Remember the song –“Dusro ki jai se pehle, khud ko jai kare”. We were/are taught this in school so early in life, but never truly understood the real, sacred and important meaning.
We live in a culture that deeply romanticises the martyr. We’ve been conditioned to wear our exhaustion like a badge of honour. From a young age, we learn to take care of others and their responsibilities (not saying that is wrong, but taking care of ourselves is important too), and often think that taking care of ourselves is selfish.
There is a profound reason flight attendants give the same crucial instruction before every single take-off: “Secure your own oxygen mask before helping the person next to you.” This isn’t a lesson in abandonment. It is a lesson in spiritual alignment and basic physics. If you run out of air, you cannot save yourself or anyone else.
As a therapist and spiritual guide, I witness the damaging effects of chronic self-neglect every day. Overcoming the guilt of self-care isn’t a trend or luxury. It is a divine mandate.
The Hidden Trap: From Martyr to Victim
When we lack true self-love, feeling guilty about putting ourselves first can lead us to take on too much responsibility for others. This often makes us feel like we need to carry burdens that aren’t ours just to feel valuable. Living in this state of constant exhaustion is not sustainable, and it creates a hidden trap that affects our mental health.
- The Shadow of the Victim: However much we love and respect them, when we bear the weight, while ignoring our own well-being, we may find ourselves complaining and resenting our circumstances. Without realising it, we begin to adopt a victim mentality toward a life that we are actively choosing to endure.
- The Cost of Suppression: The love we believe we are giving, while not taking care of ourselves, feels forced and creates silent resentment. These suppressed emotions don’t simply disappear, they linger, grow over time, and we start feeling like a victim, casting a shadow across 3 distinct levels of your existence – emotional, mental & physical.
1. The Emotional Toll: Unpredictable Storms
When we continuously suppress our own needs to maintain peace, those unexpressed emotions do not simply vanish; instead, they fester. This can lead to sudden emotional breakdowns, explosive anger, or uncharacteristic rage over minor inconveniences. Since we are not addressing the root causes of our feelings, we may end up resorting to subconscious manipulations. This could involve using guilt, passive aggression, or emotional withdrawal to get others to recognise our pain, simply because we are too exhausted to express it openly.
2. The Mental Toll: Chronic Fog and Fatigue
When we ignore our own limits for too long, our minds can become unstable. It takes a lot of mental energy to hide your true feelings, which can cause brain fog, depression, ongoing anxiety, sleepless nights, and a harsh inner critic, etc. This leads to confusion and may trap you in overthinking and questioning your self-worth. Often, this happens because our mind is filled with other people’s problems.
3. The Physical Toll: The Body Keeps the Score
One of the most concerning aspects of chronic self-neglect is its physical manifestation. When emotional pain is suppressed, it becomes a source of physical stress. If our mind consistently refuses to say “no,” our body will eventually intervene to communicate that need. This trapped trauma often presents itself as unexplained chronic diseases, fatigue, tension headaches, knee pain, severe muscle tightness, particularly in the neck and shoulders, digestive problems, and a weakened immune system. It’s not just fatigue, our body is literally struggling under the burden of unexpressed emotions.
Let me share with you a story about the balance of sacred self-care.
To truly understand how destructive this multi-level self-neglect can be-
There was once a widowed mother of 3 children who worked tirelessly to make ends meet. Every single day, she prayed deeply to Krishna to send help and protect her little family.
Moved by her devotion, Krishna answered her prayers. Every afternoon, a kind soul would arrive at her doorstep and leave an abundance of nourishing food.
With tears of gratitude, the mother would take the food inside. She immediately divided it into three equal parts and gave it entirely to her children, leaving absolutely nothing for herself. She watched them eat happily, believing she was fulfilling her ultimate duty.
This went on for a few weeks until, inevitably, her body and mind gave way to starvation and utter exhaustion. She fell severely ill and passed away, leaving her children entirely alone in the world.
When her soul met Krishna in the divine realm, she was furious and heartbroken. “How could you be so ruthless?” she cried. “I prayed to you every day, and yet you let me die and left my children orphaned!”
Krishna looked at her with deep, sorrowful gentleness and replied, “I am not ruthless, dear soul. You were ruthless to yourself. You asked me for help, and every day I sent more than enough food to your doorstep. Where you made three parts, you could have easily made four. If you had nourished yourself and lived, your children would still be taken care of today.”
When First-Hand Self-Care is Delayed
In the real world, practising perfect self-care isn’t always linear. There are heavy, chaotic situations in life where putting ourselves first feels nearly impossible:
- A new mother/parents soothing a crying infant through sleepless nights.
- A dedicated caretaker nursing a severely sick family member.
- A professional crushed under gruelling, high-stakes work hours
- During exams and day-to-day mundane busy life
In these intense situations, firsthand care is often delayed, but it must never be denied.
We all have, and sometimes have ourselves experienced (I have been there and done that years back), heartbreaking cases where caretakers collapse, lose their mental stability, or even lose their lives because they forgot they were human too. We do not have to burn ourselves alive to keep the people around us warm. Even in the tightest corners of your life, we must actively find tiny, sacred pockets of time to rest, breathe, and restore ourselves before the emotional, mental, and physical toll becomes irreversible.
"Handle With Care"
When the Divine created us, He or She whispered, “Handle with care.” Taking care of ourselves mentally, emotionally, and physically is the highest form of spiritual alignment and a gift of gratitude to ourselves.
To conquer the world, or to genuinely support and take care of the ones we love, we must first stop waging a war against our own needs. Step out of the martyr mindset. Release the burden of everyone else’s journey for just a moment and make room for self-care. Put on your own safety jacket.
Dusro ki jai se pehle, khud ko jai kare.