Why Self-Care Isn’t Always Healthy

Issue 168, May 22, 2026 ✨ Higher Power Coaching & Consulting ✨

Not everything that looks like self-care actually nourishes you.

Sometimes what we call “self-care” is actually avoidance. Sometimes what looks like rest is shutdown. And sometimes what feels like helping is really self-abandonment in disguise.

And that’s why I think one of the most important questions we can ask ourselves is this:

What’s my motivation here?

Not: “Is this good or bad?”

Not: “Would other people approve of this?”

Not even: “Does this technically count as self-care?”

But: “What is this actually doing for me emotionally?”

That question changed my life.

Years ago, when I first started learning about codependence and recovery, I heard someone say that the difference between healthy helping and rescuing behavior is your motivation. At first, I didn’t understand that at all.

I thought I was just a nice, helpful, generous, and thoughtful person. What I couldn’t yet see was that much of my helping behavior was driven by anxiety, fear, approval-seeking, and an unconscious attempt to control outcomes (esp. what others thought of me) so I could feel emotionally safe.

I wasn’t helping because I simply wanted to help. I was helping because I needed something (Yikes! What a revelation!). 

I needed reassurance, connection, validation, certainty, and relief from discomfort. That realization opened an entirely new way of understanding myself.

And over the years, I’ve realized this same question helps us understand so many things related to self-care, boundaries, healing, and emotional well-being. Because the same exact behavior can be healthy or unhealthy depending on what’s happening underneath it.

Alone Time or Isolation?

One of the clearest examples is time alone. Healthy solitude can be deeply nourishing. It can look like reading, resting, skating, coloring, napping, working on a puzzle, going for a walk, journaling, creating art, or simply enjoying your own company without needing to perform for anyone.

Healthy alone time usually feels intentional. There’s choice in it. You’re present with yourself.
You have a sense of returning to yourself rather than disappearing from yourself. You often leave it feeling more grounded, more connected, more energized, or more settled inside yourself.

Isolation feels different. It often comes from overwhelm, shame, fear, exhaustion, resentment, or emotional flooding. Instead of reconnecting with yourself, you’re trying to escape yourself (or the world). Or avoid feelings you don’t know how to stay with.

That’s a very different internal experience.

The external behavior may look identical (you’re still alone, still at home and may even still be watching Netflix under a blanket). But internally, one experience is restorative and the other is draining.

One creates more internal safety. The other slowly disconnects you from yourself.

That is why your motivation matters.

Self-Care or Self-Numbing?

I think this distinction has become even more important in recent years because self-care has become such a buzzword.

There’s nothing wrong with comfort, pleasure, rest, entertainment or fun. In fact, there’s something very right about those things. We need those things.

But not everything soothing is actually restorative.

Sometimes we aren’t relaxing – we’re dissociating.

Sometimes we aren’t resting – we’re collapsing.

Sometimes we aren’t “taking a break” – we’re emotionally checking out because we don’t know how to tolerate what we’re feeling.

One of the biggest things I teach now is that emotional boundaries and internal safety are about what happens after discomfort shows up.

Can you stay connected to yourself when guilt appears?
When anxiety appears?
When uncertainty appears?
When someone is disappointed in you?
When you feel inadequate, rejected, criticized, lonely, or overwhelmed?

Or do you immediately abandon yourself through distraction, compulsive behavior, overworking, over-giving, scrolling, numbing, rescuing, fixing, caretaking, binge watching, or obsessing about other people?

That’s the deeper question.

Because self-care isn’t just about feeling better. Sometimes healthy self-care actually involves staying present enough to feel uncomfortable feelings without overriding yourself. And honestly, that’s a much deeper form of care than most people realize.

Privacy or Secrecy?

This distinction also becomes clearer when we look at boundaries and shame. Privacy is usually grounded in self-respect.

You decide:
“This belongs to me.”
“This isn’t something I want to share.”
“This part of my life is private.”

There’s steadiness in that.

Secrecy, on the other hand, is often fueled by shame, fear, or emotional unsafety.

You’re hiding because you believe something bad will happen if people know. You fear rejection, judgment, exposure, and disconnection from others.

Privacy feels protective. Secrecy feels heavy. One comes from boundaries. The other usually comes from fear.

And here’s something important I understand much more deeply now than I did years ago: People often struggle to maintain healthy privacy because they don’t yet feel internally safe enough to tolerate other people’s reactions.

So they either overshare and make themselves unnecessarily vulnerable and exposed, or they hide everything and feel trapped and isolated. Healthy boundaries help create a middle path.

Helpful or Rescuing?

This one still matters enormously. That’s especially so for women who were conditioned to believe their value comes from being useful, accommodating, needed, emotionally available, endlessly giving, or easy to be around.

Helping becomes unhealthy when you disappear inside it.

When …

• You become more invested in someone else’s life than they are
• Your worth depends on being needed
• You override your exhaustion, resentment, limits, or truth in order to maintain connection
• Helping becomes a strategy for emotional safety.

One of my favorite things I say now is: “If you’re more invested than they are, it’s a rescue mission.”

Healthy helping has choice, freedom, and “enoughness” in it.

Rescuing has urgency, fear, compulsion, and anxiety in it.

Again, the behavior can look almost identical externally. But internally, they’re worlds apart.

The Real Question Beneath All of This

I think what I understand now that I didn’t fully understand years ago is this: The issue usually isn’t the behavior itself. The deeper issue is whether the behavior helps you remain connected to yourself or abandon yourself.

Does this behavior help you hear yourself clearly?
Remember what’s true for you?
Honor your limits, needs, feelings, energy, and values?

Or does it disconnect you from yourself?

Because we can abandon ourselves through all kinds of things, some of which look great on the outside and may even be rewarded in our society:

• Productivity
• Caretaking
• Scrolling
• “Self-care”
• Overthinking.
• Perfectionism
• Numbing
• Pretending we’re “fine.”

That’s why internal safety matters so much. When you feel internally safe, you don’t need as many unhealthy coping mechanisms because you become more capable of staying with yourself through discomfort instead of immediately escaping it.

And that changes everything.

Some Gentle Questions to Ask Yourself

The next time you’re trying to figure out whether something is healthy for you, instead of asking:

“Is this good or bad?” Try asking:

“What’s my motivation here?”
“What am I hoping this will help me avoid or feel?”
“Do I feel more connected to myself afterward or less?”
“Is this nourishing me or helping me disappear?”

Those questions will tell you far more than the behavior alone ever will. And the beautiful thing is this: Awareness creates choice. And choice is freedom.

You can learn new ways to care for yourself – new ways to rest, to play and to soothe yourself without abandoning yourself. That’s what real self-care boundaries are ultimately about. Not controlling yourself, but caring for yourself deeply enough that you stop overriding what’s true inside you.