Does "Self-Care" Make You Roll Your Eyes? 5 Signs it May be Time to Do it Anyway

"Take care of yourself," a therapist told me earnestly.

This was many years ago, during a particularly rough spot in my marriage. I had a new baby and the pain from my emergency c-section was so deep that several months later, I still carried it inside me as my secret suffering. Yeah right, I thought.

"What does that even mean?!" I thought, cynically. "Take a bubble bath? Light a candle and breathe? "

I felt like I was being sent off to Siberia with a "Get well soon" card. This was before the ubiquitous "Self-Care" messaging that now floods social media and self-help literature. But even then, I reacted the same way many do now: eye roll. For those of us who are not in the practice of taking care of ourselves, the reminder to do so is at best meaningless. How was a bubble bath going to touch my trauma and abandonment -- names I didn't even have yet?

Yet, below the surface of my cynicism is a deep longing to be nurtured, to take care of myself. Beneath my eye-rolling was a yearning to be kind to ourselves, to set down my heavy armor, take off the mask, lean into the big shoulder of the universe and just be.

How do you know you're yearning to nurture yourself?

• Envy or distain of others who are taking care of themselves.

• Resentment

• Feeling others "owe" you

• Exhaustion

• Cynicism

While the symptoms of depletion and the call for self-care may be clear, discovering the self-care regimen that is right for you may be more elusive. Self-care is not a top-down prescription. One person's self-care might be another person's hell. This may be where the eye roll comes from.

What does "take care of yourself" actually mean? What does it look like for you? How do you discover it for yourself?

Each self-care plan must begin with questions. "How am I feeling?" How is your heart? Your mind? Your body? Your energy?

If you've had a life of service, or care-giving, you might be met with silence at first. But the answer is less important than the question. The questions train you to look around yourself. Asking yourself how you're feeling may indeed be the first act of self-care. People recovering from burnout often report that they never asked themselves how or what they were feeling. Checking in with yourself is an act of kindness and the beginning of creating a blueprint for self-care.