This is a lot to take in, and I’m not sharing this data to bum us out, although seeing how dire the state of mental health is in America is certainly cause for despair. I’m bringing this information up (and believe me, I only scratched the surface) because clearly, there’s a disconnect. Our mental health is worsening yet we’re practicing self-care and improving all the time? The logic ain’t logic’ing. As a society, we are struggling. Like “The Wolf of Wall Street’s Leonardo DiCaprio hopped up on bad quaaludes and crawling across a driveway to get inside his Lambo” struggling. What we’re doing (modern-day self-care) isn’t working. What we’re refusing to do (treat mental health and health in general as a nonnegotiable pillar of society and operate with the understanding that taking care of one’s self also means taking care of the community) also isn’t working. So how did we get here? How did we lose our way when we had the blueprint of all blueprints? I’m talking about, of course, Audre Geraldine Lorde, whose revolutionary, highly political, and defiant execution of self-care unintentionally became the inspiration (and undefined catchall term) for our current crop of Instagrammers, executives, and celebrities, as well as for the average layperson.
To be clear, the idea of self-care has a long and storied history. It dates back to the ancient Greeks, which philosopher Michel Foucault examined in The History of Sexuality, Volume 3: The Care of the Self. In the 1950s, self-care came to be understood as simple activities such as personal grooming that allowed institutionalized patients to retain some sense of autonomy. A decade later, academics recommended self-care as a way for PTSD sufferers to combat their symptoms, and the solutions included things we tend to do today: meditation, eating well, sleeping, exercising, etc. With these remedies, coupled with all these white dudes such as Thoreau, Walt Whitman, and Ralph Waldo Emerson authoring the narrative of American individualism and specialness, it’s easy to see how the seeds of self-care as it’s commonly understood today were planted.
Nothing against these guys because they were mighty with the pen, but white men stay creating chaos with their semi-self-absorbed nonsense like overconfident Steve Urkels minus the apologetic “Did I do that?” energy. Seriously, these guys were just as narcissistic, if not more, as us ’lennials and Gen Zers. I mean, women get dinged for taking and posting selfies all the time, buuuuuuuut Walt Whitman wrote a poem called “Song of Myself.” Obviously, he was not one to bury the lede on the fact that he’s about to come with the bullshit, but the title is nothing in comparison to the fact that the poem has FIFTY-TWO PARTS. Fifty-two parts?! That is sooooooo many parts. In fact, it’s too many parts! Ikea credenzas tap out at thirteen pieces. Say what you want about the Swedes, but they know how to get in and get the fuck out. Like, Walter couldn’t have given us the Cliffs Notes version? How long does it take to say “I high-key fucks with myself”? Did we really need to trudge through beautiful language and imagery to read about him sounding his “barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world”? Bruh, take your yawps and wrap this shit up. We got places to be and people to see. This concludes my TED Talk. Come back next week when I drag F. Scott Fitzgerald for taking 218 pages to write about how the American dream is trash when The Great Gatsby could’ve been summed up in two words: “Duh, bitch!” But back to my point.
Self-care has kind of always been centered around individualism, so I don’t want to pretend that it was this pure, enlightened concept that got sullied. However, we must acknowledge that its current iteration is inspired by a spirit of defiance even if that essence is often forgotten today. Self-care saw a resurgence in popularity due to another kind of trauma—racial injustice against Black people—and this new version was spearheaded by the Black Panther Party in the 1970s, which advocated for Black independence and infused activism and tactical resistance against white supremacy into everything they did. This time, self-care was less concerned with the usual personal upkeep of sleep and grooming, and more intent on being a rallying cry that marginalized people matter and are just as entitled to quality healthcare as their white counterparts, as Nicole Stamp writes in her article “The Revolutionary Origins of Self-Care” on the Canadian website Local Love:
The Black Panther Party began promoting [self-care] as essential for all Black citizens, as a means of staying resilient while experiencing the repeated injuries of systemic, interpersonal and medical racism. . . . To compensate for this failing, the Black Panthers created free community health-care clinics that tested for [sickle cell disease] and provided follow-up care.
Enter Audre Lorde. A self-described “Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet,” she dedicated her life and creative work to fighting injustices ranging from racism and sexism to homophobia and capitalism. At the root of this work was an ideology that confronting these societal issues is for the benefit not of the individual, but for the collective. I mean, that’s the only way to be a civil rights activist, correct? Like, you can’t be a civil rights activist and be like, “Oh, now that we’ve gotten this far, I just meant I want rights for me. It’s every person for themselves going forward.” Like people working to get civil rights isn’t akin to a group of contestants on Survivor forming an alliance in order to get themselves to the final four and then all bets are off. Could you imagine John Lewis telling Martin Luther King, Jr., to kick rocks with a selfish “time to get mine” energy after the Selma marches galvanized the nation? That would’ve been ignorant. Anyway, what I’m getting at is that Lorde and her work were for the liberation of herself and the people. That fierce passion for universal independence didn’t weaken when she was diagnosed with cancer—first breast cancer in 1978, which lead to a mastectomy, and then the cancer metastasized to her liver—it only strengthened as she opted to take charge of her own treatment, which was yet one more revolutionary decision in a revolutionary life. She wrote her take on self-care in her 1988 book, A Burst of Light, and ended up revitalizing the concept when she said, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
Both the Black Panthers and Lorde saw self-care as a political act, one meant to protect the mental and physical well-being of underrepresented communities, namely women, people of color, and LGBTQIA+ folks, which the system purposefully neglected. If the system wasn’t going to look after marginalized communities, then, damnit, the communities would look after themselves and each other. And because capitalism was one of the cornerstones of inequality and systemic oppression, it’s only natural that the BPs and Lorde rejected capitalism and kept it out of the self-care conversation, which is why it’s all the more disheartening that their version of self-care has been distorted by businesses in pursuit of the almighty dollar.
