The Dilemma of Self-Care in Our Society
The word self-care often sounds like a hoax.
“What self-care?” someone asks.
“That’s a Western thing,” another says.
Social media, meanwhile, is full of advice. Do’s and don’ts. Reminders that you cannot pour from an empty cup. Counter-reminders that giving is our primary duty. Somewhere in between, popular psychology steps in to define what care should look like.
“What self-care?” someone asks.
“That’s a Western thing,” another says.
Social media, meanwhile, is full of advice. Do’s and don’ts. Reminders that you cannot pour from an empty cup. Counter-reminders that giving is our primary duty. Somewhere in between, popular psychology steps in to define what care should look like.
When Care Becomes a Performance
Usually, it looks calm and curated. Soft voices. Well-lit rooms. Talks of boundaries, me-time, and listening inward. Walks. Bubble baths. Vacations. Tea. Skin-care routines. These are not useless. They help some people rest, regulate, and feel alive again. That matters. And yet, something feels incomplete.
Care, something basic and necessary, slowly begins to look aesthetic, planned, and earned. These images suggest that self-care belongs more naturally to those with time, money, privacy, and mobility. What is a human need begins to resemble a lifestyle category.
In my life coaching sessions, many people arrive carrying these ideas. To practice “self-care,” they must now find extra time, extra money, and emotional energy within lives that already feel stretched thin. When they cannot, it does not just feel inconvenient. It feels like failure.
Care becomes another task. Another expectation. Another place to fall short. But this is not merely personal. It is cultural, economic, and structural. So we need to ask: Are we trying to solve a collective problem with individual solutions?
Care, something basic and necessary, slowly begins to look aesthetic, planned, and earned. These images suggest that self-care belongs more naturally to those with time, money, privacy, and mobility. What is a human need begins to resemble a lifestyle category.
In my life coaching sessions, many people arrive carrying these ideas. To practice “self-care,” they must now find extra time, extra money, and emotional energy within lives that already feel stretched thin. When they cannot, it does not just feel inconvenient. It feels like failure.
Care becomes another task. Another expectation. Another place to fall short. But this is not merely personal. It is cultural, economic, and structural. So we need to ask: Are we trying to solve a collective problem with individual solutions?
Where Duty Shapes the Body
From childhood, many of us are taught that it is virtuous to put others first, to serve, to sacrifice, to meet family obligations. For women especially, this becomes deeply internalized. Not because care is wrong, but because somewhere along the way, care for self begins to feel secondary, even selfish.
In collectivistic societies, the self is defined in relation to others. Belonging, reciprocity, and responsibility matter. Rest is rarely individual. It is negotiated, justified, and often postponed.
In collectivistic societies, the self is defined in relation to others. Belonging, reciprocity, and responsibility matter. Rest is rarely individual. It is negotiated, justified, and often postponed.
The Weight of Care in Shrinking Circles
Today, many households function as nuclear units while still carrying the expectations of joint family systems. The care once distributed among many now rests on one or two people, most often women. The structure has changed. The expectations have not.
Self-care, in such contexts, is not about withdrawing from responsibility. It is about sustaining the body and mind that carry it. Yet when care is framed only at the personal level, individuals are quietly asked to compensate for structural gaps.
When care is individualized, strain becomes personal weakness instead of shared imbalance.
Self-care, in such contexts, is not about withdrawing from responsibility. It is about sustaining the body and mind that carry it. Yet when care is framed only at the personal level, individuals are quietly asked to compensate for structural gaps.
When care is individualized, strain becomes personal weakness instead of shared imbalance.
*Geeta’s Reality: The Cost of Carrying Alone
(Name changed. Real scenario)
Geeta, from West Bengal, is a business entrepreneur. She works, earns, and carries responsibility at work. At home, little has shifted. Some labour could be shared, but largely is not. She is the daughter-in-law, and this is still understood as her role within a traditional joint family system.
Her time before and after office revolves around meals, household order, and everyone else‟s needs.
