taking care of Me

One of the hardest things to do is take care of yourself. No, really, I mean it. Do you eat foods that are healthy for you, knowing how much better you will feel than if you eat that banana split? Do you go to sleep at a descent hour because you will feel more refreshed and alert, rather than staying up that extra hour or two or three watching endless talk shows and reality contests interspersed with more commercials than you can recall? How about exercise? How often do we put off going out for a jog, or hitting the gym or that karate/dance/pilates class, knowing through our own experience that we will feel a million times better tomorrow?

And yet, these are the hardest things to do. Why is this so?

To say "I'm taking care of myself" implies first, that you are have had this great sense of enlightenment that self-care is needed because second, self care is viewed as selfish. Is not the greatest virtue self-sacrifice? Is it not selfish, even extended to "cowardly" or "lazy" to take the least harmful way out? The terms "martyr" has great virtuous connotations. We praise and admire those who work 80-100 hours a week, and get rewarded with promotions and praise. The company calls it "loyalty" - loyalty to the profits, rather than to our health.

I worked for one such company, a large law firm that also had a reputation for being a "sweatshop." All manner of professionals and the support staff worked, slaved, for hours, for the clients' interest. As support staff, we made overtime hours, which added up to a lot of money at the end of the day. But what does that money buy you? An extra pair of fancy shoes, a quick trip away for the weekend, when you actually get those weekends off. If you were smart, you saved up enough to pay off your student loans. But when you're ragged and tired and exhausted, having spent the better part of your consciousness on paperwork and typos, you just want some comfort - a bottle of nice wine, an extra fancy dinner - who cares about what's good for you, when through your actions you've already decided that what was good for you was not important.

But I get off on the subject.

What is good for you? It is hard to do. Sacrificing the pleasure of the moment for a sense of balance and well being in the next hours to come. Isn't it easier to keep that television on, to play that next videogame level, to scarf down that next piece of pie or extra scoop of ice cream? Another drink won't hurt, will it?

And so what about the stereotypes of those who do take care of themselves? They are "square" - boring, stiff, killjoy. They don't drink, they go to bed early, they jog every morning, they don't watch tv. The horror! Rather than being admired, these self-cultivators are shunned, judged, dismissed at stuck up or judgmental themselves.

Why to we harbor such self-destructive attitudes?

In my experience treating patients, the frequent response to innocent questions of "so what is your diet like" is a litany of what the guilty patient "should" be eating: "Oh I know I should eat more salad and lettuce, I should drink more water, I should cut down on the coffee." Patients almost always lie about the amount of exercise they do. "Jog - 3-4 times a week. Exercise daily." then when asked more specifically about the exercise habit, there comes the disclaimers. "Oh, well, not so much this week." Or "Well, not during the summer."

We know what is good for us. We know what we should do to take care of ourselves. But we do not. The guilt that accompanies that hour of exercise, of a longer luxurious bath, or the extra $50-100 on a massage or holistic treatment. It is guilt. Guilt that we focus on ourselves, rather than on the housework or project at work. Why is this?