Indulge in Setting Boundaries

Self-care is about discipline. We exercise it when we do what matters most to us.

- By Amy Maclin

THE WORD “CARE” can be a sneaky one, depending on how you use it. “Caring for others” is a profound act, connoting responsibility, affection, devotion, and love. But when you stick “care” at the end of a term, it loses some of the embedded emotion. “Childcare” is a thing you arrange; “caring for your child” is how you raise and love them. “Eldercare” is a bureaucratic term, cold and institutional; “caring for your mom” sounds loving and full. Just by shuffling the phrases, you get something that feels very different.

Now let's try it with you. “Caring for yourself” sounds like a heavy but important lift. And “self-care” sounds like pampering, right? It’s not, says Pooja Lakshmin, MD, a psychiatrist and the author of Real Self-Care, her guidebook on setting boundaries. During her decade-plus in medical school and residency, she tried to fight burnout from the punishing hours and stress with wellness practices like meditation and yoga, but none brought lasting relief. And when she became a psychiatrist, her patients described similar experiences, with a heaping side of self-blame. “They’d tell me, ‘I’m stressed-out, I’m not sleeping, and it’s my fault because I don’t have time to use this meditation app,” Lakshmin says. These conversations helped inspire her book, an unflinching look at what it means to be a maxed-out person in our always-on society. “I want to show that there’s a way to take care of yourself that yields sustainable results.” We want that too, so we asked her a few follow-up questions.

REAL SIMPLE: So, wait, yoga’s not self-care? Really?