Be Selfish Without Guilt
Being selfish doesn’t have to be surrounded by negative connotations. Look at the word selfish as another description of self-care. Because that’s exactly what you need to be selfish about.
Part of our mental health lows comes from trying so hard to satisfy others. For whatever reason we’re under the assumption that if we don’t do it, we don’t care or we're saying we don’t love them. So we neglect ourselves to fulfill others needs.
It’s exhausting being everyone else’s support system and having to be your own support system as well. By the time we try to take care of ourselves, we’re burnt out from helping everyone else.
If you’re a parent, you’re exhausted from the obligation you have to your child. If you’re a spouse, you’re exhausted from supporting them the best you can so they can get through their tough moment. Even with friends and other family members.
We feel the need to be everyone’s hero. All while hoping someone will come be our hero. Instead we carry their burdens and neglect our own. That’s not self love, that’s not self care. That is a form of self abuse.
Anything that doesn’t put your mental wellbeing first, is not healthy. People will use you until you no longer have what they need. We’ve all gotten that phone call where the person calling goes into a ranting/venting session. Not once do they stop to ask how you are. If they do, we now feel like we can’t vent or rant because they are not emotionally available to handle what we have to say. The result, we’ve buried what we are dealing with, to create an emotional safe haven for them. But where is your safe haven!?
What Does Being Selfish Look Like?
Being selfish means to set boundaries. It means no longer allowing others to use up the space you need to carry your own burdens. This is for everyone in your life. Before reading how to do this, please understand that you will lose people. The people that leave, don’t chase them. Let them go. As a form of self love, you now have created a space for you & those who respect the space you’ve created.
Being selfish is going to the gym, reading a book, listening to music, making yourself a bubble bath with candles lit. Being selfish means taking 1 day per week to be alone & doing something just got you. Being selfish means taking 1 hour a day, minimum, to do something that eases your mind.
On the day you choose, block out your calendar on your phone. Make yourself unavailable. Put your phone on DND. Set up an automatic reply letting people know you’ll contact them when you’re done with your self care time.
It can even be as simple as driving in silence on the way home. Or blasting your music on the way home. Put your phone on DND and ride. Give yourself that time to decompress to prepare for the rest of your day.
During this time, the only person you are emotionally responsible for is yourself.
You cannot continue to stretch yourself then trying to be everything for everyone else. When that happens, depression walks into the room accompanied by sadness and loneliness.