What Is Self-Care, and Why Is It So Important for Your Health?

What Is Self-Care?

Several organizations and researchers take a health-oriented approach when defining self-care. The World Health Organization defines self-care as: “the ability of individuals, families, and communities to promote health, prevent disease, maintain health, and cope with illness and disability with or without the support of a health worker.”

According to this definition, self-care includes everything related to staying physically healthy — including hygiene, nutrition, and medical care when needed. It’s all the steps you can take to manage the various stressors in your life and take care of your health and well-being.

Self-care requires checking in with yourself about how you’re doing physically, mentally, and emotionally. Some people use it to deal with difficult news stories, while others practice self-care just to maintain their happiness day to day.

Self-care does not mean the same thing for everyone. Different people will adopt different self-care practices, and even your own definition might change over time. “What is self-care for one person will likely differ from someone else, and what’s self-care for you one day might not feel like self-care another day,” says Marni Amsellem, PhD, a licensed psychologist based in the greater New York metropolitan area.

Regular self-care may help you put your best foot forward. “When we are regularly taking care of ourselves, we are better able to react to the things that go on in our lives,” Dr. Amsellem says. “It’s something we do to maintain positive well-being.”

A study published in 2018 took self-care to mean “the self-initiated behavior that people choose to incorporate to promote good health and general well-being.” The study authors added that it’s about being healthy but also about incorporating coping strategies to deal with work stressors.

As self-care has become more mainstream, the definitions have started to become more about general well-being and tend to focus on tuning in to one’s needs and meeting those needs. “Self-care is anything that you do for yourself that feels nourishing,” says Amsellem.

“That can be something that’s relaxing or calming, or it can be something that is intellectual or spiritual or physical or practical or something you need to get done,” she says.

The International Self-Care Foundation also includes health literacy as a pillar of self-care, meaning that any steps you take toward better understanding health information you need to make appropriate decisions about your health and well-being counts as self-care, too.

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