02):
I've carved out the time to get enough sleep tonight,
that's great, that's not really self care. It can be.
But like if you're talking about a very that's just
your norm as you don't get enough sleep, that's not
really self care. That's that's a basic need that you're
not meeting. And around the world, women don't have access
(36:23):
to health care at the same rates as men, which
does impact self care. So that is another part of
this conversation, right, and we know the pandemic alone has
affected that immensely, immensely. Even though again we've talked about
the fact that you know, we're at home, it's okay,
what we're doing, we can do this constantly. That's not true.
We know this. We already talked about again mentioning how
(36:44):
the fact that majority of the household work falls on
women in general, as well as the stress of being
quarantined and stress of living in a pandemic world uh
causes a lot of that. And then when you can't escape,
so in your usual methods of escaping, such as exercising
with wherever you go to exercise and or traveling or
(37:07):
even just being able to walk out the door, that
is highly affected as well. Again, we talked about the
fact that a lot of the money that was slowly
going towards women to help with care has disappeared because
other issues have come rise. And we know that when
it comes down to it, it's secondary for women to
get the care that they need. Yes, around the world.
(37:30):
That's a whole different conversation and recognizing that you, again
as any said, that you actually are worth that, that
you are worth the time to run away from your
family for two hours. Maybe I don't know, it's okay,
I mean I think for me, and this is very
very general. We went to your beach house and I
(37:53):
have not been so excited. And it was like six seven,
eight months after quarantine began, because we were I think
we went it was labor day and it started in
Mark and I hadn't left and I was losing it.
I was losing it and just being able to be
in a car to drive somewhere was such a phenomenon
(38:17):
at that moment that the minute we got in the
car and we started driving in like realizing we were
on a trip pulled something from me that was it
so like to me, like stuff like that, being like,
oh wow, being so scared and you and I have
talked about this. We are so scared, especially as podcasters,
as people who are sort of you know, seen, I
(38:39):
guess this is the best way to put it. We're
so scared of saying the wrong things, or doing the
wrong things, or being hypocritical and being really cautious because
of course we don't want to talk about that was
a privilege. Had I not known you, I would have
never been able to do that, and it felt like
a privilege. It was amazing and doing things like that
as a privilege. But that's the other part to that.
It's like I don't feel like I can because I
(38:59):
know other people are suffering, so am I allowed to
do this? And that again that builds onto that self
worth and again being a basically the whole different level.
You should be able to have that, and it's absurd
that we don't. Being able to be on living wage,
you should be able to have that, especially when you
work your ass off trying to provide for your people
that you love in the story. But things like that,
like the traveling that I got to do for the
(39:22):
first time in eight months, was such a glorious moment
that felt like self care, but felt so guilty that
I was doing it. Yeah. Yeah, I thought about that
a lot lately because I think a lot of women
do this, um, a lot of marginalized people do this,
But I do that a lot where I'm like, well,
is it worth I don't have it as bad as
(39:42):
this person or whoever, so I'm just being a big
baby or whatever it is like because I don't have
it as bad. And I think that is a part
of what holds people back when it comes to self care,
is that guilt around that whole idea. And when we're
talking about social media as part of this, it has
(40:04):
been a great space for normalizing self care. But if
it becomes competitive or performative, that's defeating the purpose, and
a lot of self care can get caught up in
reinforcing tropes around beauty and weight. So going back to
what I was saying at the beginning about pinterest, to me,
that's what a lot of pinterest is is people kind
of showing off that there because they eat this and
(40:28):
they exercise as much these this is how they look
in these the clothes they can wear, and and that
can be healthy. But if you turn it, it's so
like a fine line. And that's a problem I have
a lot is I turn it into something that is
not self care anymore. It is like a competitive thing.
And speaking of that, I think there's a hijacking of
(40:48):
self care too in this self help productivity workspace that's
basically selling it as a tool to do more work,
which it does help productivity, but it's not about that.
It's not about doing more work necess fairly. And it's
not some magical way to become a CEO. If you're
like good, if you really crush it, it comes to
self scare, it's not that's not what it is. Look,
(41:12):
I admire and respect the people who are on here
talking about their fitness and getting these workouts and then
having the whole why aren't you doing it? That makes
me want to throw my phone across the room like that,
Like I see that constantly and I want to be
like because I'm depressed and my anxiety is really high,
And all I really want to do is carl up
in a fetal position under my blanket while my dog
(41:33):
sits on top of me until last suff Okay, I
mean that's some of the level that I'm at. But
the thing is, if it's for them, that's great. But
to turn it around and accuse people of not being
able to hit your mark is really damaging. And when
you do that as a way of getting likes or
getting promotions what like promotional benefits from other companies, that's damaging.
(41:57):
And what you're doing is causing more harm than than
anything else. And I say you, I'm just saying the
general in all all aspects, because let's be honest, this year,
it's been a year of collective trauma. I want to
talk about this later. It could be a whole other
episode about women and collective trauma, especially in the marginalized communities,
(42:17):
and we're gonna talk a little more about the intersections
of this. But the level of trauma that has happened
this year, the fact that anyone got up congratulations. There's
a debate about drinking water. It's absurd. If you're doing it, wonderful.