She carries a quiet hesitation about conceiving. Not because she does not want children, but because she knows how care-giving usually unfolds. The autonomy she experiences at work feels fragile.
From the outside, everything looks normal. The family functions. Her exhaustion often goes unseen.
Light a scented candle? Take a bubble bath?
She lives in a joint family. Privacy is limited. There is no bathtub. Every few minutes, someone needs something.
She cannot step away from her reality in order to rest.
Self-care becomes fragile when it depends on privacy, money, or permission.
So what does self-care look like in this life? Is it meant to sustain, or merely to distract?
When care is only individual, it falls short.
Geeta, from West Bengal, is a business entrepreneur. She works, earns, and carries responsibility at work. At home, little has shifted. Some labour could be shared, but largely is not. She is the daughter-in-law, and this is still understood as her role within a traditional joint family system.
Her time before and after office revolves around meals, household order, and everyone else‟s needs.
She carries a quiet hesitation about conceiving. Not because she does not want children, but because she knows how care-giving usually unfolds. The autonomy she experiences at work feels fragile.
From the outside, everything looks normal. The family functions. Her exhaustion often goes unseen.
Light a scented candle? Take a bubble bath?
She lives in a joint family. Privacy is limited. There is no bathtub. Every few minutes, someone needs something.
She cannot step away from her reality in order to rest.
Self-care becomes fragile when it depends on privacy, money, or permission.
So what does self-care look like in this life? Is it meant to sustain, or merely to distract?
When care is only individual, it falls short.
When Rest Has No Room
In collectivistic and economically constrained settings, care cannot survive as an individual project alone.
When self-care is reduced to routines detached from culture, gender roles, and work conditions, it quietly ignores the systems that exhaust people.
For Geeta, care cannot be an exit from life. It has to be woven into life. It has to be shared, not silently carried. Ordinary, not exceptional.
When responsibility is shared, rest becomes possible. When it is isolated, exhaustion becomes moralized.
When self-care is reduced to routines detached from culture, gender roles, and work conditions, it quietly ignores the systems that exhaust people.
For Geeta, care cannot be an exit from life. It has to be woven into life. It has to be shared, not silently carried. Ordinary, not exceptional.
When responsibility is shared, rest becomes possible. When it is isolated, exhaustion becomes moralized.
Small Ways Care Could Be Shared
(Not solutions. Possibilities)
Care may arrive not as time away from responsibility, but as small shifts within it. This does not deny the value of retreats or pauses. It simply recognizes that for many, care must first be livable.
-One meal a day… not being her responsibility.
-Shared ownership of routines. Being able to hand off one dishwashing shift weekly.
-A slower walk home from work- without guilt or hurry.
-Quiet moments during the commute.
-An evening where her time is not automatically assumed.
-The freedom to say no, knowing someone else can step in.
-A hearty conversation with a friend.
Even in our own contexts, rest is expected to look productive and socially acceptable – yoga, zumba, kitty parties. But the small, ordinary pauses that look like nothing at all often matter just as much, if not more.
Rest that needs justification is already uneven.
Care may arrive not as time away from responsibility, but as small shifts within it. This does not deny the value of retreats or pauses. It simply recognizes that for many, care must first be livable.
-One meal a day… not being her responsibility.
-Shared ownership of routines. Being able to hand off one dishwashing shift weekly.
-A slower walk home from work- without guilt or hurry.
-Quiet moments during the commute.
-An evening where her time is not automatically assumed.
-The freedom to say no, knowing someone else can step in.
-A hearty conversation with a friend.
Even in our own contexts, rest is expected to look productive and socially acceptable – yoga, zumba, kitty parties. But the small, ordinary pauses that look like nothing at all often matter just as much, if not more.
Rest that needs justification is already uneven.
Different Worlds, Different Rhythms of Care
Miranda lives in Michigan. Her version of self-care is shaped by access to time, privacy, and support systems that make solitude and pause more possible. She may end her day with journaling, a skin-care routine, or quiet time alone.