This retooling and commodification of self-care reminds me of when I first started going to dive bars during my college years. I thought drinking screwdrivers (a cocktail made from orange juice and vodka) was very adultlike, so I’d excitedly order one, only to be given what was basically Minute Maid concentrate with a splash of rubbing alcohol. Because it made me feel good and gave me the courage to grind on some barely-not-a-stranger’s crotch,* I thought it was good for me in a way. And isn’t “good vibes” a key tenet of contemporary self-care? Feeling good in the moment or working toward feeling good in the future seems to be the objective. And when we associate taking care of one’s self with always being in a state of joy, are we actually taking care or engaging in activities that give us quick pleasure hits? Rewarding oneself is not the same as taking care of oneself. It’s as Perpetua Neo, doctor of clinical psychology, puts it in an essay of hers on MindBodyGreen .com, “I’m a Psychologist & Here’s the Biggest Mistake I See People Make with Self-Care”:
We all self-soothe. It gives us comfort and distracts us during difficult times, which can include things like taking a bubble bath, getting yourself a fancy drink at your favorite juice bar, or taking time off from work or child care.
Self-soothing, however, does not help us move forward or remedy the
situation. Or, it may lead to an emotional, physical, or financial hangover. Just as with overdrinking alcohol, any escape behavior can be used in excess, from shopping to eating to sex.
We’ve all been guilty of that mindset: I deserve to feel good because of all the energy I’m putting in at work / raising my kids / tending to aging parents / showing up for my friends, partner, loved ones / being alive. That’s true! I fundamentally believe that we all deserve to feel good. But all the time? Even when self-improving? Doesn’t growing and changing require some pain as well? For example, exercising can make you sore, but on the other side of that temporary discomfort is strength you didn’t have before. To me, true growth doesn’t exist without the breaking of the old and rebuilding it into something different and new. But when we’re living in a world riddled with adversity that we must face head-on daily, it can seem, at times, as though the chance for happiness is slipping through our fingers, so we’re going to take what we can get. We’re going to get what society has been denying us in any form that we can because it’s time for the world to pay up. At least, that’s how I used to feel.
Over the past few years, I’ve felt I’ve given too much. Not in an “I’m an essential worker / doctor / great thinker of our time” kind of way, but in an “I’m a financially insecure freelancer turned business owner who has had to learn on the job, which has cost me thousands upon thousands of dollars and I don’t have a plan B / my parents can’t bail me out” kind of way. My livelihood was predicated on the stress-inducing existence of never knowing when or how much money was going to come in. While that made me resilient and taught me how to persevere, it also made me feel a bit like a scrappy stray dog. And not the kind of dog in movies that gets adopted by an old, craggy dude in Levi’s who refuses to go to therapy and instead magically heals himself because he has an animal he can feed Kibbles ’n Bits to. But the kind of dog that has “THUG LIFE” tattooed across its stomach and is ready to knucketh if anyone decides to bucketh.* Simply put, I was always in fight mode, constantly having to pick up the pieces and begin again. And when you pair that with my type A personality, it’s easy to see how I became a workaholic. Yes, I know. I’ve mentioned my type A personality and addiction to work throughout this book. If you haven’t guessed it by now, they are two of the biggest themes of my life that were working for me until they weren’t. Left unchecked for twelve years, they mutated in ways I couldn’t control, so while I was building the career I dreamt of, I also developed counterproductive habits, was in a constant state of burnout, and quietly felt trapped in the life I built.
Because even though my priorities shifted—I became an apartment owner, I could afford to fly home to visit my family and no longer wanted to miss important events because of job commitments, I started living and seeing the world—I stayed on the work hamster wheel since that level of intensity is what thrust me into the next phase of my life. Still, I knew what I was doing was no longer tenable. Something had to change. So what did I do? Much like I did with my career, I threw myself into self-improvement and contemporary self-care.