If you're not, you do you be healthy, though, be
healthy again. We have to recognize how self care looks
(42:40):
different for people of color and for the LGBTQ community
or any other marginalized groups. Let's be honest politically, what
we've been seeing it's horrible. And I think we're coming
through the upswing, but the constant back and forth, the
constant back and forth, it's traumatizing. I maybe because I've
(43:00):
been so focused and been so isolated that that's all
I focus on. But these past few years feel disgusting.
Whether it's I've lost friendships, I've lost family members, I've
lost trust in people. There's so much that we have
to talk about, and we have talked about, and we
continue to talk about, and then we put on people's
(43:20):
shoulders to explain it's been a hard damn year period,
and self care may just mean I'm not going to
talk to you today, i might not see my family
for a year. I'm okay. Things like that have happened.
And then the amount of death and the amount of
(43:42):
heartache that we've seen on a consistent basis, and maybe
it's just because we're seeing it for the first time.
Also because our administration allowed millions of people to die
all of those things way, So when we talk about
what's happening in the marginalist commun unities, when we look
at all of the politics that are having even today
(44:02):
with the trans community, l g b t Q plus community.
I just saw a new a law allowing for organizations
to discriminate against the l g B t Q plus
community to allowing them to be part of the group.
I see consistently the bills that are trying to block
that community from adopting, which I have a lot of
fields on. We know this. We consistently see the bills,
(44:26):
the injustice that has happened on all the levels, mats shootings,
just this freaking weak a loan has made one of vomit.
This last month has been awful. So when we talk
about self care, it may just very well be I
don't want to talk to anyone in the story, and
(44:47):
that's okay. So to try to place this whole line
of buy this, do this, be this is damaging in itself.
I'm done. Yeah, And UM, when I was researching this,
there are a lot of resources out there for that
are for specific marginalized groups. And what I was reading
(45:10):
from people who were writing about it and they were
talking about the value of community support and camaraderie and
finding those things. So certainly if you need those resources,
they are out there. Also, much bigger conversation, but the
whole mass shooting thing, like some of that is what
we're talking about here with men can't get mental health care,
(45:33):
much bigger conversation. We also need to talk about accessibility
and cost here, because of course, when companies got involved,
prices went up for things items that have been in
this self care space, like like skincare, beauty they can get.
It can get really pricey, especially when celebrities and influencers
get involved, which more and more male celebrities have been
(45:55):
getting involved in the sun noticed not an option for
everyone and may turn people off who otherwise would participate
in self care. That's what they're seeing, that's what they
think it is. Again beauty, it's not a self care
make a lot of things, but for a lot of
people that is I have friends or that is their
thing of like doing the facial and just relaxing, or
(46:17):
if we talk about physical activities that aren't possible or
comfortable for everyone for variety of reasons. Just keeping those
things in mind too. Of accessibility, and uh yeah, of
course they are predatory products out there marketed as self
care that are like guaranteed to get rid of your
eye bags or whatever it is. That's not I beg
(46:38):
My friend calls them, um baggies, I baggies baggies. I
love it. Yeah. And for those who have been able
to be successful and maybe publish a book or do
some things we kindle, friendships whatever, that's phenomenal too, and
you should be allowed to celebrate. That's the other part again,
as at guilt level. Don't point out all say you're
(47:00):
not doing this like me, don't do that. Let's just
say that. But celebrate what you have been able to do.
Celebrate the good things in your life. I mean, I
do celebrate the fact that I am able to do
this instead of being in the world, which for my
old coworkers who are continually seeing trauma on the outside
(47:21):
and then continually dealing with trauma in their work space,
that's a lot. And I'm very grateful that I I
am in this space where I can process it in
a different manner now. But it's not lost on me
that people are doing these jobs, and people are doing
these things, people are doing this work and it's important
that we allow for them to celebrate the things that
(47:43):
they have been able to accomplish. I just remember one
of my biggest things being in that field, just constantly
thing I just needed one small victory, like crying about
it and how big of a deal it was. Whether
it's to know that I helped a kid rehabilitate and
get off of probation. In general, like I was able
to be like, we're gonna work this out, we're gonna
do these things together in the story, or hooking them
(48:05):
up and able to get them an internship, to be
able to make money, like stuff like that is phenomenal.
We're not gonna talk about the incarceration system, which I
have a lot of guilt about in general. But the
thing is there's a collective amount of trauma that is happening,
and we need to be able to celebrate the things
that can't be celebrated. And for those who have you know,
(48:26):
children in their lives who were able to have babies
and and are living in a place of health, and
that those who are seeing someone for the first time,
that's that's wonderful. Congratulations and we celebrate that with you. Yeah, Yeah,
that's I'm glad you said that, because I do. I
think that is another aspect of this is people feel
like they can't share happy things right now. I know
(48:48):
I don't. That's why I like not on social media,
hardly enter anymore. I don't want to post some stuff,
but I can't post it. The world is on fire.
