From maintaining good skin, regularly exercising, and eating healthy foods, to just doing whatever we can to take care of our mental health, the idea of self-care has been centered on what we can do to maintain our physical and mental health in the best condition.
However, what will happen if we stray too much from the things that maintain our physical health and mental health by doing what we perceive as “helpful”?
The latest trend in social media, ‘bed rotting,’ impose the idea of staying in your bed beyond your bedtime as a form of self-care – it doesn’t matter what you do or how you do it, as long as you’re purposefully and intentionally “rotting” away on your bed for long periods of time.
People who do this believe that the practice is a form of meditation, wherein, you can reclaim your physical and mental health, whether you’re coming from a cold, a long week, or just a hangover.
But the real question here is how can we say that “rotting” away is a form of self-care?
Bed rotting, from the name itself, does not sound like it’s going to be extremely helpful to one’s well-being; laying around your bed for a long period of time takes the productivity out of your day, because you are not moving AT ALL.
Exercising, or just moving in general, is essential in maintaining our physical health and making sure that we can still be functional as a human being.
Taking away that idea of moving to recover from physical pain is (kinda) okay and it’s called resting, but to intentionally lie around for long periods of time until you think you’ve recovered is quite irresponsible – even those who were in an accident, take rehabilitation therapy to recover.
Self-care is also associated with having a meaningful life with meaningful conversations, but if we were to rot ourselves to feel better about ourselves, doesn’t that mean we’re just stalling ourselves?
Self-care is actually subjective and doesn’t have a definite rule to say that what we’re doing is actually for the better or not – but there are things that are just meant to be looked at objectively, like bed rotting.
We should think about whether what we’re doing is actually beneficial for ourselves physically and mentally based on reasoning and not just based on a trend that we think might be “fun,” – because at the end of the day, it’s still your body and no one can tell dictate you what to and what not to do that can impact your lifestyle, just your decisions, really.
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