You know when a TV show becomes a cultural phenomenon, so you decide to check it out, but you now have really high expectations? After binging the whole series, you’re like, “Dat’s it? I wasted a month’s worth of eggs on watching something that is actually pretty average, and I’m not talking Kirkland brand eggs, but the ones that were chilling in my left fallope?” That’s kind of how I feel about contemporary self-care. When I was finally financially able to participate in the world of #SelfCare, I was conflicted. For much of my adult life, I was on the outside looking in and believed that self-care was consumerism nonsense designed to take our money, which, if I’m being honest, was in part due to the fact that I was jealous that I couldn’t afford to indulge in it. At the same time . . . having expendable money to buy face masks and bath bombs is nice, and using those products does feel good. And as much as I wanted to dig in my heels and dismiss these privileges as merely frivolous distractions, I couldn’t. Turns out I do believe that pampering and substantive care can coexist. I came to this belief not because I’m wise, but because I ended up turning into Linda Blair from The Exorcist.
During the most stressful part of quarantine, when all my work was up in the air, I was so riddled with anxiety that one morning, while writing something—a script, this book, an email, I don’t remember what—I promptly got up from my laptop, vomited quietly into a trash can (I didn’t want to wake up British Baekoff), wiped my mouth, and then returned to my computer to work. BITCH, WUT? I was out here ralphing into a simplehuman trash bag all cuz of some emails and a Microsoft Word doc? I know I shouldn’t judge myself harshly, but that was gahtdamn ridiculous. Vomiting should be relegated to morning sickness, the flu, and meeting Post Malone, I guess? * Anyway, I knew I needed help and immediately began therapy. A quick word.
“Hate” is a strong word, but I hate when folks do things like go to therapy, have a housekeeper or a nanny, etc., and don’t acknowledge the privilege in being able to afford these expenses. It’s like that time when, years ago, after months and months of saving, I bought a knockoff Hervé Léger bodycon dress during a 50 percent off sale at Macy’s for my birthday party. I was so excited and telling my friend, a fellow fashion plate and a comic who also comes from money, about the dress, and she responded, “Oh, I could never wear a fake Hervé Léger. You just have to buy the real thing.” Listen, heaux! Not everyone can afford to spend thousands of dollars on a dress that looks like it’s comprised of a bunch of seat belts from the Mitsubishi factory. So for her to behave as though buying designer clothes is everyone’s experience showed how out of touch she was.
That’s why I will never pretend that taking care of your mental health is just something everyone can do. It requires disposable money, which so many people don’t have. So it’s no wonder why people turn to candles and notebooks. What other recourse is there? The government isn’t there for us. Mental healthcare isn’t adequately funded, wrote Richard Frank, a professor of health economics at Harvard, because of “difficulty in defining mental illness, the lack of evidence on effective treatments, the high cost of covering mental healthcare, and the uncertainty in making actuarial estimates of costs.” When people constantly encounter a system that doesn’t believe them and won’t use its resources to help them or spend the time necessary to find the most effective solution for bettering their mental health, and, most important, when people are unable to afford mental healthcare, of course they are going to look for solutions they can easily apply to their lives, hence notebooks, candles, blankets, etc. Damn, it’s not just that the government isn’t there for us, it’s that many of their officials are actively working against us out of bias and greed. Either way, we’re the ones who are suffering the consequences.
So I will never take therapy for granted or pretend that it is a universal experience. Rather, I’m forever grateful to have a therapist and that I don’t have childhood trauma to unpack, but instead am wrestling with anxiety, poor coping skills, and workaholism. This is not meant to belittle my problems in comparison to others’, but it’s important to be up-front and honest. One more thing: If you’re a person of color and in a position where you can start therapy, I highly recommend working with someone who is the same race as you. It was really nice not to waste a session explaining the “work twice as hard only to get half as much” concept with my therapist. She gets it. She’s lived it. Now, with all that said, let’s return to discussing my newish therapy journey.
In addition to learning how to deal with work-related stress, I wanted to deal with the stress of 2020, and finally, and perhaps most important, get a handle on the sense of lacking I felt, which I had hoped treating myself to takeout and buying more things would address. Despite all the self-care, the lacking persisted, so I drowned myself in work even more as a distraction and, as a result, I was connecting less and less with people. I was mentally rushing through every conversation, pho
ne call, virtual hangout, agitated that I had to be fully present for someone else because hadn’t I already given enough? Time, energy, vomit. Realizing how overworking was starting to make me selfish and unappreciative, I thought, Well, I’ll first work on myself, then eventually turn outward to restrengthen my relationship with the world, but like Charlotte Lieberman wrote in that Harvard Business Review article, I was consumed with my “iEverythings” and tracking my progress. I was slowly becoming an island unto myself. Once I’m done working on me, I will turn outward, I’d tell myself.
But the work is never done, really, is it? And in striving toward excavating myself and analyzing all the pieces, I had forsaken connecting with others and communities. And I don’t mean in the cliché New Yorker way of “I’m not talking to my neighbors,” but in a deeper “I’m not caring for the collective” way. And I had misinterpreted that neglect as another self-related problem, so I burrowed within myself even more, not realizing that gravitating away from instead of toward others was exacerbating the problem. I don’t know how I lost sight of the importance of community, especially when I consider the kind of family I come from.
Please Don't Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes Page 23
