How Active and Passive Self-Care Differ
When it comes to self-care, there are two ways that you can go about caring for yourself at any given time.
One way is active self-care. This is the deep work that comes when you are learning about yourself, rewiring your learned patterns, and working on loving yourself enough to care for yourself well.
You are actively involved in this work at all times. Without your diligent and active involvement, this deep work does not get done and you don’t progress as quickly.
Passive self-care consists of those wonderful and loving things you do for yourself that you can do to help replenish your energy reserves.
You can do these passive activities routinely, but you can only do them once in a given session, and you aren’t necessarily the one doing the work.
Active self-care is the hard work which we don't often associate with self-care. Passive self-care is the array of activities that most people think of when they think of self-care in general.
Active self-care is ongoing and dynamic, while passive self-care is restorative and temporary.
IMAGE BY ALISON BEHRENS BRALY
How Active and Passive Self-Care Work Together
Self-care work is HARD. It takes a lot of time and mental energy. It also involves a lot of trial and error.
If the only way that one could embrace and enhance their self-care was through active self-care acts, everyone would give up on self-care very quickly. Not only would they always be completely exhausted, but the incremental growth would be hard to see over such a short time period.
Working to understand more about yourself, recognize patterns, put habits in place, and generally make your life better is a long-term goal that can only be measured by slow, incremental (sometimes unnoticeable for lengths of time!) growth.
Overwhelm? It may take you weeks or months to recognize that the source of that overwhelm is not that you're overcommitted, but that you don't actually rest on the weekends.
Feeling tired and sluggish? It might not be that you aren't getting enough sleep, but that you're chronically dehydrated.
These solutions aren't going to come to you overnight, without any experimentation or action on your part.
In between the hard work of working on the solutions to these long-term problems, it's important to give yourself a break, and let your energy shift to enjoyment and downtime. Passive self-care gives you that.
Energy stores must be replenished when you are doing self-care work. You will not have the bandwidth or strength to make big changes or decisions without a break in the active self-care work that is required.
Passive self-care allows your body and your brain to relax and recharge, even if the activity doesn't seem "restful," per se. You are still letting yourself put down the deep work you've been doing (consciously AND subconsciously!) and allowing yourself a restorative moment.
Active self-care is the work that looks toward the long-term, and is draining but rewarding. It can be a slog, but you will be better for it, and it will get easier as you go. Passive self-care is the array of short-term restorative acts that bolster you while you're doing the work. It is necessary and you will find that it is a welcome respite from
Passive self-care is the array of short-term restorative acts that bolster you while you're doing the work. It is necessary and you will find that it is a welcome addition to your self-care regimen.
Examples of Active Self-Care
Gratitude Lists
Setting Firm Boundaries
Therapy
Ending Toxic Relationships
Sticking to New Habits
Working to Change Your Thought Patterns
Examples of Passive Self-Care
Girls' Night
Netflix Binge
Wandering Your Favorite Store
Napping
A Long Shower
Uninterrupted Time Doing a Favorite Activity
Image by @SIGMUND
Why You Need Both
Active and passive self-care are both completely legitimate forms of self-care, and I would argue that you cannot put long-term, transformational self-care in place without both.
If you are working and working and working on learning how to care for yourself, but don’t know what passive actions to put in place that will help you rest and recharge along the way, you’re going to burn out and decide that self-care is too draining and not worth it.
Conversely, if you're only applying the passive forms of self-care without doing any kind of deep work around your internal self-talk, your level of self-compassion, or any other complication that needs to be addressed for you to know your true needs and wants, true transformational self-care won’t happen, either.
Active self-care creates long-term growth.
Passive self-care restores energy.
The work of transformative self-care takes more mental and physical energy (and sometimes emotional, too) than most anything else you can do for yourself. It requires an immense amount of internal reflection, and a commitment to staying the course. It is not easy to discover some of the major parts of your self-care routine, let alone implement them.
Making the commitment to the hard work of developing and implementing a self-care routine is intense, and absolutely will deplete your energy, even if you think it won't when you start out.
You cannot process all the changes that are taking place in and around you without using full energy stores.
You have to make all these connections, and you have to put all these pieces together, and you can't do that without fully digesting what you're learning about yourself as you go. You need to allow yourself the time and space for these connections to be fully realized and understood.
You won't be able to allow that if your energy is depleted from doing the work to get to the realization in the first place.
Allowing yourself to do the deep work, have the realizations, and then allow yourself and your realizations the space to process and fully digest by engaging in passive self-care is the most measured and balanced way to achieve transformative self-care.
Recognizing that you are doing such good work, and are worthy of a break, is also something I highly highly encourage, friend.
Have you been engaging in too much of one of these forms of self-care? Want to learn more about how to balance it all out? Get the link for my free Beginner Self-Care Video Workshop here.