Richard Kearns
Psychotherapy

Self-care is the deliberate way you look after your physical, emotional, mental, relational, and practical wellbeing so you can stay grounded and function well.

It is not just “treating yourself,” though pleasure can be part of it. Proper self-care is often more ordinary and less glamorous. It includes things like getting enough sleep, eating properly, resting before you are burnt out, moving your body, setting boundaries, speaking kindly to yourself, asking for support, and doing what helps your nervous system settle.

A useful way to think about it is this: self-care is anything that genuinely restores, protects, or steadies you, rather than just distracting or numbing you.

For example:

• sleep, food, hydration, exercise

• time alone or time with safe people

• saying no when something is too much

• taking breaks

• reducing overload

• doing things that bring meaning, not just relief

Some things feel like self-care in the moment, but are really avoidance or numbing if they leave you worse afterwards. So the real test is: does this help me come back to myself, or does it take me further away?

A simple definition:
Self-care is the ongoing practice of meeting your needs with enough honesty and consistency that you do not abandon yourself.

A trauma-informed version of self-care is not about pushing yourself to do what is supposedly “good for you.” It is about creating enough safety, steadiness, choice, and kindness that your system does not have to stay in survival mode all the time.

For someone with trauma, self-care may need to begin much earlier and much smaller than people think. It may not start with exercise plans, journalling, or productivity. It may start with noticing when you are overloaded, reducing threat, softening self-judgment, and finding ways to help the body feel a little more settled.

In that sense, trauma-informed self-care is the practice of responding to yourself in a way that does not repeat trauma. It avoids harshness, overwhelm, shame, and unrealistic demands. It respects pace, consent, limits, and the fact that some nervous systems have learned that rest, stillness, closeness, pleasure, or even attention to the body can feel unsafe.

A good working definition would be:

Trauma-informed self-care is the compassionate, choice-based practice of meeting your needs in ways that increase safety, regulation, dignity, and connection without overwhelming your system.

Some key features of trauma-informed self-care are:

• Safety before improvement: feeling safer matters more than performing wellness.

• Choice rather than force: being able to choose helps restore agency.

• Small steps rather than big demands: regulation often comes through manageable actions.

• Compassion rather than shame: the inner tone matters.

• Respect for the body: exhaustion, numbness, vigilance, and avoidance are understood as adaptations, not failures.

• Connection where possible: safe contact with others can be part of self-care, not just solitary practices.

Examples of trauma-informed self-care might include wrapping up in a blanket, eating something regular, cancelling one non-essential demand, going outside briefly, loosening tight muscles, sitting with a pet, texting a safe person, reducing stimulation, or simply noticing: I am activated right now, so I need less input, not more pressure.

The core shift is this:
self-care stops being “How do I make myself function better?” and becomes “What does my system need in order to feel safer, more supported, and less alone?”

For many people, that is the real beginning.