At it’s most fundamental level, caring for yourself can refer to basic tasks that you do every day: getting dressed, washing oneself, acquiring and eating food - all of those normal functions. We all do it, we encourage children to grow up to be adults who can cope with these things as a starting point. We can even carry out these tasks without really thinking.

However, self-care is about more than merely functioning and just getting through. It should be considered as looking after yourself the way you would a loved one or a cherished child, and giving yourself the same patience, grace and kindness. Loving oneself the way you love your favourite person.

When we consider the word ‘caring’ to describe someone, we always mean it as a compliment; when we turn the word towards ourselves and use it to describe self-care, we suddenly feel self-centred. The assumption is that looking after oneself is to the exclusion of everyone else, and regardless of the impact on others. Many people feel that self-care is selfishness under another name.

I hard disagree with that thought! Surely if you feel happier, more content and the best version of yourself, then you will also feel that you have more to share and give to others. When we like ourselves, we tend to want to contribute more to the world as a whole, because we have valued who we are and what we can do. Kindness towards ourselves spreads into kindness to others. In a spirit of healthy nurturing soil, the good things about us can grow.

When we are bound up in self-mistrust, low esteem and running on an empty tank, it makes us self-conscious and absorbed with our own issues. We don’t have the energy or intention to reach out for others, and can’t give anything to the people or things we care about.

When we embrace self-care, we become focused, switched on and ready to be engaged with life. It doesn’t mean to fully retreat permanently, rather to take time to recharge, be energised, and stay a functioning part of the world. The more we deny our own needs, the more exhausted we become. There will always be people and tasks that demand our attention and time, we live real lives, but we are also human beings who need to protect a little time for ourselves. In the same way others demand it, we need to demand it for ourselves. You deserve your own attention just as much as anyone else. Instead of considering it as something you need to do to the exclusion of everything you know, it’s taking time to ‘have a meeting with yourself’. Find yourself just as you are, and think about the little steps you can take to care for yourself some more.

Self-care is not selfish. It is all a learning curve of self-respect, self-love, compassion and seeing the benefits on yourself and the people around you. In looking after yourself, you model wellbeing to the people you know.