I like self deprecating stuff like and I tripped and
trust in my angle in a living room. But for
those who are asking, how, how do we even go
down this road? Or should we even go down this route?
(49:10):
So if you're listening to this and thinking I need
to start doing this, you don't have to. But if
you want to, or maybe like I need to do better,
how to go about that? Again, you're better stefferent from
everybody else's just be healthy. So here are some tips.
Choose an activity or activity you enjoy or that relaxes you,
such as playing fiends and trying to beat your coworkers
(49:33):
like Lauren who has yet to reply to my banter.
If that makes you feel better, then do it. Yeah, yeah,
get a get some activities that you like better healthy um,
and then narrow it down to one at first that
you want to start putting into your daily routine. So
here we're talking more about incorporating it more regularly as
(49:54):
opposed to that sort of one time event. Then yeah,
try implementing it every day for a week. After that
week's done, think about how you feel about it, repeat
with another activity, switch out activities, or just to reflect
on how you want to go about it and if
it worked for you and why it did or didn't
work for you. If it didn't, it's okay. It moving on,
(50:14):
It is okay. And speaking of I, I did want
to briefly talk about this because I I, like I said,
I'm really bad at it, and uh, I was working
on this outline the day after I got my second
dose of the vaccine and I ended up getting having
a pretty severe reaction, I will say. And I was
(50:34):
in bed and I was shaking so hard that the
bed frame was rattling, and I was sweating. It looked
like I had gone swimming. I was so cold, and
I felt so bad, and I was typing like women
made to do better at self care? Not bad, but
essentially like how could women be better at self care?
And then I was working away and Lauren, my co
(50:58):
worker and friend, she texted me and said stop working,
and then she sent an email out to like everybody
I was supposed to work with that day to record,
and she said, we're not recording. She's good. And then
you showed up. You're so kind and you bought me fun.
But I felt guilty about it because I was like,
(51:18):
oh no, what if I was, I know, you wouldn't
let me like I'm doing it, damn it. Fine, fine,
this is part of myself here. We've talked about this before,
like for people like me, I love doing things like that,
so I have to do it, So let me do it.
Let me do it. I kept be like, oh no, no,
And then I did have the thing where I was
(51:40):
like so proud of myself, which is very unhealthy because
I was like, wow, I feel terrible, but look at
how much work I'm doing. Yeah, and I did nothing.
I did nothing. I we purposely didn't record. We changed
the date, and I was like, you know what, this
is going to be a rough one for I don't know,
maybe it could be a rough one I've seen store.
(52:00):
And of course my reaction because we ended up getting
our shots at the same day. Hey, we're very different,
Like I was nowhere in your as bad as you were.
We had I had this a little bit of chills
and enough favor, but that was quickly gone. But I
was like, I'm just going to check in on her
and make sure she's alive. But we're not talking about work.
And I purposely did not ask about work. And we
(52:22):
did bring some noodles for you, because you know, this
is all about getting together. And that's the other part
this is you have to recognize when your body is
telling you something because it's telling you something for a reason.
And that was hey, stop it, go to bed, damn it.
(52:42):
It's surprisingly difficult to do that, I feel like as women,
but we are especially I can just speak. In my case,
I've distanced myself so much from my body that it's
I can't basic things like sleepy and hunger, and I don't.
I'm working, honest of that. Yeah. I on the other hand,
(53:03):
I do recognize it, but it's accord to what I
have to do. And if there's just like I felt
guilty because I had a feeling you were working, and
so I didn't know what else to do. But I'm like, yeah,
but I'm sleepy and I'm tired, and we can do
this later. If I do things I don't want to
just laid back. JA. I was like, I'm done, I'm good.
(53:29):
I will do that, but there are days that I'm like,
I have to do more. If it came down to
helping someone else, then yeah, I will do it. But
if it comes down to it's just me, Oh, I
got that. So you and I clearly have work to
do as well. Yeah, I have better at it. And
(53:53):
like the fan ficed, writing fan fiction is something I
do hiking when whenever we can go, when I can
go back out comfortably because I know I could have
always but I was never comfortable. That is a big
one for me. So it is something that I have
been mindful of and have been trying to be better at.
But long ways ago. Still well, listeners, we would love
to hear about your self care. What do you do?
(54:15):
Are are you any good at it? Are you terrible
at it? You can email us our emails, Stuff Media
Mom Stuff at i hurt media dot com. You can
find us on Twitter at most Stuff podcast, or on
Instagram and stuff I've Never told you. Thanks as always
to our super producer Christina. Thank you Christina, and thanks
to you for listening. Stuff I never told these protection
I Hurt Radio. For more podcast from I Heart Radio,
visit I Heartradio app, Apple podcast, or every listen to
(54:36):
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