Fucking what. What is this.
What’s happening here. Why are there so MANY of them.
Okay but as always the problem is not a few clear ridiculous people who took a psych class once. What troubles me is the number of people responding positively to these bizarre missives.
Actually, what troubles me is that language that has a specific purpose for a specific population is being drained of its meaning (…hello) and applied to contexts it simply wasn’t made for. This is perhaps a natural consequence of people feeling they don’t have to hide that they go to therapy and read self-help books. Maybe, thanks to the slow, steady destigmatizing of mental health care, you’re just more likely to use the clinical language in your everyday life.
But dealing with an emotionally abusive relative, or trying to clarify your feelings with your therapist, is not the same thing as an everyday interaction with a friend or loved one. Imagine how you’d react if you sent your friend a quick text venting about some idiot thing your idiot boss did, and they sent you a response that felt like it had been run through some corporate lawyer text replace algorithm.
You’d feel like garbage, wouldn’t you? Maybe even like an emotionally unstable vampire leeching the life out of your poor suffering friend. …Or you’d rethink the friendship altogether. You probably wouldn’t trust them much, after a response like that.
The really bizarre thing is that these “scripts” are all for interactions over text. We’ve all gotten texts from friends at inopportune times. If it’s something like a vent about work, or something that isn’t life-or-death,* it… can wait. Hours, if need be. Hell, every single person in possession of a phone that can text has whiffed and missed responding to at least one text by an entire day or even longer. Odds are you can, at some point within a few hours, send a response that explains you’re kinda wrapped up in [whatever] right now, that sounds shitty, you’ll talk about it later.
If it’s a text full of stuff you don’t want to deal with—a serious emotional crisis—then, well. You don’t have to, I guess. You can just ignore them—that is probably preferable to you telling them you don’t feel like dealing with them, which is the message you send even if you try to disguise it. (I know that’s what I’d prefer.) But wrapping this feeling in the language of self-care is grotesque. It makes you an asshole.
My gut says the spread of this speech style into the vernacular is related to the coöpting of the entire concept of “self-care” by corporations to ensure America (in particular) remains as devoted to the concept of the Individual Over All as it can be, to further erode what few bonds are left in our society: personal relationships.
It’s “self-care” to tell your friends you simply can’t deal with their problems right now, you’ll try to pencil them in next week. It’s “self-care” to buy yourself a “ ” . It’s “self-care” to go to spin class instead of your nephew’s bris.
But why do you need to perform this “self-care”? Why are you so emotionally fragile you can’t bear to read another person’s problems and respond with some bare-minimum humanity?
For the vast majority of people, it’s not because too many people are dumping their problems onto you. You’re burned out by working one job for 10 hours a day (plus commute) or maybe two jobs. You’re constantly anxious about whether you can make rent and student loan payments this month. Whether you’ll have health insurance next year. If you read this newsletter, you’re probably also exposing yourself to the noxious #content geysers of Twitter and Instagram. Everything is so fucking horrible all the time. How can you possibly spare the time for your friend’s breakdown over the indignities of online dating?
You can. You could if you wanted to. But you’re being fed the lie that not only is “self-care” is treating your own emotional needs as paramount, but that “care” is a zero-sum game.
“Self-care” is not locking yourself away in some mental cocoon. It’s talking with people. Experiencing the world outside your apartment. Helping other people, and receiving help in return. There are times when you’re fraying and quite literally at the end of your rope and incapable of shouldering other people’s burdens, and it’s okay to tell them you’re cracking under the weight of the world. But for Christ’s sake, talk with people like a person, not a marketing tech firm chatbot.
*If you can’t recognize a life-or-death text, that’s… a problem. Maybe yours, maybe your friend’s, but spare me the talk of how it’s ableist to suggest that in most relationships, platonic and not, the people in those relationships know each other well enough to signal what is and isn’t a genuine crisis without resorting to corporate law-speak. Or maybe you do have some relationships like that. That’s fine! But there is a way to communicate clearly without sounding like a psychology textbook or Terms of Service agreement. It’s fucking exhausting to have to treat your loved ones like their brains are made of spun sugar.