Working in healthcare tends to very much not be about self-care, and yet healthcare self-care has never mattered more. It’s about caring for others, prioritising the needs of the many over yourself, and responding both physically and emotionally whilst managing an increasing administrative burden. During and post-covid this feeling has been amplified for many and it seems to have become harder to say no and push back against the relentless ground swell of demands. (1,2)
Self-care can be great fun, it can feel rewarding and even luxuriating. However, this often requires time, finances and personal resources you may be lacking. But self-care isn’t just about feeling fabulous. It’s also, at its most basic and important level, about looking out for yourself.
There’s an abundance of marketing telling you what self-care looks like, smells like and feels like, but self-care can also show up in some very simple ways. It can be present in how you step in for yourself each day; making sure you eat and eat well, making time to exercise, taking time off from your normal routine, recognising your limits, or from small, simple awarenesses like using that extra bit of care when walking on uneven ground or using a sharp knife, to finding ways to support yourself through those harder times.
More than a collection of occasional indulgent activities, self-care is a system that brings together different parts of ourselves to help us function sustainably and safely. Self-care might be pitched now as an event or even a luxury, but in the last couple of decades, it’s moved deep into the territory of being a necessity, especially in healthcare, whether you’re on the frontline, or in research or organisational roles. And when we stop to consider the significantly higher strain being placed on our executive functioning and nervous system from modern living, self-care can be the lynchpin protecting our physical health, mental wellbeing and cognitive capacity.
It’s More than Bubbles
A nice soak in a candlelit bath isn’t always achievable, that hour massage might not quite erase a heavy week of caring, a night out with mates might be a good laugh but you still must go home and deal with tomorrow when it comes.
Many of us now recognise that single acts of healthcare self-care aren’t quite enough to counteract that sometimes-incessant pounding of pressure that can ripple through modern life. That the push to be more, do more, give more, and have more isn’t always assuaged by a crystal and a scented candle. They may be good grounders, but they are only one part of a process.
For many healthcare and research professionals, where emotional labour, cognitive demands, and responsibility for others can continue long after the workday ends, sustainable self-care becomes less about occasional recovery and more about protecting the capacity to continue caring well.
The constantly shifting health and wellbeing field, rapid technological change, endless updates, and increasing push to optimise our careers, finances, and personal lives have exposed us to more stimulation than any previous generation. Stimulation that isn’t just activating our nervous systems but is also pushing us toward change dynamics that are putting many of us beyond our capacity. Self-care is softly eloping out of the window.
The Art of Being Discerning
A core skill for surviving the modern world is now learning how to be discerning. Especially when it comes to industries and roles that prioritise the wellbeing of others and maybe leave you little energy for your own self-care.
Backed by a comprehensive industry that ranges from the basic to the luxury, one can easily lose large amounts of money and time on things that don’t necessarily suit us, help us feel better in the way we expect or might even cost us later in ways we could not foresee.
Self-care, like anything else, can become an internalised stress, pushing us from within to do and be more than our capacity allows, and that can have the reverse effect of our aims for rest and recuperation. This can be amplified when you work in the healthcare world and whilst your originations pushes you to care for yourself, the roles you do doesn’t always leave the space to do just that.
Comparison is something we all instinctively do. In many ways it helps us assess ourselves, identify areas for improvement, and provides a potential blueprint for change. And that’s where discernment is supposed to step up.
Thanks to the combination of demanding jobs, overwhelming choice and the explosion of ideas in the wellness market, alongside the perfectionistic and often urgent nature of their marketing, we can bypass this step and forget to discriminate between what could suit us and our circumstances and what’s better suited to the nature and life of others.
When More Thinking Creates Less Clarity
But it isn’t necessarily about thinking more. In fact, it’s about streamlining your thinking. And, then your life.
Your brain is designed to activate response systems in the face of threats. Whether physical danger, financial stress, workplace conflict, or an overwhelming list of demands, the body shifts into a protective mode. Stress hormones are released, and this affects your attention, reducing your capacity for crucial analysis and limiting your ability to access higher-order thinking. You move from rest and digest into fight or flight. (3,4)
The problem with modern life is often running away or fighting isn’t an option, you can’t really run away from your patients, even if they are more than you can count, and kicking the manager in the shins for pressuring you to meet their KPI’s is definitely not an option.
