Self-Care or Self-Avoidance?
How to Tell What You’re Actually Doing
A lot of things get labeled as self-care. Some of them are genuinely supportive. Others are just ways to take the edge off without dealing with what lies beneath.
This is a pattern I see often in coaching work with people navigating stress, burnout, and ongoing emotional overwhelm.
Both can feel comforting in the moment. Only one actually helps you move forward.
The difference usually isn’t the activity itself. It’s why you’re doing it and what happens afterward.
What Self-Care Looks Like When It’s Actually Supportive
At its core, self-care is about tending to yourself in ways that make life more manageable, not more avoidant. It’s about staying engaged with your life rather than checking out.
Self-care can show up across different areas of life:
Physical: sleeping enough, eating regularly, moving your body, tending to pain or fatigue
Emotional: letting yourself feel what’s there, laughing, talking things through, offering yourself basic kindness
Mental: reflecting, journaling, setting limits, getting support when you need it
Spiritual: time in nature, quiet reflection, meditation or prayer, moments that help you feel connected to something beyond the day-to-day
Relational: spending time with people who feel steady to be around, saying no when you mean no
Work-related: taking breaks, using sick time, addressing burnout instead of pushing through it
Financial: looking at your accounts, making realistic plans, asking questions, setting boundaries around spending
Practical / environmental: tending to your space, handling unfinished tasks, reducing background stress where you can
Self-care doesn’t always feel indulgent or relaxing. Sometimes it feels neutral. Sometimes it feels uncomfortable. Over time, though, it tends to leave you clearer, more resourced, and better able to respond to what’s in front of you.
What Self-Avoidance Often Looks Like Instead
Self-avoidance can look a lot like self-care on the surface, which is why it’s easy to miss.
It usually shows up when relief becomes the goal.
It might sound like:
“I just don’t have the energy to deal with this.”
“I’ll handle it once things calm down.”
“I can’t think about that right now.”
When something feels uncomfortable, many of us look for ways to ignore it. We often tell ourselves we’re resting or taking care of ourselves. Sometimes that’s true. Other times, we’re putting off something we don’t want to deal with.
People often stay busy or delay conversations instead of dealing with something directly. Sometimes this gets called rest, even though the situation doesn’t change.
When this goes on, certain things don’t happen. Conversations get postponed. Boundaries stay unclear. The issue doesn’t resolve. It stays present in the background and continues to take up mental space.
How to Tell the Difference
A nap can give your body what it needs. It can also be a way to avoid a conversation you don’t want to have.
Rather than asking whether something counts as self-care, it can help to ask a more straightforward question. Is this supporting me, or am I putting something off? Will this make it easier to deal with what’s waiting, or harder? Do I feel more able to engage afterward, or just briefly relieved?
When something is supportive, things tend to feel more manageable. When it’s avoidance, the issue usually stays where it is.
Why This Matters
Most people learn this because there was a time when dealing with things directly wasn’t possible. When avoidance becomes the default, it starts shaping decisions.
Supportive self-care makes it easier to face what’s actually there instead of pushing it away.
Where This Shows Up in My Work
This distinction between care and avoidance comes up often in my work at Healing Arts Center. People don’t come in to escape their lives. They come in because something isn’t working anymore, and the ways they’ve been coping aren’t helping.
Our approach is grounded and integrative. We focus on helping people notice patterns, regulate stress, and make choices that support engagement with their lives rather than disappearance from them. Many people seek out somatic and mindfulness-based coaching when self-care habits stop helping and avoidance starts running the show. The work is slow, honest, and practical, centered on building capacity rather than chasing quick relief.
A More Useful Way to Think About It
You don’t need to eliminate comfort. You don’t need to confront everything all at once.
What helps is learning to notice when you’re using comfort instead of care.
Sometimes the most supportive thing you can do isn’t soothing or pleasant. It’s opening an account you’ve been avoiding, setting a boundary, making a plan, asking for help, or admitting something isn’t working.
Other times, rest really is the right choice.
The difference is honesty with yourself.
The goal isn’t to live without discomfort. It’s to stop organizing your life around avoiding it.
This is a distinction I work through with clients in both individual and group settings, especially when stress patterns have become hard to untangle alone.
