Chapter 1

When people are curious about self-care, they often turn to the internet. There are millions of articles, images, and videos detailing the best way to take care of yourself. As more people turn to the internet to share their tips, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find the right information. Before diving deeper into what self-care is, I want to break down some of the misconceptions people have about the topic.
One of the major misconceptions about self-care is that we can trust role models and social media influencers to tell us how to take care of ourselves. Bloggers and social media influencers tell stories about their own journey by sharing the techniques and products that work for them and trying to get others to adopt those same practices. However, their lives are drastically different from yours. You could differ by life experiences, age, location, gender, socioeconomic status and thousands of other factors that make some of their techniques unrelated to you. They create an illusion that since it works for them, it must work for everybody. Their purpose is for you to be exactly like them even if you have absolutely nothing in common. The truth is that whatever works for them may not necessarily work for you. And in extreme cases, it could be harmful.