Why Self-Care Starts with Knowing Who You Really Are
Self-care is a hot topic. We see it everywhere — bubble baths, nature walks, a mindful chocolate meditation. And yes, these are all lovely. But are they really self-care? Or does self-care need to be deeper and more meaningful?
Then there are the basics: regular meals, drinking enough water, going for health check-ups. These are essential to functioning; the bare minimum of looking after ourselves. Yet, for someone deep in burnout or overwhelm, even these can feel like acts of care. In that case, perhaps they are self-care.
Self-care is something that is dynamic and many people have opinions about, I am talking about it in a different way today, not to tell you what it is, but how to figure it out for yourself.
The Missing Piece: Intentionality and Something Deeper
I love Briana from Learning to Be Free’s take on intentionality:
“Being intentional about your self-care involves increasing your awareness about WHAT self-care means to you and HOW it fits into your daily life.”
(Read her full post here)
But here’s the question I can’t ignore: how can you truly know what self-care means to you if you don’t deeply know yourself? If your sense of self is shaped more by old stories and external expectations than by your own truth, how can you be sure that what you’re calling self-care is actually caring for you?
Why Identity Work Matters for Self-Care
We all carry layers of nervous system programming — societal expectations, family rules, unprocessed trauma, old emotional imprints. These layers blur the line between what you’ve been taught you should want and what you actually want. They blur the edges of your true identity and make it incredibly hard to know what we genuinely like, need, and value — which means we often end up choosing self-care practices that don’t actually replenish us.
It’s the reason you might try the morning routine everyone swears by and feel nothing. Or why the things that used to soothe you stop working. If you’re operating from a version of yourself shaped by old conditioning, your self-care will always feel like a mismatch.
If you don’t know who you are underneath all that conditioning, how can you choose the kind of self-care that truly restores you?
This isn’t only a self-care problem. The same lack of clarity shows up everywhere; in how you run your business, navigate your relationships, make decisions about your family, or even choose your health priorities.
When you don’t know yourself or your values, you’re building your life on an unstable foundation. It’s exhausting to keep guessing what you need. And even when you get it right, it’s hard to trust that it’s right for you.
Clearing the Noise and Coming Home to Yourself
Getting clear on your true identity and core values can make your self-care feel entirely different. Instead of feeling like another task to tick off, it becomes something that genuinely meets your needs.
When you know who you are and what you value, it becomes so much easier to:
Choose activities that truly restore you.
Say no to the things that drain you without guilt.
Make decisions that feel clear and solid.
Recognise when you’re acting from truth rather than conditioning.
Plus, getting clear on your true identity and values (and clearing the stuck emotions and false layers built up over a lifetime), doesn’t just make self-care easier.
It makes your whole life feel more aligned.
How to Find Yourself in the Noise
If this is landing for you, maybe there's a spark of “ohhh, this makes sense”, I created the Unstuck Self Workshop Series for exactly this reason.
The first workshop, Unstuck Identity, helps you rediscover who you are beneath all the noise by guiding you through simple but powerful journalling prompts. It’s the foundation for the rest of the series, because once you know who you are, you can more easily see what you need in every part of your life, including your self-care routine.
Starting with Unstuck Identity, moving to Unstuck Values, and then Unstuck Boundaries: these three form the foundation for living in alignment and taking care of yourself in a way that actually works for you.
So yes, go ahead and plan your self-care routine. But if you want it to feel effortless, nourishing, and truly yours, start with finding yourself first. Uncover who you truly are beneath the noise and from there, everything, including your self-care, falls into place.
