When Self-Care Becomes Another Thing to Be Good At |
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She finished her workout, grabbed her water bottle, and before her heart rate had even come down, she was already scrolling through her camera roll looking for the right shot. She spent more time on the caption than she did stretching. By the time she posted, the endorphins had faded and so had most of the benefit.
We are living in the golden age of self-care content. Wellness routines are aestheticized, morning rituals are monetized, and the pressure to not only take care of yourself but to do it visibly has never been greater. Somewhere between the matching sets and the perfectly lit smoothie bowls, something got lost. For many people, self-care has quietly become one more thing to perform, optimize, and be good at, and that performance is actively canceling out the very benefits they're chasing.
The Problem With Performative Self-Care
Performative self-care isn't exclusively a social media problem, though that's where it shows up most visibly. It's any act of self-care where your attention is somewhere other than the moment you're in. It's the walk where you're mentally composing a caption before you've reached the end........