Is it selfish to put yourself first?

I have this issue, I find it almost impossible to put myself first, I will always put my daughter, partner, wife & mother ahead of myself, if not friends as well.

If I do put myself first I feel selfish, my mind goes into guilt mode. Berating myself, if I really love them surley I should put them first. Is this from upbringing or are some of us more prone to put others first.

In today’s society there is a lot of encouragement to put yourself first, to make sure you can be the best you can be. The thing is for me, it seems that you should be at your best for others.

So in my mind it is irrelevant if I put myself first or not, as others should still come before me.

However, one big issue, eventually I get worn out, my mental health deteriorates, I start to get depressed. Then my mind goes into full 24 hour overthinking.

So, is it selfish? No, this is something I am working on. There is no use me putting others first if in the end I fall down. I would be useless to not just myself, but as a mother, partner, wife , daughter & friend. One thing I detest is feeling useless.

As many of you will relate, as a working mother, I seem to constantly run out of time. I have started to have more me time, I also want to model this for my daughter. As she gets older I want her to be able to give herself permission to put herself first.

I am only at the start of this journey, so if anyone has any tips or tricks they would like to share, I am all ears!!

Thank you for visiting & reading. Don’t forget to follow!

Ell.

2 responses to “Is it selfish to put yourself first?”

Jay-lyn Doerksen

July 9, 2022 at 10:37 pm

Good morning! Once I use to struggle with putting myself first until one day I went kaboom. Like yourself I thought that I was the end all be all for the care of others. Only thing is I did more damage to myself then to them. Now even when that voice goes should you not be doing something I tell it to go back to its hole. If I want to sit out in the sunshine and read as opposed to cleaning the house I can do that. The house is always going to be there my mental health would quickly desert me if I did not pay attention. Having said that though it was a long and hard journey to get to where I could tell that voice to stuff it. Good luck in learning how to tune it out and accept that you need to put yourself first too. Have an awesome weekend. 🙂

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1. Ellpoet
  
  July 10, 2022 at 3:14 am
  
  Thank you for taking the time to leave a comment, good evening to you! I am in Australia. I am finding if a hard journey, you are right, some things can wait. I have a lot to balance, our daughter, my wife who now has a severe acquired brain injury, it happened four years ago, I stand by her & am her voice, my girlfriend & my mum. My father passed last year so I try to be there for Mum. I will take your advice, as there are some things I do for each of these that can sometimes wait.
  
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