Women's Health
![Pooja Lakshmin MD - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B0B8TJ4L3B.jpg)
Real Self-Care: A Transformative Program for Redefining Wellness (Crystals, Cleanses, and Bubble Baths Not Included)
From women's mental health specialist and New York Times contributor Pooja Lakshmin, MD, comes a long-overdue reckoning with the contradictions of the wellness industry and a paradigm-shifting program for practicing real self-care that will empower, uplift, and maybe even start a revolution.
You may have noticed that it's nearly impossible to go even a couple days without coming across the term self-care. A word that encompasses any number of lifestyle choices and products-from juice cleanses to yoga workshops to luxury bamboo sheets-self-care has exploded in our collective consciousness as a panacea for practically all of women's problems.
Board-certified psychiatrist Dr. Pooja Lakshmin finds this cultural embrace of self-care incomplete at best and manipulative at worst. Fixing your troubles isn't simple as buying a new day planner or signing up for a meditation class. These faux self-care practices keep us looking outward-comparing ourselves with others or striving for a certain type of perfection. Even worse, they exonerate an oppressive social system that has betrayed women and minorities.
Real self-care, in contrast, is an internal, self-reflective process that involves making difficult decisions in line with our values, and when we practice it, we shift our relationships, our workplaces, and even our broken systems.
In Real Self-Care, Lakshmin helps readers understand what a real practice of caring for yourself could-and does-look like. Using case studies from her practice, clinical research, and the down-to-earth style that she's become known for, Lakshmin provides a step-by-step program for real and sustainable change and solace. Packed with actionable strategies to deal with common problems, Real Self-Care is a complete roadmap for women to set boundaries and move past guilt, treat themselves with compassion, get closer to themselves, and assert their power. The result-having ownership over one's own life- is nothing less than a personal and social revolution.
You may have noticed that it's nearly impossible to go even a couple days without coming across the term self-care. A word that encompasses any number of lifestyle choices and products-from juice cleanses to yoga workshops to luxury bamboo sheets-self-care has exploded in our collective consciousness as a panacea for practically all of women's problems.
Board-certified psychiatrist Dr. Pooja Lakshmin finds this cultural embrace of self-care incomplete at best and manipulative at worst. Fixing your troubles isn't simple as buying a new day planner or signing up for a meditation class. These faux self-care practices keep us looking outward-comparing ourselves with others or striving for a certain type of perfection. Even worse, they exonerate an oppressive social system that has betrayed women and minorities.
Real self-care, in contrast, is an internal, self-reflective process that involves making difficult decisions in line with our values, and when we practice it, we shift our relationships, our workplaces, and even our broken systems.
In Real Self-Care, Lakshmin helps readers understand what a real practice of caring for yourself could-and does-look like. Using case studies from her practice, clinical research, and the down-to-earth style that she's become known for, Lakshmin provides a step-by-step program for real and sustainable change and solace. Packed with actionable strategies to deal with common problems, Real Self-Care is a complete roadmap for women to set boundaries and move past guilt, treat themselves with compassion, get closer to themselves, and assert their power. The result-having ownership over one's own life- is nothing less than a personal and social revolution.
Editorial Reviews
"I see parents-moms in particular-struggling with the weight of expectations, feelings of failure, and the sense of never measuring up. In Real Self-Care Pooja explores what it really means to take care of ourselves and provides a revolutionary self-care framework that is honest, compassionate, and completely actionable."
--Dr. Becky Kennedy, clinical psychologist, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Good Inside, and CEO and founder of Good Inside
"Real Self Care is a revelation! Pooja takes us through a journey of unlearning and rediscovery to tackle burnout, make ourselves whole again, and step into our power in a world that is often stacked against us."
--Eve Rodsky, New York Times bestselling author of Fair Play
"Pooja's Real Self-Care is a gentle yet direct invitation for us to consider the things that will really help us to be well. She does a masterful job of exposing the life hacks and shortcuts that may seem helpful in the short term while encouraging us to interrogate and change the systems and beliefs that actually contribute to us feeling burned out and overwhelmed. This is a practical and helpful guide for anyone who has done all the things the listicles have outlined and is still feeling overrun and worn out. Pooja provides a real path forward paved with compassion and encouragement."
--Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, Licensed Psychologist & Founder of Therapy for Black Girls
"This isn't just another self-help book. It gives us a clear-eyed look at the way social systems drain our energy, and a concrete set of principles to rely on as we declare independence from these systems. Pooja is just the kind of wise, compassionate, experienced advisor who can help us claim health and happiness for the long term, despite the near-impossible demands that face us all. Real Self-Care is a much-needed sanctuary for the minds and hearts of its readers."
--Martha Beck, New York Times bestselling author of
--Dr. Becky Kennedy, clinical psychologist, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Good Inside, and CEO and founder of Good Inside
"Real Self Care is a revelation! Pooja takes us through a journey of unlearning and rediscovery to tackle burnout, make ourselves whole again, and step into our power in a world that is often stacked against us."
--Eve Rodsky, New York Times bestselling author of Fair Play
"Pooja's Real Self-Care is a gentle yet direct invitation for us to consider the things that will really help us to be well. She does a masterful job of exposing the life hacks and shortcuts that may seem helpful in the short term while encouraging us to interrogate and change the systems and beliefs that actually contribute to us feeling burned out and overwhelmed. This is a practical and helpful guide for anyone who has done all the things the listicles have outlined and is still feeling overrun and worn out. Pooja provides a real path forward paved with compassion and encouragement."
--Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, Licensed Psychologist & Founder of Therapy for Black Girls
"This isn't just another self-help book. It gives us a clear-eyed look at the way social systems drain our energy, and a concrete set of principles to rely on as we declare independence from these systems. Pooja is just the kind of wise, compassionate, experienced advisor who can help us claim health and happiness for the long term, despite the near-impossible demands that face us all. Real Self-Care is a much-needed sanctuary for the minds and hearts of its readers."
--Martha Beck, New York Times bestselling author of
Readers Top Reviews
Elaine L
This is the first thing I’ve ever read about self-care that didn’t make me cringe or feel guilty about everything I wasn’t doing. Pooja Lakshmin writes with the perfect blend of humility, relatability, and authority. Her own story inspires and invites you in. A few gems I keep coming back to: “ When you are at a fork, in the road, you must pick up path. If you try to pursue too much at the same time, you will burn out and neither road will fulfill you. Your guide and making these tough decisions must be internal – your values – not external.” “Rest is not a form of weakness, but instead an assertion of strength.” “Self compassion is a radical act of subversion to the social structures that are built to keep us quiet and overburdened.” Or two - one for yourself and another for someone you love.
JayaramJayaramEla
In this book Dr. Lakshmin provides practical solutions to understand your needs and to fulfill them. She has navigated the challenges of faux self-care for her patients and for herself. Dr. Lakshmin has weaved together this excellent guide based on the successes of her patients as well as her personal successes in real self-care. Dr. Lakshmin speaks to you directly in her own voice as someone who has been where you are. She understands and appreciates the struggles in life and offers ways for you to overcome them. She integrates scientific research and evidence-based medicine into actionable approaches in a stepwise fashion. People of the modern world thirst for happiness and fulfillment through unique challenges, and this book offers novel insights and guidance to do the hard work to get there. Dr. Lakshmin fills the gap where others fall short by describing the underlying causes and offering clear paths to help. Life is a journey, and Dr. Lakshmin's real self-care points you in the right direction to make it worthwhile.
Mary JayaramJayar
Since the pandemic, having two kids, and balancing work, I've made a small habit out of reading 'self help' books and memoirs focusing on women struggling to find balance and authenticity in our current age. Real Self-Care by Dr. Pooja Lakshmin really stands out amongst the genre for many reasons: 1) The author has the credentials AND lived experience. Her training and expertise is clear, but it isn't prescriptive, she approaches the audience with kindness and compassion. It's akin to a therapy session with a professional who works with women frustrated by our current systems, which is exactly who Dr. Lakshmin is! Also Dr. Lakshmin provides touching and very real personal experiences that help her relate to the reader. 2) There are activities to think about and work on as you read, which force the reader to be more than a passive participant. This is not meant to be binged, but returned to as a guide. She also provides help on locating professional mental health experts, a huge hurdle for many people. 2) Real Self-Care identifies, correctly, that this isn't all about changing your perspective and journaling away the negative thoughts. We have and continue to face major, seemingly insurmountable issues as a society. This books acknowledges how these problems can be very specific (workplace conflict) as well as very general (gender and race-based pay discrimination). Not everything can be resolved over night, but the book provides a roadmap to approaching these large problems from a place that is true to you. Highly recommend! Am planning to give as gifts for many friends/family members!
