But have I got time?
Self-care takes commitment. That, in itself, is not a fashionable thing to say.
Commitment implies effort, repetition, and the possibility of failure, which are all awkward companions in a culture that prefers hacks and shortcuts.
The real difficulty, though, is not that self-care is demanding. It is that it requires head space, and head space has become one of the scarcest resources of modern life. We are not just managing work, family, health and finances; we are managing information, contradiction, outrage, fear, and the distressing anxiety that we might be doing everything wrong.
As Richard Bentall observes, the social causes of psychological distress are pervasive, from debt and unemployment to relationship breakdown and workplace stress, a reality that shapes the lives of many people who are struggling without ever reaching crisis thresholds.1
Life has not merely become busy. It has become meta-stressful.
Every day we are presented with evidence [or what claims to be evidence] proving opposite things. Coffee is good for you until it isn’t. Rest is essential, but productivity is virtue. Boundaries are healthy, except when they are selfish. Mental health is everyone’s responsibility, except when it becomes inconvenient.
We live surrounded by confident assertions, yet personally short of certainty.
This constant cognitive friction is not benign. Bentall’s work reminds us that prolonged adversity and the constant drip of social media is not psychologically neutral; it accumulates, shaping mood, cognition and vulnerability over time.1 It creates information overload: a state in which the volume of input exceeds our capacity to process it meaningfully. Add doom-scrolling and AI-generated images and stories that blur the line between real and fabricated, and we arrive at a peculiar kind of stress; emotional, but with cognitive strain. We are often unsure what to trust, including our own judgement.
When this becomes too much, retreat is tempting. We go on holiday. We unplug. We fantasise about a cottage with poor Wi-Fi and an absence of opinions. And for a while, it helps. Nervous systems calm down when stimuli are reduced. Cortisol levels fall. Sleep improves.
But retreats do not last. The world resumes almost immediately upon our return. Avoidance, however restorative, does not increase our capacity to live within complexity. It simply removes us from it for a short while.
We cannot withdraw completely even if we wanted to. Despite the modern rhetoric of ‘me first’, most of us live embedded in networks of responsibility: children, ageing parents, colleagues, communities. Ethical life is relational, whether we relish that or not. Self-care that demands disengagement from everyone else is neither realistic nor, ultimately, sustainable.
When stressful life events occur, people will experience a stress response. This is normal and expected. But when the threatening situation is no longer a danger, reducing the stress response can have powerful, beneficial effects. 2
The question, then, is not how to escape stress, but how to adapt to it without becoming brittle.
Stress is not a personal failure.
It is a biological and psychological response to demand. Problems arise not because stress exists, but because it is unrelenting and poorly buffered. The language of ‘coping’ often implies gritted teeth and endurance; what we need instead is a better understanding of adaptation. How do we help the brain and body to metabolise pressure rather than accumulate it?
In my own life, and in my clinical work, I have often turned to herbs in times of strain. Not as magic bullets, and certainly not as replacements for social or psychological support, but as allies in supporting sleep, mood, digestion and resilience. At the same time, I am acutely aware that many people require pharmaceutical intervention simply to survive. Medication is not a moral failure; it is often a lifeline.
What troubles me is the vast and poorly supported space between early low mood and psychiatric crisis. Between ‘I’m not coping’ and the need for the NHS crisis team.
Many people live for years in this middle ground where they are functioning, contributing and outwardly fine but inwardly depleted. Services are rarely designed for them.
It seems that either one is well and self-managing, or unwell and in crisis.
I find myself wondering whether there might be a gentler bridge here. Not a rejection of medicine, or a woo-woo approach, but an integrated, earlier intervention to support adaptation [physiologically, psychologically, and socially] before distress hardens into pathology.
Wouldn’t that be good? Not a panacea, but a widening of the conversation.
Life is not fair. It never has been. But we can find ways to exist with one another, even in times of sustained stress, without breaking down or giving up.
The following quote from Dr Christopher Palmer may seem rather simplistic [italics mine];
“The easiest way to manage stress is to reduce or eliminate stressors when possible. … Creating a life that is manageable, pleasurable, and rewarding is something we should all strive to do.”2
For those of us with complicated lives and commitments, eliminating stressors is impossible. Yet, fortifying the brain and supporting the body is not selfish; it is one of the quiet responsibilities of living among others.
Herbal medicine seems to me a good place to start nudging ourselves towards resilience.
1 Bentall, R. P. (2003). Madness Explained: Psychosis and Human Nature. London: Allen Lane.
2 Palmer, C. M. (2022) Brain Energy: A Revolutionary Breakthrough in Understanding Mental Health—and Improving Treatment for Anxiety, Depression, OCD, PTSD, and More. New York: BenBella Books.
