Self-Care
What self-care really is...
September 10, 2025
— CHRISTINE SPARACINO
We typically use self-care as a way to restore depletion, to fill ourselves back up when we’ve spent too much. But this strategy never really works. Or it never worked for me. I felt better momentarily but the deficit lingered.
If you’ve been around since I started, you know I have talked about what self-care is not. Now let’s explore what it IS instead.
Self-care is…
For me, self-care is knowing what I have capacity for in a day and not forcing myself past the limit. Repeating this on a regular basis as a habit. It means paying attention to the signs of my body. Decoding her messages and once I have learned her language, listening. It’s not enough to know…self-care means doing something about it.
It means predicting what I can handle in a day, in a season. I used to blow past my limits. Abuse my capacity. That doesn’t work so well anymore. I can’t rebound like I once did.
Self-care is honoring my need for a slow morning with a cup of tea and morning pages. Without shaming myself for not being more productive. It is doing what works for me and my constitution, whether that works for someone else or not.
Self-care is…
Self-care is also leaving over-stimulating places and situations. The situations and places and people that become more than I can handle, more than is good for me. Self-care is recognizing when I am getting over-stimulated and when I need a break.
Self-care is only accepting invitations that are not going to deplete or exhaust me. It is leaning in to invitations that excite me and give me more energy.
Self-care for me is protecting my peace. Not giving all of myself in every circumstance to every person.
Self-care for me is being selective what I care about and how much. As an HSP, I can’t afford to care about everything, to invest my energy into every tragedy or every problem. Self-care is putting a regulator on my empathy, not giving it all away as freely.
Self-care is guarding my heart. Limiting my exposure.
Self-care is…
Self-care is distancing from the people who drain me. Who make the interaction all about them. Who rarely seem interested in me and who aren’t invested in me. Who are comfortable using me as an object for their self-esteem.
Self-care has been disengaging or distancing from non-reciprocal relationships.
For me, self-care has been leaving jobs behind. Walking away from unhealthy workplaces.
Self-care is ending the cycles of depletion in my own life. Giving it all away and then frantically trying to fill myself back up. No more voluntary depletion! Self-care is keeping some of the good for myself.
Self-care is caring what I think more than what others think of me. Treating my own opinions as valuable as I esteem other’s opinions.
Self-care is…
Self-care is letting people find the answers on their own without my help. Self-care for me is not helping everyone, even if they ask me.
Self-care is giving only as much as the other person and no more. Keeping my over-responsibility in check.
Self-care is caring for myself as well as I care for everyone else. It is showing up for my needs like I attend to the needs of others. Rather than dismissing or postponing my own needs. It is releasing the guilt and shame that circulates through me around my needs. Hell, even my desires. It is refusing to let shame tell me that my needs are too much.
Self-care is letting others be responsible. As responsible as me. Letting them tolerate their own distress, their own displeasure of my choices. The unhappiness they feel when I don’t abandon myself to meet their needs. It is holding on to my self.
Self-care is releasing the shoulds. And creating a protective bubble from the shoulds the world wants to place upon us.
Self-care is…
Self-care for me is identifying what lights me up all over and seeking it out more. Self-care is being fully alive. No more checking out, going along, fawning.
Self-care is taking up space. It is expanding. Filling space. Honoring my needs even if they seem odd or strange to everyone else. Letting myself expand instead of staying small.
Self-care is being myself and letting go of being palatable. Fuck that. Self-care is existing as me, all of me. No longer hiding parts away for fear of rejection. Being more concerned with my needs and desires than the desires or needs of others.
Self-care is risking being “selfish.” Daring to be “selfish” actually. Self-care is asserting myself.
Self-care is rebelling - pushing back against who we have been told that we are. Throwing off the mantle. Refusing the roles assigned to me. It is redefining what a life alive looks like for me. Not what I was told life should look like.