Geeta ends her day chopping vegetables so the next morning runs smoothly for her and everyone else.
Both live within systems that shape what care can look like. One is not simply more caring or less burdened than the other – they are carried, constrained, and supported by different social, economic, and relational structures.
Both need care. But they are not held by the same conditions.
What travels globally as “self-care” often carries the assumptions of certain worlds – about time, privacy, money, and autonomy. When those assumptions land in different cultural and economic realities, they can feel either out of reach or strangely ill-fitted.
The issue, then, is not whose life is harder. It is how differently systems distribute rest, responsibility, and support.
And for us, care is not only a personal practice. It is a relational and social arrangement.
Geeta ends her day chopping vegetables so the next morning runs smoothly for her and everyone else.
Both live within systems that shape what care can look like. One is not simply more caring or less burdened than the other – they are carried, constrained, and supported by different social, economic, and relational structures.
Both need care. But they are not held by the same conditions.
What travels globally as “self-care” often carries the assumptions of certain worlds – about time, privacy, money, and autonomy. When those assumptions land in different cultural and economic realities, they can feel either out of reach or strangely ill-fitted.
The issue, then, is not whose life is harder. It is how differently systems distribute rest, responsibility, and support.
And for us, care is not only a personal practice. It is a relational and social arrangement.
Relational Rhythms of Care
And yet, beyond the language of individualism and collectivism, many of us live within what can be called relational worlds, where identity and wellbeing are shaped not only by duty or structure, but by chosen bonds, shared presence, and mutual attentiveness.
I remember growing up when neighbor aunties would bring small portions of food in batukas (bowls) – not because a family was poor or in need, but as a simple way of saying, we are thinking of you, you belong, you are held.
In such worlds, care is not meant to be carried alone. Here, “self-care” is also “we-care”. It grows through a quiet web of relationships, in recognition of our interconnectedness – through honest presence, gentle boundaries, the repair of ruptures, and the willingness not only to care for others but also to allow ourselves to be cared for. This web is not sustained merely by living under the same roof or belonging to the same system. It is formed through intentional reaching out, in person or online, through meaningful listening, and by making space for one another beyond obligation.
Even across busy schedules, cities, or oceans, such rhythms of care can be continually chosen. They become the relational ecosystem that holds the self when individual strength runs thin. In this way, rest and care become acts of reciprocity rather than self-sacrifice. They arise from relationship and mutual regard, not from entitlement or isolated striving. It is the quiet language of someone saying, “I’ve got this for now. You can rest.” This is what mutual upholding looks like.
I remember growing up when neighbor aunties would bring small portions of food in batukas (bowls) – not because a family was poor or in need, but as a simple way of saying, we are thinking of you, you belong, you are held.
In such worlds, care is not meant to be carried alone. Here, “self-care” is also “we-care”. It grows through a quiet web of relationships, in recognition of our interconnectedness – through honest presence, gentle boundaries, the repair of ruptures, and the willingness not only to care for others but also to allow ourselves to be cared for. This web is not sustained merely by living under the same roof or belonging to the same system. It is formed through intentional reaching out, in person or online, through meaningful listening, and by making space for one another beyond obligation.
Even across busy schedules, cities, or oceans, such rhythms of care can be continually chosen. They become the relational ecosystem that holds the self when individual strength runs thin. In this way, rest and care become acts of reciprocity rather than self-sacrifice. They arise from relationship and mutual regard, not from entitlement or isolated striving. It is the quiet language of someone saying, “I’ve got this for now. You can rest.” This is what mutual upholding looks like.
Pause in a Noisy World
In my work through Chautari Life Coaching, I speak often about pauses, rest, and reflection. And yet, I am continually reminded of how context shapes the very possibility of pause.
Some sessions happen while a cooker whistles softly in the background. Life continues around the conversation.
