I'm not against bubble baths. If a hot bath and some candles make you feel better, great. Do that. But we need to be honest about what we're actually talking about when we say "self-care."

The problem with how self-care gets sold is that it's all about feeling good in the moment. Comfort. Treats. Permission to indulge. None of that is bad, but it's not what keeps you functional when life gets hard.

Real self-maintenance isn't about rewarding yourself. It's about doing the boring shit that keeps your brain and body working. Going to bed at a reasonable hour even when you'd rather scroll your phone. Eating something that isn't garbage. Moving your body because sitting all day makes you feel like hell. Showing up to your therapy appointment when you don't feel like talking.

Here's what our team sees in practice: people come in burned out, exhausted, barely holding it together. Somewhere along the way, they got the message that self-care means more massages or a weekend away or buying something nice for themselves. So they do that, and then they're confused why they still feel like shit.

You can't treat-yourself your way out of chronic sleep deprivation. You can't bubble-bath your way out of never exercising. You can't face-mask your way out of avoiding all your problems.

Self-maintenance is the stuff that isn't fun but keeps you from falling apart: sleeping enough, consistently. Eating in a way that doesn't make you feel terrible. Moving your body regularly. Taking your meds if you're on them. Going to your appointments. Having some kind of social connection, even when you don't want to. Not drinking yourself into the ground every weekend.

None of that is Instagram-worthy. None of it feels like self-care. Most of it feels like just another thing you have to do.

But maintenance isn't optional. You can skip it for a while, sure. Your body and brain will let you get away with it. Eventually though, you pay for it. You always pay for it. That's not punishment, that's just how it works.

The people I see who are actually doing well aren't the ones with the most elaborate self-care routines. They're the ones who consistently do the boring basics. They sleep. They eat. They move. They show up. They do the work even when it's not fun.
Yeah, they also do nice things for themselves sometimes. They take breaks. They rest. They enjoy their lives. But that stuff works because it's built on a foundation of actual maintenance, not instead of it.

So if you're exhausted and burned out and nothing's helping, ask yourself: are you actually maintaining yourself, or are you just trying to treat yourself out of a hole?
If you're running on four hours of sleep, eating like garbage, never moving your body, and isolating yourself, no amount of retail therapy or spa days is going to fix that. You've got to do the boring work first.

Self-maintenance isn't sexy. It won't make a good social media post. But it's what actually works. Everything else is just decoration.

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