---
title: Self-Care is not Selfish
date: 2025-05-18
lastmod: 
published: true
tags: 
    - adulting
    - health
---

To be a provider is to be a machine that converts time and energy into the resources your dependents need to survive. You may think that taking time to care for yourself is selfish. It is not. Pushing yourself to the point of physical or mental breakdown will only hurt your dependents in the long run. Self care is like sharpening a blade, cleaning a filter, or changing oil. 

Develop the mindset that everything you do to take care of yourself is a short- and long-term investment in being better able to fulfill your responsibilities and provide for your loved ones.

As a husband and a father, I now have to take a much more intentional approach to my health and wellness. Here are some of the things I've found useful to keep me running like a well-oiled machine:

- **Find a regimen of vitamins and other supplements that works for you**: ensuring your body has everything it needs to function properly is critical for good health. Once you've made the initial investment of figuring out what you need and building the habit of taking it when you need it, it's pretty easy to maintain this habit.
- **Drink herbal tea**: tea isn't for everyone, but I learned to enjoy it while I was recovering from mononucleosis in winter 2023/2024. It's become a part of my morning routine that helps me start the day with calm determination. My favorites are Twinings Immune Support+ (Blackberry) and Glow+ (Peach) with a teaspoon of raw honey (which allegedly can help allergies in the long run). I've also found that Traditional Medicinals Throat Coat helps if I have a sore/dry throat and Peppermint Delight Probiotic helps if I have gastrointestinal pain.
- **Stretch once when you wake up and once before you go to bed**: becoming a parent entails going from resting to swinging around a free-weight with little warning. If you don't stretch, you will throw out your back, neck, or shoulder. When I stretch in the morning, I feel more awake throughout the rest of the day.
- **Exercise regularly**: this habit is the hardest to build, but the most rewarding. Obesity comes with so many comorbidities that you cannot afford to waste your life dealing with, and weakness or lack of fitness makes it hard to keep up with children. I find that I'm able to exercise much better if the activity itself is fun. So, most nights, I play Super Punch Out or Wii Fit. If you have a kid, playing with your kid is like exercise, fun, and bonding all rolled up into one activity. Roughhousing with your kid is a great way to get exercise for both of you, while also teaching your kid body awareness and confidence, coordination, balance, and how to respect others' boundaries and limits.
- **Use skin care**: I've got dry skin on my hands, and when they start to crack and bleed, I don't want to use them for anything. So every night, I use lotion and put on fingerless gloves to trap the moisture against my hands while I sleep. I'm still trying to find a good hand cream, but O'Keeffe's Healthy Feet works miracles for my feet. If your feet are dry and cracking, get a pedicure, then use O'Keeffe's under some socks. Finding a good face wash and lotion can reduce acne breakouts and rashes (I use Clear Days Ahead face wash and L'Oréal Age Perfect face cream).
- **Break unhealthy digital habits**: doomscrolling is perhaps the greatest waste of life of the 21st century. Take steps to get off your phone and either consume long-form media that requires active attention, or be present in the real world. This can be really difficult, but I've found the following steps to be very helpful in renegotiating my relationship with my phone and digital media:
  - **Use do not disturb**: I currently mute all notifications except for phone calls. Having your phone pinging constantly is the best way to ensure it stays in your hand (or drives you insane from across the room). I make sure the people I regularly communicate have an understanding that if they need to reach me urgently, they have to call. 
  - **Archive or delete social media apps**: If you need them, you can download them again. But without that barrier in place, you constantly have to resist the temptation.
  - **Block addictive websites**: Once you make it harder to use your apps, there's a good chance that you'll just start to use the website versions of your usual social media platforms through your browser app. I paid $100 for a lifetime subscription to the [BlockSite](https://blocksite.co/) app/browser extension  to remedy this; I figured that if it saves me 4 hours of my life, it has paid for itself. And it has. Once you have BlockSite, you will be appalled to see just how often you see its "This website has been blocked" message because the habit of navigating to your usual websites is so deeply ingrained.
  - **Make the UI less appealing/convenient**: when people talk about gambling addictions, they often cite how the gaudy displays, flashing lights, and exiting sounds draw gamblers in and keep them playing [1]. I paid $30 for a lifetime subscription to [minimalist phone launcher](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.qqlabs.minimalistlauncher), which replaces my home screen with a plain text. I feel like this has helped me reduce how often I, by reflex, open my phone and navigate to a scrolling app. Another intervention you can use is to set your display to be greyscale only. That *did* help me reduce my phone usage, but I had to disable it too often for it to be practical (and I once got pulled over while using Google Maps in greyscale because I couldn't distinguish the route from the rest of the roads).
- **Learn to let go of FOMO**: there are times when I get down about not seeing my friends as much, not having time for my hobbies, having to miss out on events, or even falling behind on housework. While it's okay to feel like that, and you should absolutely make time to see your friends and do what you love, you can't let feelings of discontent be an assault on your well-being. Remember that if there are people who you love so much that you take care of them, you're not wasting your time.
- **Invest in efficiency**: this is not conventional self-care, but anytime you learn how to do a chore or routine faster, better, or cheaper, that's time and/or money that you can give back to yourself.
- **Play**: if you only take one thing away from this note, let it be that it is critically important that you make time to play. If all you do is work and sleep, you will be miserable. Play rejuvenates the soul while at the same time exercising the mind and/or body. Play with your spouse, and your relationship will be stronger. Play with your children and you will watch their development progress in real time. Play with your friends and you will feel community. Play outdoors and you will feel alive. Play roleplaying games and you will have new and fantastical experiences. Play rhythm or action games and you will develop better reflexes. Play strategic games and you will develop an intuition for understanding real-world interpersonal interactions. Do not play mobile games because they are a plot by the Canadian Devil to capitalize on addiction to fund the development of Canadian infrastructure [2].

Sources:
[1] https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1171-18.2018 
[2] https://southpark.cc.com/video-clips/jgkzdr/south-park-beelzaboot
      (alt: *South Park* S18E06: "Freemium Isn't Free") 