To learn what I do think actually counts as fundamental self-care, keep reading.

Think of yourself as a house.

I think it can be quite helpful to think of ourselves and our psyches – the human soul or spirit – as a proverbial house.

When imagining this house, I invite you to envision multiple levels, let’s say three – a basement, a first floor, and a second floor.

These floors represent various aspects of you. The house is reflective of yourself, your own personality. And how you care for your self.

Now, let’s imagine for instance, that you moved into this actual, real multi-level house.

But let’s also imagine you wanted to spend all of your time and energy decorating the first and second floor, painting the walls creamy colors and ordering furniture to make your space pretty.

You had no interest in investigating or spending time in the basement or even really knowing what’s going on down there.

You, instead, prefer to focus on the prettier, more tangible things upstairs.

But let’s also imagine the basement of your house had a cracked and leaking foundation, sump pump problems, some mold, and maybe even a growing family of rats who has taken up residence down there.

Those are some pretty big problems!

But if you never went into the basement to check it out and invest the time, energy, and yes, even finances, into resolving those issues, how liveable do you think the other floors of your house are going to be in the long-term?

You know as well as I do that all the pretty paint and furniture can’t make up for a house that’s structurally unsound or unsafe.

So why am I bringing up fundamental self-care?

Because often I think that self-care gets co-opted to look like all the activities and actions we take to “decorate” the liveable floors – the mani/pedis, the bubble baths, etc. – when really, these activities should come secondary to the self-care work that’s truly needed which is making sure the foundation and structure of our proverbial “house” is safe and whole and strong.

So what does make our foundation solid and strong?

In my personal and professional opinion, fundamental self-care is an investment we make in getting to know and support ourselves and living that awareness out in congruence in the world through career, boundaries, self-expression, and other life choices that support our most fundamental well-being and integrity.

Fundamental self-care, in my opinion, may look like doing the often “unsexy,” often unglamorous “basic” work of confronting your personal psychological history and healing from any unprocessed traumas or grief you may have avoided so that you are not “owned” or “run” by your past.