16/09/2026
I used to hate self-care, even though I knew it was important.
It felt like yet another chore—another thing I had to force myself to do while already overwhelmed.
I was a single mother. A small-business owner. Homeschooling my children.
And I thought my inability to relax was a personal failure.
Eventually, I discovered that it had very little to do with willpower—or needing to add more self-care to my to-do list.
What looked like busyness was also an inability to stop. Stress, urgency and overwhelm kept me from feeling emotions I had buried long ago.
When you didn’t receive the care you needed as a child, you weren’t only left without that care.
You were left with emotions around its absence—hurt, sadness, anger and fear—that you couldn’t safely feel or express.
And when expressing your needs didn’t bring care, you may eventually have stopped expressing them altogether.
You learned to be independent and resourceful. To need nothing. To keep going.
Perhaps that independence even earned you acknowledgement or approval.
But the need for care didn’t disappear.
Neither did the emotions you had learned to swallow automatically.
A part of you may still be unconsciously waiting for someone to notice. To see that you’re struggling. To care for you—without you having to ask.
In my work, I often find this unresolved need beneath the urgency, stress, overwhelm and dysregulation people experience in everyday life.
Yet they continue pushing and find it almost impossible to ask for support—until they become sick.
Then, finally, they have permission to stop.
To rest.
To need something.
To receive care.
This doesn’t mean you consciously make yourself sick.
But if sickness is the only time you permit yourself to have needs, forcing yourself to practise more self-care isn’t the answer.
The deeper work is meeting the emotions you couldn’t feel or express—and the need for care you learned to silence.
So you no longer have to collapse before your need for care becomes undeniable.
