When actress Verena Altenberger was a guest at the Ö3 “Breakfast with me”, she told of the most important thing that her mother, who died a few years ago, had given her on her way through life.
“First of all, you have to make sure that you are happy, that you love yourself – only then can you love and make others happy,” said the 33-year-old, who is on stage this year as a fanatic in “Jedermann” at the Salzburg Festival. Verena Altenberger is convinced that self-love and the pursuit of one’s own dreams are the basic prerequisites for being there for others and, according to her own statements, lives quite well according to this motto.
In doing so, the actress from Salzburg addressed the topic that is currently being used as a guide under the heading of “self-care” and which is the content of many lectures and workshops.
Self-care can easily be translated into German as self-care. The term describes the caring treatment of one’s own body, mind and soul.
“The intimate relationship with oneself is the prerequisite for being able to connect with others,” says the German psychologist and bestselling author Ulrike Scheuermann. For them, self-care is the complete opposite of selfishness. She quotes a long-term study on happiness that has been going on at Harvard University for 80 years and shows how central good relationships are to well-being – including those with ourselves.
“Self-care means the ability to treat oneself well, to be good to oneself, to protect oneself, to consider one’s own needs, to assess stress correctly, not to overwhelm oneself or to remain sensitive to excessive demands,” says the German-Swiss psychoanalyst Joachim Küchenhoff.
Finally take better care of yourself
In this sense, self-care also means recognizing your own limits and respecting them accordingly.
It also includes paying attention to yourself and even becoming aware of what your own needs look like: This care should be well integrated into everyday life, in which we quickly lose sight of the elementary things: We drink too little water, eat too much fast food, don’t take breaks, work too much and too long and fall asleep in front of the TV on the living room couch in the evenings.
Psychologist Ulrike Scheuermann also recommends everyone who wants to take better care of themselves to examine themselves less critically. For example, instead of looking in the mirror 43 to 71 times a day, as most people do, you could banish the mirrors from view.
Jane Stock is a technology author, who has written for 24 Hours World. She writes about the latest in technology news and trends, and is always on the lookout for new and innovative ways to improve his audience’s experience.
