“SELF” WHAAAT???

Tempo di lettura: 8 minuti

‘Self-care’: a term that has now become part of our everyday vocabulary, often abused and shredded by practical acts that have nothing to do with its profound meaning. ‘Self-care’: a term that has now become part of our everyday vocabulary, often abused and shredded by practical acts that have nothing to do with its profound meaning.
I don’t have any desire to spread self-care practice suggestions; the web is full of practical tips by those who tell us how to get well even if they don’t know us. Instead, I wish to stimulate individual curiosity, the only engine for a peaceful and lasting self-care practice.
The practice of self-care in occidental culture often represents that physical-spiritual-mental activity that we perform in a specific time within the everyday frenzy, mechanically and generally following rules dictated by others, without questioning too much: since every day we have to get somewhere, overcome someone or ourselves, not give up, strive to be first, prove to be better, to be aware that only with effort and sacrifice do we achieve the best results: NO PAIN, NO GAIN – an expression Jane Fonda used during her workout sessions, limited to the context of physical training, now superficially applied to the whole of human existence by those who live life like a gladiator in the arena, fearless fighters aiming for glory through tribulation. Some are so devoted to the tribulation that they choose to get this slogan tattooed.
Then the tribulation to reach the Olympus of satisfaction becomes corporate policy, social communication, reality show, daily affair, and method to inspire children to become fighters in the life ring.

“Go, go, fucking go! Run, jump over hurdles, break your breath, run over those who stand in your way, don’t stop to ask or wonder, show that you have an answer for everything, the enemy is ready to fuck you over, don’t give it to them, if you slow down and show the weakness of the wondering, the weakness of the philosopher, then don’t complain about your FAILURES. At the most, spend 15 minutes a day on yoga, meditation, which is good for you…’. There, that is the role to which we have miserably reduced self-care to…15 minutes of meditation or a session with the hairdressers and beauticians, but always because someone else has led us to believe that this is what self-care is.
Rarely, those who wake up in the morning because they have to hurry up and collect tribulations in the name of satisfaction, contemplate the fact that self-care is fundamental – that’s right, FUNDAMENTAL – human right to promote one’s own well-being, that is, one’s mental, physical and spiritual health. It is the right to be able to prevent illness – even before treating it – and to keep ourselves healthy. But what does ‘keeping healthy’ mean?

Stop for a moment, suspend your reading, close your eyes if you like, and ask yourself “what does ‘keeping healthy’ mean to me?”. Think about it for a while, maybe write it down, because it is important to stay in touch with our answers, which can change over time, and their change represents, for better or worse, our evolution.

We can hardly consider what this term really includes, and much depends on the social and cultural context in which we are born and/or grew up, which, by granting or not granting free access to this right, establishes for us what is fundamental and what is not.

The World Health Organisation defines self-care as

Self-care is the ability of individuals, families and communities to promote health, prevent disease, maintain health, and cope with illness and disability with or without the support of a health worker.

Everything from hygiene, nutrition, lifestyle, socio-economic and environmental factors fall under this definition, and the goal is to improve aspects of life such as self-esteem, autonomy, community participation, community well-being, and so on.

Below you can see exactly the multiplicity of dimensions of self-care, through a conceptual framework that in my opinion should be posted in schools in place of the crucifix, so that everyone can acquire new self-awareness every day, and have the freedom to choose how to practice self-care as their sole reference. In order to ensure individual and social growth oriented towards self-care and well-being.

 

This conceptual framework, with a person-centered approach at its center, very clearly represents the starting point for addressing self-care through interventions, technologies, and services that ensure its implementation and evolution. The fundamental principles represented are those that must necessarily guide services, contexts and responsibilities of the system that revolves around the person.

As you can see, the life journey is among these principles, along with human rights, gender equality, holistic intervention, and ethics. They are at the center, not on the margins, not off this map.

Think of how different our lives, our relationships, and our priorities would be if we lived in a society that has so introjected this framework that we experience every aspect of it absolutely naturally, from birth, in every context. Not an achievement, but a starting point for further evolution.

 

 

 

 

 

The focus on self-care brings with it the wellbeing that acts as an essential tool for coping with the difficulties of personal life, the community, and the whole world.

Now again I ask you to pause reading to ask yourself ‘do I live in a cultural and social context that has introjected this? Do I enjoy the right to access everything that guarantees self-care? Have I ever considered all aspects of self-care?”
For many years I have been interested in the concept of individual health and well-being as a pillar of collective well-being because it is by starting with ourselves that we can improve the world we live in every aspect, none excluded, just look at the diagram above.
Of course, the lens through which I observe and move in any context is always the feminist one: although obvious, I find it useful to emphasize this.
And always from a feminist perspective, it is my personal experience that moves my being in the world and my reflections on what surrounds me: I have always believed in the care of individual and collective psychic well-being as prevention not only of illnesses but also of discomforts and conflicts, as a seed for the cultivation of knowledge. It is a practice that starts with constructive listening and dialogue and therefore can only generate well-being.
Although I live in a country, Italy, that certainly does not make this practice easy, I believe that promoting self-care is essential to reverse the process, spreading awareness to the point of generating change.
While strongly believing this, I have often come across contexts and people who have completely ignored the issue of welfare even in its smallest and most trivial meaning. It is here that the clash with a culture that aims at not guaranteeing too much well-being so as not to produce cohesion, in order to perpetuate that mediocre obstacle race in which a few win and do so at the expense of those who lack endurance and long legs. In daily life, I rarely have conversations – outside of the cultural and activist context of reference – that take into account the real meaning of self-care, rather I find myself bored by the trivial achievements of those who have their chests full of medals, contemplate others only if it is useful to prove they are better, and have no time for that trivial scheme that is good for them for those who have shit to do in life. As for work…well…I could stop here…. but it is worth showing the backwardness to stimulate small daily rebellions: I have worked uninterruptedly for at least twenty years and, without going too much into the details of the different contexts, I can state with absolute certainty and even through scars of body and soul, that the practice of self-care as the basic strategy for the prevention of illnesses, conflicts, mobbing, burn out, was not only not contemplated at all, but sometimes – do as if I had written ‘always’ – scientifically avoided so as not to risk that wellbeing would produce dialogue, solidarity, complicity: all elements that could seriously challenge a system of control and management that aimed at precariousness in every respect.
Some people don’t see this, just because we have not introjected self-care to the point of making it a widespread practice of daily life. Instead, those who do notice it, who point it out and press for that fundamental right to be guaranteed, become immediately an undesirable element to be marginalized and hopefully put down. In my private life, I have done my best to be able to guarantee this right. But it can’t work if you have to face every day the world’s hostility outside. And gosh, in recent years the world outside was really armed to the teeth! After trying to jump hurdles in order to rescue myself, I chose to slow down and stop, even though the world outside continues to grumble and run.
I chose to dedicate part of my blog to self-care even though I actually believe that my entire virtual space responds to this idea, however, I would like to touch on every single aspect of that conceptual framework, in order to grow from the bottom of the practice of this important and primary right, with the awareness that after all, it can take very little to contaminate the world. And by sharing the beautiful, the experienced, through a space where we do not have to struggle to win, we can truly make life a wonderful journey. It is the ability to wonder that nourishes our being in the world, not the – false – certainty that we have all the answers. We don’t have to run somewhere and achieve standardized results to be able to say we live our best, we need to be in our own time, to treat ourselves according to our needs. And we have the right to live in a world that considers our rights, that does not guilt us, and that does not deprive us of well-being in every context.