A client once shared that her “me-time” was enjoying a bhutta (corn) during her one-and-a-half-hour train ride back home from an eight hour shift. No quiet room, no silence, no rituals- just a few unhurried minutes with warm corn by the window.
Moments like these have changed my understanding of pause. “Pause‟, I am learning, is not a breaking away from life, but a recalibration within it- small, ordinary breaths of rest woven into moving, demanding days.
Self-care is what quietly rejuvenates and sustains you, not what exhausts you or leaves you guilty for not keeping up with a trend.
Some sessions happen while a cooker whistles softly in the background. Life continues around the conversation.
A client once shared that her “me-time” was enjoying a bhutta (corn) during her one-and-a-half-hour train ride back home from an eight hour shift. No quiet room, no silence, no rituals- just a few unhurried minutes with warm corn by the window.
Moments like these have changed my understanding of pause. “Pause‟, I am learning, is not a breaking away from life, but a recalibration within it- small, ordinary breaths of rest woven into moving, demanding days.
Self-care is what quietly rejuvenates and sustains you, not what exhausts you or leaves you guilty for not keeping up with a trend.
Care That Is Not a Luxury
Everyone needs care. Rested minds work with clarity. Presence brings dignity to labour. But many people work from exhaustion because stopping is not an option. When they pause, livelihoods and sometimes lives are affected.
So the question is not whether self-care matters. It is this:
How do we speak about care without erasing lived realities?
How do we stop turning rest into another silent standard to fail?
The issue is not the desire for individual care. It is the unequal access to it.
So, is this dilemma of self-care in our societies calling us to re-imagine the worlds, relationships, and rhythms that make care a shared reality rather than a private struggle?
We may turn inward again and again, but if the environment around us does not hold, mirror, and nourish that care, it keeps leaking away. It becomes like pouring water into a container with an open tap- no matter how much you pour, it never quite fills.
So the question is not whether self-care matters. It is this:
How do we speak about care without erasing lived realities?
How do we stop turning rest into another silent standard to fail?
The issue is not the desire for individual care. It is the unequal access to it.
So, is this dilemma of self-care in our societies calling us to re-imagine the worlds, relationships, and rhythms that make care a shared reality rather than a private struggle?
We may turn inward again and again, but if the environment around us does not hold, mirror, and nourish that care, it keeps leaking away. It becomes like pouring water into a container with an open tap- no matter how much you pour, it never quite fills.
A Gentle Invitation
This is not a call to consume another solution. It is an invitation to reflect, to notice, to begin naming what rest could mean within our own contexts, relationships, and limits.
I carry a quiet dream for spaces like Chautari- that one day, the most basic form of care might simply be access to a listening, reflective space, without money becoming the gatekeeper…that those who can afford it would help hold the space for those who cannot, until a time when community itself is ready to support it, without turning care into a business. I sit with the fear that otherwise, even this could remain only a dream, or slowly become another part of the growing support industry- packaged, priced, and consumed.
If you are longing to explore that kind of pause, to listen to the stories your body and emotions carry, you are welcome to sit with me at Chautari. Not as a product to be bought, but as a space to be held. Feel free to DM “pause” if you want to be a part of this conversation.
True care is not a transaction. It is the space to be met, the pause to breathe, and the freedom to exist without guilt.
I carry a quiet dream for spaces like Chautari- that one day, the most basic form of care might simply be access to a listening, reflective space, without money becoming the gatekeeper…that those who can afford it would help hold the space for those who cannot, until a time when community itself is ready to support it, without turning care into a business. I sit with the fear that otherwise, even this could remain only a dream, or slowly become another part of the growing support industry- packaged, priced, and consumed.
If you are longing to explore that kind of pause, to listen to the stories your body and emotions carry, you are welcome to sit with me at Chautari. Not as a product to be bought, but as a space to be held. Feel free to DM “pause” if you want to be a part of this conversation.
True care is not a transaction. It is the space to be met, the pause to breathe, and the freedom to exist without guilt.