Self-Care Is A SCAM (And You Know It)

You're doing everything right. The morning routine is locked in. You're journaling, meditating, using the right face oils, buying the ethically sourced sage. You've got the therapist, the supplements, the boundary scripts saved in your notes app. You're performing wellness like it's a fucking Olympic sport. And you're still exhausted.

Here's why: Self-care got colonized. What started as a radical actBlack feminists and activists insisting that rest is resistance in a system designed to extract until you collapsegot repackaged and sold back to you as another metric of success. Another thing you're failing at.

Now self-care isn't about actual care. It's about optimization. It's about making yourself more palatable, more productive, more profitable. It's about fixing yourself so you can get back to work. And if you're still tired? Still anxious? Still struggling? Well, clearly you're not doing it right.

HOW THE TRAP WORKS

The manipulation is elegant. First, they individualize systemic problems. You're burnt out? Must be a you problem not the fact that you're doing the emotional labor of four people, working multiple jobs, navigating systems designed to exhaust you, and still being told you're not grateful enough.

Then they sell you the solution: more self-care. More optimization. More fixing. Buy the planner. Take the course. Download the app. Do the breathwork. Master your morning. Biohack your sleep. Manifest harder.

The fucked up part? You internalize it. You start believing that if you just tried harder at resting, you wouldn't be so tired. If you just did enough inner work, you'd stop feeling the weight of external bullshit. You turn your exhaustion into a character flaw instead of a reasonable response to unreasonable conditions.

WHAT THIS ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE

You can't watch TV without doing something "productive" simultaneously. You feel guilty taking a bath unless it's part of your "self-care Sunday routine." You apologize for being sick. You work through your therapy homework like it's another deadline. You feel like you're failing at rest.

You've got seventeen tabs open about how to optimize your morning routine, three apps tracking your water intake, and a shame spiral every time you sleep past your alarm. You're managing your nervous system dysregulation while working full-time, caring for others, and still trying to look like you have your shit together on the internet.

The self-care you're performing isn't making you feel better. It's making you feel like there's something wrong with you for not feeling better yet.

THE ASTROLOGY OF PERFORMANCE WELLNESS

If we're looking at this through an astrological lens not for prediction, but for pattern recognitionthis is Saturn pathology without the wisdom. All structure, no sustainability. All discipline, no discernment. You're building a prison and calling it a routine.

When every waking moment has to be intentional, optimized, and in service of becoming a better version of yourself, you're not living. You're auditioning. For what? For whom? For the capitalist machine that needs you functional but not free? For the algorithm that rewards performance? For the people who need you useful but not whole?

Chiron energy gets weaponized here too. Your wound becomes your brand. You're supposed to turn your trauma into content, your healing into hustle, your vulnerability into value. And if you don't? If you just want to hurt without having to extract a lesson from it? You're wasting your pain.

WHERE THE REAL MANIPULATION HIDES

Here's what they're not telling you: The system is working exactly as designed. You're supposed to be tired. You're supposed to feel like you're failing. Because if you're too busy optimizing yourself, you won't have time to question why you need so much self-care in the first place.

If you're focused on fixing your attachment style, you won't notice that the dating apps are designed to keep you single and scrolling. If you're working on your abundance mindset, you won't organize with other people who are also struggling to make rent. If you're doing shadow work, you won't have energy left to dismantle the actual shadows the systems of power that need you fragmented.

Self-care culture tells you the problem is internal. That you need to heal your way into worthiness, fix your way into belonging, meditate your way into mattering. But what if you're not broken? What if the thing that's broken is a world that demands you be available 24/7, emotionally regulate on command, and produce value even in your rest?

THE PROOF IS IN YOUR BODY

Your body knows this is bullshit. That's why the anxiety doesn't go away after the meditation. That's why you can't sleep even though you did all the sleep hygiene things. That's why you feel worse after scrolling wellness content because your nervous system recognizes spiritual gaslighting even when your conscious mind hasn't caught up yet.

When someone tells you to "just raise your vibration" while you're struggling with actual material conditions that's not healing advice. That's dismissal. When you're told your chronic illness is a manifestation of unresolved trauma, not a symptom of living in a sick system that's not empowerment. That's victim-blaming in a wellness font.

Your exhaustion isn't a personal failing. It's data. It's your body telling you that something is unsustainable. And instead of listening, you've been taught to meditate it away, journal through it, positive-affirmation over it.

WHAT NO ONE WANTS YOU TO FIGURE OUT

The people selling you self-care don't want you to rest. They want you to buy rest. They want you subscribed, optimized, and scrolling for the next thing that will finally fix you. Because if you actually resteddeeply, radically, without earning it you might realize you were never the problem.

If you stopped performing wellness long enough to feel your actual feelings, you might get angry. You might notice patterns. You might start asking why you're the only one in your friend group who can hold space for hard conversations. Why you're always accommodating everyone else's comfort. Why your boundaries are called "walls" but other people's neglect is called "free-spirited."

If you rested for real not the commodified kind, but the kind where you stop trying to be better for five fucking minutes you might realize that the version of you everyone praises is the one that doesn't ask for much. The one that manages her own needs quietly. The one that makes other people comfortable by staying small.

WHAT ACTUALLY HELPS (AND IT'S NOT WHAT THEY'RE SELLING)

Real rest doesn't have a morning routine. It doesn't require the right aesthetic or the perfect setup. It's not something you earn by being productive enough first.

Real rest is letting yourself be a disaster for a day without spinning it into content. It's saying no without a palatable explanation. It's feeling your feelings without immediately trying to fix them or extract a lesson. It's recognizing that you're tired because you're doing too much, not because you're not doing self-care correctly.

Real care is recognizing that if you need three hours of self-soothing just to tolerate your daily life, the problem isn't your soothing techniques. The problem is your daily life.

And sometimes the most radical thing you can do isn't another morning routine. It's refusing to participate. It's letting the group chat go quiet. It's not optimizing. It's not improving. It's just being a human who's tired and letting that be enough information.

PERMISSION YOU DIDN'T ASK FOR BUT NEED ANYWAY

You're allowed to rest without making it productive. You're allowed to be a mess without turning it into a breakthrough. You're allowed to not have your shit together and not be working on having your shit together.You're allowed to be exhausted by a system designed to exhaust you without also having to fix yourself for feeling exhausted. You're allowed to want things softness, reciprocity, actual support without performing gratitude for the bare minimum.

And you're allowed to stop trying to self-care your way out of problems that aren't yours to solve alone. The version of you that everyone loves might be the performed one. But the version of you that gets to be free is the one who stops performing altogether.

If this hit different, it's because you're done performing wellness for an audience that benefits from you staying stuck.

I break down the emotional manipulation hiding in your "spiritual growth" on TikTok (@vibrationsbytash), because sometimes you need someone to name the pattern before you can break it.

And if you're ready to stop optimizing and start trusting yourself again? I do readings that cut through the spiritual bypassing and get to what's actually blocking you—not what the algorithm says should be blocking you.

No fluff. No "just manifest harder" bullshit. Just astrology as a tool for deconstructing the lies you've been sold about your worthiness, your softness, and your right to take up space.

Book a reading: vibrationsbytash.com

Natal Chart Reading

Plan only

1h

Book Now

Because the version of you that gets free isn't the one who perfected the morning routine. It's the one who stopped performing altogether.