What this means is you’re left with a body carrying elevated stress hormones without a clear way to convert that activation into action. In the absence of an outlet, those physiological changes can begin to affect the wider system and limit access to our higher-order thinking skills, making it harder to problem solve and make clear decisions. For healthcare professionals, where decision-making, concentration, communication and emotional regulation are often central to their roles, these effects can become particularly noticeable and important. (3,4)
The Sometimes Irritating “Calm Down” Approach
If you’re under the pump to meet a deadline, help someone in pain or deliver a report being told to take a breath can make even the calmest person momentarily reconsider their life choices. But, as many people in healthcare know, there’s a fairly sensible reason we tell people to calm down and take a breath, and it’s not just because we saw some breathwork thing on TikTok. It’s not to be irritating, or patronising, it’s because being in the non-fight and flight mode (the parasympathetic system) means we are more likely to be able to access the executive functioning part of our brains. And this opens the doors back to awareness, attention and the ability to work out what we need to do more of and what to become less involved with.
This is when discernment becomes accessible, and discernment is at the heart of self-care.
When it comes to self-care and the wellness space, prevention is always going to be better than cure. What this looks like is working out what you know about yourself and what you know about modern life.
There are going to be certain types of self-care practices that suit you and some that don’t. Taking stock of these and being clear in your mind what you have physical capacity for, time for, and the finances for, will help you make decisions when presented with options or help you navigate that comparison trap to see if what someone else is doing is for you or not.
The 6 Selves of Self-Care
Relying on a system of self-care that uses different parts of us to work together, the 6 Selves support self-care through combining information with appropriate action, resulting in a system that operates in defence of our finite resources:
- Self-Knowledge – looking at what we have been exposed to and what we have been through, and how this influences our needs, preferences, strengths, and limitations.
- Self-Understanding – accessing information about why certain experiences affect us the way they do and recognising that many of our emotional responses are part of being human.
- Self-Compassion – responding to difficulties with kindness rather than criticism and working to alleviate our own suffering.
- Self-Recognition – acknowledging our efforts, progress, the small wins and the quiet achievements.
- Self-Advocacy – speaking up for our needs and wellbeing to both ourselves and others.
- Self-Protection – safeguarding your time, energy, and resources.
Together these 6 parts help us go past reactive or intermittent self-care and toward sustainable self-care. They allow us to assess what we need, understand why we need it, respond and act kindly, honour our efforts, advocate for our wellbeing, and protect the finite emotional, physical, cognitive and financial resources we rely upon every day. The 6 selves work together to help you see what’s getting in the way of self-care and what you might be able to do about those blocks.
Perhaps one of the most valuable self-care practices you can do for yourself isn’t just engaging in a particular practice, buying a certain product or using a wellbeing service, it’s taking a little bit of time to work out who you are, what you’ve been through, what works for you, what hasn’t, where you’re vulnerable and seeing how that might get hijacked or impacted through the comparison game and thinking that you should be more.
Developing a system that supports you in seeing your worth through even the smallest acts and decisions, and stepping in to protect your finite resources now and for your future self, is likely one of the most sustainable forms of self-care available.
Healthcare self-care is choosing you.
Author’s Note
The 6 Selves of Self-Care is an original framework developed by the author as part of the Adaptable Sustainable Psychology model. It integrates established psychological principles into a practical approach to sustainable self-care, supporting long-term wellbeing through self-knowledge, self-understanding, self-compassion, self-recognition, self-advocacy, and self-protection.
Author Bio
Amberley Meredith is a registered psychologist and author with over 25 years’ experience in mental health, organisational wellbeing, trauma-informed practice, and professional supervision. Her work examines burnout, emotional regulation, leadership, self-perception, and the psychological impact of modern workplace culture. She is the founder of Adaptable Sustainable Psychology and author of Self-Improvement Burnout – When to Start, When to Stop, with a particular interest in the interaction between workforce sustainability, psychological safety, and long-term emotional functioning.
