When Self Care Looks Like Less
Honoring Capacity In Hard Seasons
Every year in September, I become a different version of myself. I’m called to focus on my mental health during this season of grief. It’s a quiet month for me, the month I lost my sister, Natasha. This year marks ten years without her. After a decade of carrying the ache of her absence, I’ve learned September needs to be soft. It’s the month I care for myself differently.
Choosing Less, A Practice Of Capacity
I make it a low energy, low commitment, low productivity month. Outside of what’s required, my self care is simple. I agree to nothing. I leave space in my days to feel however I feel. I lean on my support system for laughter, comfort or quiet company. I eat lots of pho. I simplify. I rest. A season of quiet.
The Problem With Performative Self Care
Lately, we hear so much about self care. It has been marketed, commodified and turned into another performance. Something you can buy, post, or perfect. Don’t get me wrong, I love a spa day and routines can be very grounding and healing. But sometimes self care is saying no. It’s staying home. It’s allowing silence.
Self care isn’t always about doing more, but about honoring capacity and aligning with what your body and heart need at any given moment. And giving yourself permission for that need to change and shift from day to day.
True self care asks:
What do I have capacity for right now?
Can I let that be enough?
We have been taught to equate care with effort or doing, but real rest often looks like subtraction not addition. You do not owe the world constant productivity.
Reflection for Hard Seasons
I invite you to reflect on your own self care, especially during hard seasons. Months that carry memories, transition or tender anniversaries:
The month you lost someone you love
Your own birthday month
The November and December holiday stretch
Grief, change, and human limits are a part of life. As I return to writing this October, I carry this reminder. Self care can be light, quiet, and simple.
Questions for Reflection
Do I secretly feel guilty if my downtime doesn’t “produce” anything?
How do I measure whether I “rested well”? Who taught me that metric?
If I stopped doing for a whole month, what would I learn about myself?
What would crumble without my constant effort, and would that actually matter?
What signals has my body been sending that I’ve ignored in the name of commitment or consistency?
How much of my idea of worth is tied to usefulness?
Whose approval am I chasing when I “self care” by buying, posting, or optimizing?
What would rest look like if no one could see me doing it?
How can I create a life that doesn’t require collapse to justify recovery?
How Self Care Strengthens Relationships
This invitation to slow down is also an invitation to come home to yourself.
It’s something I remind the couples I work with about often, self care isn’t selfish. It’s fundamental. In relationships, when we “push through” our partners only get the fragmented version of us. But when we identify what we need, then provide for ourselves and ask for it from others, we restore connection.
We reconnect not only with ourselves but with each other. Resentment fades. Presence and closeness return. We stop running on fumes.
Healthy relationships thrive on reciprocity. We care for ourselves, pour into our partners, and allow them to pour back into us. It all begins with honoring capacity consistently, not just when we are burnt out.
Closing Reflection
Maybe self care isn’t what we do between breakdowns, but how we prevent living in a constant one.
If you or your partner are struggling to find balance caring for yourself and caring for your relationship, I offer couples therapy and therapy intensives in Georgia and California to help you rebuild connection and restore emotional safety with each other.
Written by Jazmyne Asaju, LCSW - Trauma and Relationship therapist for couples in Georgia and California. Learn more here.