Short Excerpt Teaser
Chapter 1
Empty Calories
Faux Self-Care
Hasn't Saved Us
Revolutions that last don't happen from the top down. They happen from the bottom up.
Gloria Steinem
My patient Erin, thirty-eight, a mom of three school-age kids, wanted to pull her hair out whenever she heard the term self-care. She was up before 5:00 a.m. most mornings, responding to emails, getting the kids ready for school, and then rushing into the office for a ten-hour day. In the evenings, she'd pick up the kids and prep dinner before helping with homework and bedtime routines. Around 9:30 p.m., she would open up her laptop again for another two hours of work.
"Just tell me, when in this chaos am I supposed to find time for self-care?" she lamented. "I don't need a two-hundred-dollar massage, though it sure would be nice. I need more than five hours of sleep a night."
Whenever Erin found a couple of minutes to look into doing something for herself, the advice she found felt painfully condescending: "learn how to meditate" or "make a gratitude list." Instead of giving her a sense of relief, these recommendations just made Erin feel bad. "If everyone else seems to feel better with a bubble bath and a glass of wine, what's wrong with me that I can't get it together to make that happen?"
Then there was Hina, twenty-nine, who was struggling to achieve that elusive work-life balance. In her pursuit, she found herself diving headfirst into optimization and productivity strategies. She was always the first in her group of friends to try out the new meal delivery service and was fortunate to be able to outsource household tasks from time to time. Her focus on productivity was theoretically in service of finding time to do self-care, yet Hina could never quite pour the time she gained back into herself. When she did grab an extra hour for herself, she felt irritated by the leftover dishes in the sink and plagued by guilt for not spending more time at work.
These stories are common in my clinical practice, where, as a psychiatrist, I specialize in women's mental health. I see women of all backgrounds and ages-single and partnered, mothers and those who are child-free. Some of these women are coping with depression or anxiety, but many are just struggling to figure out how to take care of themselves in the midst of incredibly busy and hectic lives-and that was before a pandemic raised our stress and anxiety levels to epic proportions. The commonality among all of these women is clear, though-they're struggling, and what they're doing to find relief isn't working.
The Broken Promises of Faux Self-Care
In the past few years, I've noticed something curious happening. For women, the cultural obsession with self-care has not only failed to provide solace, it has also added more guilt and pressure. A common refrain I hear in my practice is "I'm burned out, I just can't do it anymore, and I feel like it's my fault because I should be taking care of myself." Self-care ends up being another burden, another thing on the to-do list for women to feel bad about because they aren't doing it right. I call this the tyranny of self-care.
My patients feel beaten down and confused, and so do I. And, taking it a step further, many of us also understandably feel insulted and resentful that not only do we not have time for these "strategies," but even when we do them, they don't provide the relief that is advertised. Or on the occasions when they do work, the relief doesn't last long. We are right to recognize that it's ridiculous that the solution we are sold to the unrelenting demands of being a woman in the twenty-first century is a twenty-dollar bath bomb. Our culture has taken wellness and foisted it on the individual-where it can be bought, measured, and held up as personal success-instead of investing in making our social systems healthy.
Personally, I also know the allure of these supposed fixes all too well-I shared in the introduction about my wellness-cult deep dive. But even before that dramatic decision, in my early twenties I turned to yoga as a fix for being a burned-out medical student. It certainly helped at first-my weekly yoga class was a much-needed break from memorizing the Krebs cycle, and I felt stronger in my body. But like a pattern I observe with many of my patients, I brought the same perfectionistic mindset to yoga that I took to medical school. When I couldn't keep up with the rigid yoga schedule I had outlined, I quickly chalked myself up as a failure.
