If We Already Know Self-Care is Important, What Keeps Us from Practicing It?

We already know that self-care is important.

Most of us are familiar with the standard guidance: adequate sleep, balanced nutrition, physical activity, rest, and maintaining social connections, to name a few. These are well-established components of health and well-being.

This advice appears consistently across healthcare settings, educational materials, and well-intentioned conversations with professionals, family, and friends. However, for many caregivers, the issue is not awareness. It is putting these into practice within the realities of caregiving.

So the question is not whether self-care is important. It’s this:

If we already know self-care is important, what keeps us from actually doing it?

 

The Reality Behind Self-Care Struggles

Research tells us something important here: it is usually not a knowledge problem, but the challenge of translating that knowledge into practice while navigating the emotional, practical, and psychological realities of caregiving.

A systematic review of dementia caregivers found that while caregivers generally understand self-care and its importance, they face significant barriers to putting it into practice. 

These include:

-self-sacrificing attitudes, 

-caregiving burden, and 

-difficulty balancing their own needs with those of the person living with dementia. 

The review found that self-care is more likely to occur when caregivers finally recognize that their own well-being matters too (Waligora, Bahouth & Han, 2019). 

This is an important distinction. 

Knowing that self-care is beneficial is not the same as believing that we “deserve” it or that our own well-being is worthy of attention. Lasting change often begins when self-care is no longer viewed as optional or selfish, but as an essential part of sustaining the ability to care for someone else. It’s believing that we ourselves are worthy of and need the same care, compassion, and attention we so readily give to the person we are supporting.

Caregivers make moment-to-moment decisions in demanding and often unpredictable circumstances, where the needs of the person we care for naturally take priority. Over time, this can make self-care feel less like an intentional choice and more like something that gets continuously postponed, even when caregivers fully understand its importance.

 

Barrier One: Guilt

Guilt shows up often in caregiving. What makes guilt particularly complex is that it is often rooted in care and commitment. It reflects how deeply caregivers feel responsible for the well-being of the person they are supporting. However, when guilt goes unexamined, it can begin to override practical needs for rest and emotional recovery.

“I should be doing more.”

“If I take a break, I’m letting them down.”

“They need me more than I need rest.”

This kind of thinking is incredibly common and very human.

A more realistic way forward…

Notice guilt without letting it take the lead.

Guilt doesn’t always mean we’ve done something wrong. The goal isn’t to fight guilt. It’s to pause long enough to question it.

• Notice guilt without automatically acting on it
• Remembering that feeling guilty does not always mean we are doing something wrong
• Reframe taking a rest as part of care, not separate from it
• Ask: “What would I say to another caregiver in my situation?”
• Practice short pauses before self-criticism takes over. Even a few quiet minutes of not arguing with yourself can ease the constant internal pressure many caregivers live with.

 

Barrier Two: When Caregiving Becomes Your Identity

Over time, many caregivers stop simply “doing” caregiving and begin to “become” the caregiver.

There is an important distinction between these two. 

“Doing” caregiving refers to actions and responsibilities: tasks that can be paused, shared, or adjusted. “Becoming” the caregiver, however, reflects a deeper shift in identity, where caregiving is no longer just something a person does, but something they feel they now are – an identity that replaces the person. 

In this space, the individual can gradually become overshadowed by the role itself.

The one who holds everything together.

The one who manages everything.

The one who cannot stop.

Within this caregiver identity, prioritizing oneself can feel unfamiliar, uncomfortable, or even inappropriate.

A more realistic way forward: Redefine the role 

Good caregiving is not defined by constant self-sacrifice. It is defined by sustainability over time.

Rather than focusing on major changes that feel unrealistic in daily caregiving, it can be more helpful to start with small, practical shifts:

• Pausing briefly before responding to every request
• Allowing tasks to be “good enough” rather than perfect
• Notice when you are defining yourself only through caregiving tasks
• Ask: “Who am I beyond this role, even in small ways?”

They are protective adjustments that help ensure caregiving does not become so depleting as to lead to burnout.

 

Barrier Three: Limited Time, Money, and Support

For many caregivers, this is a reality that is often overlooked, yet it is one of the most significant, hardest to navigate, and most challenging barriers to self-care.

There may be no nearby family.

Respite care may be limited or unavailable. Finances may already be stretched. In these situations, traditional self-care advice can feel disconnected from real life.

A more realistic way forward: Make self-care accessible within real constraints

When time, finances, and support are limited, self-care cannot depend on ideal circumstances. It needs to be grounded in what is realistically available, even in small and imperfect ways.

In these situations, self-care often becomes less about creating new time and more about connecting with existing supports and using what is already available in the system.

• Speaking with a social worker through a hospital, home care program, or local health authority, who can help identify respite options, caregiver supports, and financial assistance programs that may not be widely known or easy to navigate alone
• Asking a family physician or specialist clinic about referrals to caregiver support programs, counselling services, or community dementia resources
• Exploring free or low-cost caregiver counselling or support groups, which are often offered through community organizations, Alzheimer societies, public health programs, convenient online support, and resources like family support memberships
• Inquiring about respite care options, even short-term or emergency respite, to create brief but meaningful breaks
• Accessing dementia education or caregiver training programs, which often include emotional support alongside practical strategies, can reduce stress by increasing confidence in day-to-day care decisions

 

Self-Compassion as A Realistic Form of Self-Care 

Self-compassion is often misunderstood as being “kind to yourself” in a vague or overly positive sense. In reality, it is much more grounded and far more practical than that.

Dr. Kristin Neff, a leading researcher in self-compassion and author of “Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself”, describes self-compassion as how we respond to ourselves in moments of difficulty. 

Her work highlights three core elements that are especially relevant for caregivers: 

• being kind to ourselves rather than self-critical,
• recognizing that struggle is part of the shared human experience; and, 
• allowing ourselves to notice difficult emotions without becoming overwhelmed by them.

In her research, one of the most important insights is this: people are often far harsher toward themselves than they would ever be toward someone else in the same situation. Over time, this pattern of self-criticism can increase emotional distress rather than reduce it.

For caregivers, this dynamic is especially familiar.

Caregiving for a person living with dementia often includes exhaustion, grief, uncertainty, and the emotional strain of seeing someone you love change in ways you did not expect.

Self-compassion shifts this pattern – not by changing the circumstances, but by changing the internal response to them.

It can sound like:

“This is really hard right now. Of course, I’m feeling overwhelmed.”

“Anyone in my position would find this challenging.”

“I can care deeply and still have limits.”

“I don’t need to judge myself while I’m already under pressure.”

Self-compassion does not remove the demands of caregiving, and it does not make the work easier, but what it does change is the additional weight caregivers so often carry silently: the belief that they should be coping better than they are.

For many caregivers, that reduction in self-judgment is what makes it possible to keep going with more steadiness, clarity, and emotional balance.  Often, it is these small, compassionate shifts – not sweeping changes- that make it more possible to sustain both care for others and care for self over time.

 

At Dementia Solutions, we’ve made it our mission to demystify dementia behaviour and continue to explore person-centred, creative, non-pharmacological solutions to manage dementia-related behaviours. We believe that awareness creation and skill-building through education is the most effective and powerful tool we have to promote and maintain the well-being of both the person with dementia and their caregiver.