01/19/2026
Struggling to prioritize your mental health and self-care?
I’m right there with you.
For years, I put self-care at the bottom of the list — after housework, to-do lists, and way too much scrolling. If I’m honest, part of it was that self-care felt… boring or hard to achieve. There was little instant reward or gratification, so it was easy to make excuses and put it off.
My thought was: “Well, I’m not having a mental breakdown *yet*, so I’m fine.”
Getting started is hard. Staying consistent is even harder.
Here’s what actually helped me:
• Naming the avoidance out loud. I started voicing my excuses and resistance to my counsellor. Saying it out loud and receiving validation for the constant pressure to be productive, the overwhelm, the shutdown — helped me get to the why behind avoiding self-care.
• Letting go of all-or-nothing thinking. Self-care doesn’t have to be perfect or long. I can do small doses. If I stop enjoying it, I can stop and try something else.
• Using self-hypnosis. This one surprised me. It made my body feel like butter melting into the bed, yes, literally like butter. It was the first time that doing relaxation techniques on my own gave me an instant reward, and for once, I actually wanted to come back to it.
• Booking appointments. Counselling, hypnosis, reiki, acupuncture, massage, osteopathy, dietitian, chiro — all of them are scheduled. That matters. It’s intentionally carved-out time to prioritize mental health.
Everyone’s self care looks different. There is no one size fits all.
We aren’t meant to do this alone. We need a village to support us so we can learn how to support ourselves.