There was also that time I subscribed to Real Simple magazine, convinced that if I gained mastery over my out-of-control closet, a feeling of inner contentment would closely follow. (I'm only slightly embarrassed to report that there'...
Empty Calories
Faux Self-Care
Hasn't Saved Us
Revolutions that last don't happen from the top down. They happen from the bottom up.
Gloria Steinem
My patient Erin, thirty-eight, a mom of three school-age kids, wanted to pull her hair out whenever she heard the term self-care. She was up before 5:00 a.m. most mornings, responding to emails, getting the kids ready for school, and then rushing into the office for a ten-hour day. In the evenings, she'd pick up the kids and prep dinner before helping with homework and bedtime routines. Around 9:30 p.m., she would open up her laptop again for another two hours of work.
"Just tell me, when in this chaos am I supposed to find time for self-care?" she lamented. "I don't need a two-hundred-dollar massage, though it sure would be nice. I need more than five hours of sleep a night."
Whenever Erin found a couple of minutes to look into doing something for herself, the advice she found felt painfully condescending: "learn how to meditate" or "make a gratitude list." Instead of giving her a sense of relief, these recommendations just made Erin feel bad. "If everyone else seems to feel better with a bubble bath and a glass of wine, what's wrong with me that I can't get it together to make that happen?"
Then there was Hina, twenty-nine, who was struggling to achieve that elusive work-life balance. In her pursuit, she found herself diving headfirst into optimization and productivity strategies. She was always the first in her group of friends to try out the new meal delivery service and was fortunate to be able to outsource household tasks from time to time. Her focus on productivity was theoretically in service of finding time to do self-care, yet Hina could never quite pour the time she gained back into herself. When she did grab an extra hour for herself, she felt irritated by the leftover dishes in the sink and plagued by guilt for not spending more time at work.
These stories are common in my clinical practice, where, as a psychiatrist, I specialize in women's mental health. I see women of all backgrounds and ages-single and partnered, mothers and those who are child-free. Some of these women are coping with depression or anxiety, but many are just struggling to figure out how to take care of themselves in the midst of incredibly busy and hectic lives-and that was before a pandemic raised our stress and anxiety levels to epic proportions. The commonality among all of these women is clear, though-they're struggling, and what they're doing to find relief isn't working.
The Broken Promises of Faux Self-Care
In the past few years, I've noticed something curious happening. For women, the cultural obsession with self-care has not only failed to provide solace, it has also added more guilt and pressure. A common refrain I hear in my practice is "I'm burned out, I just can't do it anymore, and I feel like it's my fault because I should be taking care of myself." Self-care ends up being another burden, another thing on the to-do list for women to feel bad about because they aren't doing it right. I call this the tyranny of self-care.
My patients feel beaten down and confused, and so do I. And, taking it a step further, many of us also understandably feel insulted and resentful that not only do we not have time for these "strategies," but even when we do them, they don't provide the relief that is advertised. Or on the occasions when they do work, the relief doesn't last long. We are right to recognize that it's ridiculous that the solution we are sold to the unrelenting demands of being a woman in the twenty-first century is a twenty-dollar bath bomb. Our culture has taken wellness and foisted it on the individual-where it can be bought, measured, and held up as personal success-instead of investing in making our social systems healthy.
Personally, I also know the allure of these supposed fixes all too well-I shared in the introduction about my wellness-cult deep dive. But even before that dramatic decision, in my early twenties I turned to yoga as a fix for being a burned-out medical student. It certainly helped at first-my weekly yoga class was a much-needed break from memorizing the Krebs cycle, and I felt stronger in my body. But like a pattern I observe with many of my patients, I brought the same perfectionistic mindset to yoga that I took to medical school. When I couldn't keep up with the rigid yoga schedule I had outlined, I quickly chalked myself up as a failure.
There was also that time I subscribed to Real Simple magazine, convinced that if I gained mastery over my out-of-control closet, a feeling of inner contentment would closely follow. (I'm only slightly embarrassed to report that there'...
