What is self-care, and why do you feel guilty when you take time for yourself? Read what self-care is, what it is not and how to fit it into everyday life.
It is a Saturday afternoon and the house has finally gone quiet. You are thinking of sitting on the balcony for half an hour with a cup of tea and doing nothing at all. Just then a voice rises inside you: "The washing-up is still there, you haven't called your mother, you haven't prepared for tomorrow's meeting. Is this really the time to sit down?" As your tea goes cold, you find yourself in the middle of another chore. If this scene feels familiar, the question "what is self-care?" may not be just a conceptual curiosity for you but an everyday struggle. In this article I explain what self-care is, how it differs from the picture painted on social media, why you feel guilty when you take time for yourself, and how you can fit self-care into your life in a realistic way.
What Is Self-Care? A Simple Definition
Self-care means noticing your own physical, emotional, mental and relational needs and taking deliberate steps to meet them. It sounds simple: eating, sleeping, resting, spending time with the people you love. But the real issue is that these needs are constantly put off in the face of other people's demands, workload or the "things that have to be done".
In psychology, self-care is usually considered in several areas:
- Physical self-care: regular sleep, adequate nutrition, movement, keeping up with health check-ups, allowing yourself to rest when you are ill.
- Emotional self-care: noticing your feelings, making room for them, crying when you need to, talking, asking for help.
- Mental self-care: giving your mind a break, stepping away from the constant flow of information, learning something you are curious about.
- Relational self-care: making time for relationships that nourish you and setting boundaries in relationships that drain you.
- Meaning- and values-based self-care: connecting with things that matter to you, such as faith, nature, art or volunteering.
Self-care is not a luxury; like charging a phone, it is the maintenance needed for something to keep functioning. A phone with a flat battery does not work, however valuable it may be.
What Self-Care Is Not
On social media, self-care is often portrayed through bubble baths, expensive skincare products, spa days or holiday photos. These can be enjoyable, but they are not the essence of self-care. In fact, reducing self-care to a shopping list leads many people who are struggling under the rising cost of living to think, "Self-care isn't for me."
Some things that are confused with self-care include:
- Constantly rewarding yourself: going shopping or reaching for something sweet after every stressful day can sometimes be not self-care but a way of escaping a feeling.
- Avoiding responsibilities: self-care does not mean putting off everything that needs doing. Sometimes self-care is paying a bill you have been avoiding for a long time, or booking a doctor's appointment you have been postponing.
- A flawless routine: meditation, journalling, exercise and a green smoothie every morning. A list like this simply opens up a new area of failure for someone who is already tired.
- Being alone: for some people self-care is spending time alone, while for others it is a long phone call with a friend.
Self-care means showing yourself some of the care you show other people.
Why Does Taking Time for Yourself Make You Feel Guilty?
Feeling guilty when you take time for yourself is extremely common. The roots of this guilt usually lie not in a single place but in several layers.
Learnt rules
You may have grown up with messages such as "Work first, play later", "Don't be lazy" or "Think of others". Each of these messages makes sense in a particular context, but when they turn into rigid rules, resting feels like breaking a rule. The critical voice inside you may in fact be the echo of sentences you heard years ago.
Cultural expectations
In Turkey, women in particular are expected to put the family's needs before their own. A working mother comes home from work, prepares dinner, checks her child's homework and calls her mother-in-law; the half hour she takes for herself is overshadowed by the thought of "what will people say". Men, on the other hand, often learn to see saying they are tired as a weakness. In an extended family, saying "I won't be able to come this time, I need to rest" about the visits during the religious holidays is unthinkable for many people.
Making self-worth conditional
Some people measure their own worth only by how productive or helpful they are. For such a person, resting can mean feeling "worthless". Schema therapy explains this pattern through the "self-sacrifice" or "unrelenting standards" schemas: the person focuses excessively on other people's needs or constantly feels obliged to do more. If you feel that you forget yourself while trying to meet everyone's needs, the article on people-pleasing may also feel familiar.
Is Self-Care Selfish?
Selfishness is meeting your own needs while consistently and knowingly ignoring the needs of others. Self-care, by contrast, means taking your own needs into account as well. There is an important difference here: in self-care, other people do not drop out of the equation; you are added to it.
Think of the safety announcement on aeroplanes: "Put on your own oxygen mask first, then help the person next to you." This is said not because you do not care about the person next to you, but because if you cannot breathe yourself, you cannot help them either. When someone caring for an ill relative, looking after young children or working in a demanding job exhausts their own resources, their patience shrinks, they lose their temper more easily and the quality of their relationships declines.
You can ask yourself the following questions:
- Does this time I am taking for myself leave someone's urgent and basic need unmet?
- If I meet this need of mine, might I be more patient and more present for others afterwards?
- If a friend of mine took time for themselves in the same situation, would I think they were selfish?
Very often the answer to the third question shows that you apply a much harsher standard to yourself than you apply to others.
It is also worth remembering this: someone who never voices their own needs may, over time, try to meet those needs in indirect ways. Unspoken tiredness seeps into the relationship as reproach, and unexpressed hurt as coldness. Seen from this angle, self-care is an openness that also protects relationships; someone who says clearly what they need does not leave the other person with the burden of guessing.
What Is Self-Care, and What Does It Look Like in Everyday Life?
The most useful answer to the question "what is self-care?" lies less in an abstract definition than in small, concrete behaviours. The suggestions below are not a checklist; they are ideas for you to pick the ones that suit you and try them out.
Start small
Instead of aiming to set aside two hours a day, start with ten minutes. Drinking your morning coffee without looking at your phone, walking for five minutes at lunchtime, switching off the screen before going to bed in the evening. Small steps are more effective because they are sustainable.
