Self-Care is Self-Responsibility

This week, 'Therapy Begins with T(ea)' steeps on the true purpose of self-care and offers a full body check-in to practice integrating more holistic self-care into your day.

Original Publish: 8/31/25 (can be published on site at any time)

Steep In Thought (3-5 min)

Self-Care is a Treat?

What comes to mind when you think of self-care? A spa day maybe. Or ‘treating’ yourself. Maybe it’s making time for a full, nutritious breakfast at the beginning of the day or moving your body. Journaling or mindfulness. And you’d be right: self-care can be all of the above. But it might also be studying or working on your resume, life admin, introspection and repair with someone you’re having conflict with, or checking in on your finances. Self-care means taking an active role in preserving and improving your health, wellbeing, and happiness as a whole.

We often associate self-care with dopamine hits, but self-care is really about presence. It’s about getting re-connected to our bodies when our minds (and the stressful thoughts in them) become too overwhelming. Self-care helps us both internally and interpersonally – and it doesn’t always feel good in the moment. 

Self-Care is Self-Responsibility

One of the best ways to incorporate self-care is by asking yourself the question, “how can I make this ___ (moment, hour, day, week, etc.) more manageable?” That answer might be taking a few cycles of breath or practicing mindfulness before diving into a period of focused work time. It might be calling on your willpower and reserves to do the very thing you don’t want to be doing in that moment so that you can take it off your plate and truly rest afterwards. It might be making tough decisions around boundary setting, moving your body to get anxious energy out, or checking in with a friend via voice note. 

Self-care can be romantic and fun, but it is ultimately a responsibility we have to ourselves (and the people we’re in relationship with), so we should take it seriously. And if you’d like to explore this take on self-care, try out this week’s full body check-in. 

Full Body Check-In (2-4 min)

Today’s grounding exercise is going to look a little different, but feel free to focus on your breath if you find that most helpful. Otherwise, start to visualize yourself walking. What is the first setting that comes to mind? Sometimes our mind goes right to a tranquil setting, like walking along the beach or on a forest path. Sometimes our mind goes with what we’re familiar with and we imagine ourselves on, for example, our morning commute. Whatever scene or setting comes to mind, know that you can tweak and adjust it however you’d like so that you find it less stimulating and more peaceful. That might mean turning down the volume on traffic noises or turning up the dial to hear the crunch of your feet on the ground as you walk. Take a moment or two to adjust this visual so that you feel calm and curious as you walk, left, right, left, right, left, right...

When we don’t have the capacity or the access to go on a walk, mindfully visualizing it can give us the same psychological benefits as physically walking would. Notice how it feels in your body right now as you take these couple of moments to comfortably and curiously stroll.

Stay on this mindful walk as long as you’d like. When you’re ready, start to bring forward the concept of self-care and notice what words, emotions, sensations, or memories come up. How do you describe your relationship to self-care? What are examples of it in your life?

What would it be like to view self-care as a resource to make your day, and the tasks/roles baked within it, more manageable? If you’re at the start of your day, think about what’s ahead; if you’re at the end of your day, look back on it. What could you do for yourself today to make the day more manageable? How can you set up your day? What moments of break, rest, or presence can you sprinkle into it? What could be your day’s bookends (i.e. how do you want to begin and end the day)? Remember, self-care isn’t just about what feels good – it’s about what is good for us as a whole, which sometimes includes the monotonous or challenging tasks we have in life too. How can you make them, and your experience of the day, more manageable?