To think society should stop glorifying self-care and prioritise community care?

As pp have said, all of this community care fell to women. Women now work ft and raise kids. I am over 50 and too exhausted to take on community care and volunteering. I need self care to remain sane. Time for the men to step up, if they're not too busy doing some amazing hobby all day sunday.

Self care is a phrase that is generally used in physical and mental health circles to mean things like showering, brushing your teeth, being aware of your own tiredness and your own triggers.

So self care for someone with epilepsy might be being aware of their triggers eg flashing lights or driving in the dark and making sure they avoid them.

In my case, self care means doing my physio exercises every day and getting out of the wheelchair to walk as much as possible.

I'm not sure how you feel community care would replace that?

Can you give an exact situation you're talking about?

But yes I do think that community would be nice. It's just so hard to keep it going.

I've volunteered in a number of community groups and they are always riven with conflict. I think it might be because I'm in a city, but I'm not sure.

Tbh I don't think that's right because I remember my DM coping with similar when I was growing up. I think maintaining a community is just incredibly demanding work.

I agree with pp who mentioned that women are all working now too. Very true.

Yes, thank you.

There are a lot of groups and community gatherings. Some of them struggle with lack of volunteers or money for renting a suitable space, the structure is different than before due to people migrating and mixing differently but still there are a lot.
I think people are tired, live far from relatives, have a lot of commitments plus CoL so they don’t have opportunity to get out that much. But there is push to do this, in our area GPs are always give out leaflets about local groups e.g groups for parents of disabled children.

I kind of both agree and disagree. I remember back in the 80s and 90 when our church community was thriving, and we had more community, but I also remember how stressed we all were with constantly rushing from pillar to post, to be part of those communities. We were always knackered.

Our church here now is no use really. I did go when I moved here, but there were very few young people so I was constantly given loads of tasks to do and was again knackered. Then when it suited them to do something I couldn't do for disability reasons, they just dropped me and I had to leave.

I think what we need really is for everybody just to calm down and stop being so perfect all the time. All the rules about what we should do and must do are just a bit bonkers. All the kids desperately trying to ace GCSEs and all that and the rules about having perfect Christmas and stuff.

Could we all just calm down a bit and try a bit less hard? Then the community could just be everyone in the street clearing weeds together to keep the street nice, and that would be ok.

That's kind of my conclusion.

Community care was always something shouldered (mainly) by women, now that women are working full time, raising kids with little support and trying to maintain their own household and health, there is very little left to give to others. I’d love to do more voluntarily in the community but i have absolutely nothing left.

I think 'self-care' is a bullshit term invented by capitalists to try and divert attention from the fact that their system is pretty much toxic to all.

It has the added bonus of making individualism seem like a 'progressive' thing, and communitarianism like an authoritarian thing. So selfishness is now a 'liberal' value.

It's a bit like how the hippies went on to invent tech and become arch-capitalists - they were the OG individualists. The only things that can prevent inequality are structural, which necessarily constrains the individual; it's easy for individualists to frame structures as 'the man' or 'the elite' or as fundamentally conservative.

I work with teens and actually think this has been quite damaging for a lot of them. I work with a lot of young people who struggle hugely with forming friendships. They have absorbed messages about “speaking their truth”, prioritising their own “emotional safety” and setting their own “boundaries” and then get upset when others don’t want to spend time with them. The sad fact is that other teens don’t want to hang out with the kids who only want to talk about themselves and expect to be able to speak their mind completely freely regardless of others’ feelings but get upset the second anyone says or does something they don’t like.

Why?
My generation had never been taught this, quite the opposite.
Now at 45, I'm finally enjoying putting myself first.

We are really lucky. Live in a tiny street of just 10 properties where everyone knows each other by name, we nearly all contribute to keeping our street clean and tidy, keep an eye out for anything unusual, suspicious, tell each other if anyone gets burgled, take in parcels for each other, even share house keys if anyone goes on a long break, jump start each other’s cars, clear the snow, fetch shopping etc for anyone who is ill, check everyone is ok if there’s a power cut. All sorts of kind, well communicated, shared problem solving. We don’t live in each other’s houses, don’t pop round every five minutes, but there might be an occasion meal shared, a BBQ. Anyone new who moves in gets a quiet hello, a few names, then a gentle offer of any help if required. Privacy respected if this is preferred. Any issues with local council, we fight as a team, and it gets so much more achieved.
It’s not rocket science, but little neighbourly niggles don’t become major issues, everyone gets on, there’s lots of respect, and it makes for a much nicer environment. My Mum has similar adjacent neighbours. In the North by the way.

Yes, please
what exact problems you are talking about?
I can see you update now.

I really think it depends where you live, I definitely live in an area that has lots of diverse "communities" - but there's no guarantee you would necessarily fit in with any of them, or the duration you'd be in contact with them.

People tend to come together (as I observe in white English culture with lack of local extended family) for either a specific reason, or due to a location and are very wary of over committing in general.

Lots of places in the country you don't say good morning or smile and nod to a stranger without looking demented, so it's very different across the country.

I’ve noticed this sort of thing too. Society seems to be becoming more individualistic. The number of people that I see now listening to music on loudspeaker on the train/tube or having conversations on speakerphone with their phone held flat on their palm is pretty staggering. Not so long ago that never really happened. There’s a lot of focus on “living your best life” without really thinking about others.

@ThatJoyousCyanReader I agree with you but probably most people on here won't.

people only seem to help family now. Admittedly I don't have any so I'm very isolated and fear the future. Community seems to have fallen apart in recent years. I think the perception is probably that I'm stupid and should have chased marriage and children to secure a future. It all makes me feel very sad and low.

edit - before someone asks, I have always helped in the community, since I was a teen.

Actually I think in many cases there is not enough emphasis on self care.

Teachers, social workers and doctors (and many other professions) burn out at high rates because they show up for others and go above and beyond for others and neglect self care.