Put it in your diary
You write appointments with other people in your diary; write down your appointment with yourself too. A concrete plan such as "Thursday 7 pm walk" is far easier to put into practice than the thought "I'll make some time for myself at some point".
Try saying "no"
Saying yes to every request eliminates the time you could set aside for yourself. An important part of self-care is setting boundaries: replying to work messages sent after hours the next morning, politely postponing a second visit at the weekend, or asking for time to think when a relative asks to borrow money.
Listen to your body's signals
Hunger, tiredness, a headache or a stiff neck are your body's ways of telling you something. Instead of brushing them aside with "I'll deal with it later", taking a short break, drinking a glass of water or lying down are basic self-care steps.
Notice the guilt, but do not obey it
When you take time for yourself, the feeling of guilt will come; this is a natural result of habit. Without trying to suppress the feeling, you can say: "I'm feeling guilty right now, but I'm still choosing to rest." Over time, this feeling weakens.
Count asking for help as part of self-care
For many people, the hardest part of self-care is accepting that they do not have to do everything alone. Talking to your spouse about sharing the housework, asking your siblings to take on a concrete task in caring for an elderly parent, or asking a colleague for support with a file you cannot keep up with at work are legitimate ways of lightening your own load. Asking for help is a sign not of weakness but of knowing your own limits. In the first attempts, the other person may be surprised or may object; this does not mean your request is wrong, it simply shows that the familiar balance is changing.
Use kind language with yourself
Notice the tone of your inner voice. Saying "You're so tired today, you have every right to rest" instead of "How lazy you are" may feel artificial at first, but over time it changes the climate of your inner world. For more on this, you can have a look at the article on self-compassion.
Let's say the mother of a young person preparing for the university entrance exam has not gone out in the evenings for a year, because she thinks, "I can't go out while my child is studying." Going for a short walk with a friend one evening a week could give both the mother and the tension at home some room to breathe. Seeing that his or her mother can look after herself, the young person also gains an indirect example of how to organise their own life after the exam.
Signs of a Lack of Self-Care
When you put off your own needs for a long time, the traces usually appear gradually:
- Constant tiredness, an exhaustion that does not go away even when you rest
- Reluctance towards things you used to enjoy
- Getting excessively irritated over small things, or bouts of crying
- Falling ill often, headaches and neck pain
- Quiet resentment towards those close to you and a feeling of "Nobody does anything for me"
- Disrupted sleep patterns
- Being unable to answer the question "Who am I, what did I use to love?"
Over time these signs can turn into burnout. For detailed information on the symptoms and causes of burnout, you can read the article on burnout syndrome.
When Should You Seek Professional Support?
Self-care is an important part of protecting mental health, but on its own it does not solve every difficulty. It may be helpful to see a professional in the following situations:
- If, whenever you try to take time for yourself, intense guilt, anxiety or a sense of worthlessness pulls you back every time.
- If for a long time you have been unable to enjoy anything, have struggled to get up in the mornings and have found life meaningless.
- If tiredness and lack of motivation are noticeably affecting your work, school or family life.
- If you constantly experience conflict when you try to set boundaries in your family or relationship.
- If there are marked changes in your sleep, appetite or body weight.
These signs do not mean a diagnosis; but they may show that the time has come to look at your load together with someone.
How Is Self-Care Addressed in Therapy?
In therapy, self-care is usually addressed not as a list of tips but as a reflection of the relationship a person has with themselves. The therapist does not stop at saying "Take more time for yourself"; they try to understand together with you why you are unable to do so.
The following kinds of work may be part of individual therapy:
- Examining automatic thoughts: in cognitive behavioural therapy, the evidence for and alternatives to thoughts such as "If I rest, I'm lazy" or "Everyone expects something from me" are reviewed together.
- Recognising schemas: you talk about how early patterns such as self-sacrifice, approval-seeking or unrelenting standards steer your current behaviour.
- Clarifying values: what really matters to you in life is identified, and self-care is redefined as a tool that serves these values.
- Small behavioural experiments: experiments such as saying no to one request a week or putting an hour-long activity in your diary are planned, and what happens afterwards is reviewed together.
- Boundary-setting skills: you work on how you can express your needs to your family, colleagues or partner.
In this process, the goal is not to turn you into "someone who drops everything and thinks only of themselves", but to help you find a balanced place where you can care both for others and for yourself.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much time should I set aside for self-care?
There is no fixed amount of time. Small habits of a few minutes a day can be more effective than one big activity once a month. What matters is regularity, and that this time responds to your real needs.
Is it possible to take time for myself when I have a child?
It is possible, but it often requires creativity and cooperation. Planning time in turns with your partner or a relative, taking a short moment while your child is asleep, or choosing activities that you do with your child but that also nourish you can all help.
Does the feeling of guilt go away once I practise self-care?
It may not go away straight away. Guilt is often an old habit, and it weakens gradually as the new behaviour is repeated. Continuing with the behaviour rather than waiting for the feeling to change is usually the more realistic path to change.
Can I practise self-care without spending money?
Of course. Looking after your sleep, going for a walk, talking to someone you love, rereading a book, spending a screen-free evening or simply sitting without doing anything at all are forms of self-care that cost nothing.
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Eda Erkan Alapala
Klinik Psikolog. İstanbul Kent Üniversitesi Klinik Psikoloji Tezli Yüksek Lisans mezunu; bilişsel davranışçı terapi, çocuk merkezli oyun terapisi ve çocuk-ergen psikoterapisi alanlarında eğitimlerini tamamlamıştır.
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