It Takes Two
There is something to be said about today’s solitary nature of ‘self-care’: if I push myself enough and fully know all there is to know about myself, then I can take the best care of myself. There is an inner voice that might say you haven’t tried hard enough and that investing in yourself, in your self-care, is the only way forward. A individual journey into the unknown; the adventurer braving their own inner wilderness.
The concept of caring for yourself, improving yourself, figuring yourself out – spending hours curating self-care rituals from online content, reading self-help books, listening to podcasts all remain accessible ways of exploring new options and interests – oh there’s something I’d have never thought of. Even in group classes, self-improvement remains the focus rather than a shared experience. The solitary nature of this journey still remains: the wider societal assumption that somehow, you remain solely responsible for your own wellbeing, for your own improvement, for your own understanding of yourself. There is a sense of loneliness in that, of bewilderment, of not even knowing where to start because of how insurmountable the task feels. How does a person even begin to take responsibility for the almost infinite ways that one can relate to themselves – much less process the enormity of this demand? This becomes even more challenging when we try to navigate difficult life circumstances: loss, grief, mental health issues, difficult family histories or a myriad of social pressures. The causes remain multiple but the option is seemingly a single one: I have to figure this out myself, everyone else seems to be managing too...I think I bookmarked a reel about this the other day, that should be enough. Listicles become an easy way to problem-solve ‘big feelings’, a chatbot becomes a quick way to avoid the shame connected with looking foolish at a workplace conversation discussing something you’re not familiar with, never-ending social media curation presents the illusion of more information while slowly becoming recursive. At the end of it all, the belief that an individual is wholly responsible for caring, improving and knowing themselves better on their own only increases the isolation felt and the inadequacy people experience when they don’t feel good enough.
When people come into therapy, some often do so feeling frustrated, exhausted or inadequate because they’ve tried their best to work on themselves – sitting with an emotion wheel, doing breathing exercises, journalling, or managing larger emotions in their own way. Often, with a sense of resignation, a story emerges of wanting to do right by themselves, following the ‘correct’ information and doing things exactly as the posts or books told them to, but not quite feeling what they expected to feel. Having put so much effort into this, it’s hardly surprising that frustration and defeat spill over. And yet, taking a step back, it feels like in the pursuit of making care and growth an individual responsibility, the core social aspect of a person has been abandoned. Research tells us that both historically and developmentally, the basic functions of caring for oneself and improving oneself are fundamentally social. We learn from watching others – caregivers, friends, mentors – watching their movements, reflecting on our own, trial and error. In a similar way, the act of caring for the self: recognising when you’re not feeling well, naming emotions and learning what soothes you best – is socially dependent. Within psychology lies the concept of self-regulation, a term you may have heard already. The term itself suggests that the responsibility for regulation lies with the self: my emotions feel all over the place so maybe I should get them back in order. Self-regulation isn’t a single action, rather it requires a deep understanding of one’s own body, emotions and a grounded way of differentiating between a regulated and dysregulated nervous system. Self-regulation is successful when you’re able to soothe and calm emotional overwhelm. However, self-regulation can never be learned in isolation, rather it is learned relationally. As infants, regulation is first experienced with a caregiver – the child expresses distress and the caregiver recognises and soothes the child, resulting in the child experiencing a regulated nervous system. Eventually, the child learns to recognise and feel better with less reliance on their caregiver. There are instances where this may not be the lived experience of a person, because of difficult childhoods or caregivers who themselves struggled with emotional regulation. However, even in the case of those who learned how to self-regulate, the importance of the other still remains.
Even as adults, we still seek out others to best self-regulate, being around others with well-regulated nervous systems also affects our own. This aspect of learning to regulate with others, to better experience someone else in order to understand ourselves is what the current trend of self-care and self-improvement can crucially miss. Being in the presence of someone you trust and expressing vulnerability, fear, uncertainty, shame or guilt – and then feeling seen and heard – can open up a space for self-compassion, self-care and a genuine desire for self-improvement in a way that an isolated pursuit of those could seldom replicate. Any ‘self’ implies a social aspect and we remain inextricably connected, and wired for, the other. We were never meant to do any part of living on our own.
