Self Care and Setting Healthy Boundaries vs. Self Isolation and a lack of Self control: Where is the line?

Recently, our society has started to rightfully prioritize self care, which has been long neglected. Boundaries are now a topic of conversation and setting healthy ones is regularly encouraged. Ideally, your boss/ friends/ family members/ partner(s) will respect your need for self care and the boundaries you have set. But our society is also struggling with loneliness more than ever while also seriously struggling with consumerism, debt, and wastefulness. Is our “treat yourself”, “protect your peace” mentality just setting us up for more hurt in the long run? When trying to draw the line between self care and giving in to undisciplined impulses, how do you know where to stop?

If you find yourself regularly feeling “out of control” or controlled by things that are meant to help you cope and deal with stress, they may not be serving you. Cancelling plans with friends to have a night in can be necessary self care occasionally but could turn into isolating self sabotage. Treating yourself to a nice dinner or a new perfume is a great way to reward yourself and honor your work, but when we “treat ourselves” too often, does it just become the new normal? Everyone has different needs financially, socially, physically and mentally. What might be the bare minimum of social interaction in a week for you may be the maximum for someone else. What might be an extravagant reward to you may be an average Tuesday to someone else. Knowing whether you are honoring your needs must be evaluated internally and not determined through comparison.

Good ways to determine whether you have an imbalanced relationship with boundaries and self care are to analyze your financial, social, physical and mental health. Asking yourself if you have any “self care” habits that you regularly prioritize over friends/ family or your financial/ physical/mental well-being. Comparing your habits to your habits a year ago, are the changes that have occurred positive or negative? Do you feel as though you are in a better financial/ social/ physical/ mental situation than you were 1/3/5 years ago? Try to focus on things that are in your control and influenced by your habits and lifestyle and not external or unpredictable factors. If after doing this, you feel as though things have become imbalanced for you, think about when/ how/ why that started. Once you feel you have answers to some or all of those questions, think about the last time that things did feel balanced and what you could do to return to that state. If you feel that it would not be possible to return to that state think about a state of balance that you find desirable. Then consider what it would take to get to where you would like to be. Maybe it’s going out to dinner with friends once a week, maybe it’s spending less time on social media, maybe it’s starting a yoga class, maybe it’s making a monthly budget and sticking to it, or maybe its journaling. Whatever your balanced path towards your goals is, remember to evaluate it regularly to make sure it’s still serving you, good luck!