Rethinking Self-Care: Less Doing, More Being

For a long time, I thought self-care had to look productive. I believed it needed to involve doing something — a workout, a skincare routine, journalling, stretching, ticking off habits that were supposed to make me feel better. And while those things can absolutely be supportive, I started to notice something strange: I often felt more exhausted afterwards than restored.

It felt completely backwards. How could all these “healthy” things still leave me feeling depleted?

Eventually, I realised that the problem wasn’t self-care itself — it was the way I was approaching it. Even my rest had become another task to complete, another thing to do well. I was still carrying the same mental load, the same constant sense of effort, just wrapped up in prettier packaging.

So I started scaling things back.

Instead of asking myself what I should be doing to take care of myself, I began asking what my body actually needed in that moment. And more often than not, the answer wasn’t activity — it was softness. Stillness. Space.

I discovered that I didn’t need more doing. I needed more being.

Self-care became quieter and far more passive. It looked like reading outside in the sun, getting a massage, cuddling with my cats, lying down without trying to “earn” the rest first. It stopped being something to achieve and became something to sink into.

And it wasn’t until I stepped away from the constant doing — the carrying, the managing, the pressure to always optimise myself — that I truly started to feel restored.

My version of self-care has changed a lot over time. And honestly, it feels much more like care now.