{ "item_title" : "Real Self-Care", "item_author" : [" Pooja Lakshmin "], "item_description" : "National Bestseller featured by Good Morning America, NPR's Code Switch, The New York Times, and The GuardianNPR's Books We Love for 2023Forbes' Greatest Self-Help Books of All Time Realistic and trustworthy -- InStyle This isn't just another self-help book. It gives us a clear-eyed look at the way social systems drain our energy, and a concrete set of principles to rely on as we declare independence from these systems. --Martha Beck, New York Times bestselling author of The Way of IntegrityThis book is for anyone who's ever removed a 'relaxing' sheet mask only to realize it hasn't transformed you so much as your trash can. --Jessica DeFino, The Unpublishable From women's mental health specialist and New York Times contributor Pooja Lakshmin, MD, comes a long-overdue reckoning with the contradictions of the wellness industry and a paradigm-shifting program for practicing real self-care that will empower, uplift, and maybe even start a revolution. You may have noticed that it's nearly impossible to go even a couple days without coming across the term self-care. A word that encompasses any number of lifestyle choices and products--from juice cleanses to yoga workshops to luxury bamboo sheets--self-care has exploded in our collective consciousness as a panacea for practically all of women's problems. Board-certified psychiatrist Dr. Pooja Lakshmin finds this cultural embrace of self-care incomplete at best and manipulative at worst. Fixing your troubles isn't simple as buying a new day planner or signing up for a meditation class. These faux self-care practices keep us looking outward--comparing ourselves with others or striving for a certain type of perfection. Even worse, they exonerate an oppressive social system that has betrayed women and minorities. Real self-care, in contrast, is an internal, self-reflective process that involves making difficult decisions in line with our values, and when we practice it, we shift our relationships, our workplaces, and even our broken systems. In Real Self-Care, Lakshmin helps readers understand what a real practice of caring for yourself could--and does--look like. Using case studies from her practice, clinical research, and the down-to-earth style that she's become known for, Lakshmin provides a step-by-step program for real and sustainable change and solace. Packed with actionable strategies to deal with common problems, Real Self-Care is a complete roadmap for women to set boundaries and move past guilt, treat themselves with compassion, get closer to themselves, and assert their power. The result--having ownership over one's own life-- is nothing less than a personal and social revolution.", "item_img_path" : "https://covers4.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/0/59/348/972/0593489721_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "29.00", "online_price" : "29.00", "our_price" : "29.00", "club_price" : "29.00", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "29.00" } }

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Yoga classes, cleanses, wellness retreats: We’ve all heard these and other remedies marketed as “self-care” for life in an exhausting and distressing world. But debut author Pooja Lakshmin wants readers to know that, while these types of self-care may make us feel temporarily better, they are part of an ineffectual system that keeps people (especially women and minorities) feeling inadequate and overwhelmed. As the psychiatrist and New York Times contributor writes in her introduction to Real Self-Care: A Transformative Program for Redefining Wellness (Crystals, Cleanses, and Bubble Baths Not Included), “This book is my letter to every woman out there who has flirted with hopping in the car and running away from it all.” Lakshmin wants to help readers find ways to more authentically enjoy their everyday lives, and she uses anecdotes about her patients to illustrate what this might look like. For example, there’s Shelby, who shifted from viewing breastfeeding as imperative to something that just didn’t work out (and that’s OK!), and Clara, who started her own business after realizing teaching was no longer sustainable. How did they get there? Via Lakshmin’s four principles for real self-care: setting boundaries without guilt, practicing self-compassion, exploring your real self and asserting power. Helpful tools, exercises, scripts and a “Real Self-Care Compass” smooth the way to the gratifying final stage, which is “facing, straight-on, the toxicity and trauma that our culture brings to women . . . and it’s only when a critical mass of women do this internal work that we will come to collective change in our world.” Daunting? Sure. Doable? The author believes so, and she contends that the hard, ongoing work is worth it. After all, she is writing as a fellow traveler alongside her readers. “I ended up falling for Big Wellness in the worst way,” she writes. “I joined a cult!” While her time with the cult, which practiced “orgasmic meditation,” did offer some benefits (she worked with neuroscientists at the Rutgers fMRI orgasm lab, and the meditation practice “was healing for me in profound ways”), when she left the group, she was deeply depressed for quite some time.  Over time, Lakshmin realized that “real self-care is not a noun, it’s a verb—an ongoing internal process that guides us toward profound emotional wellness and reimagines how we interact with others.” In her heartfelt and empathetic Real Self-Care, she shares how she moved beyond shame and regret to a happier, more true-to-herself life, something she believes readers can do, too. Lakshmin's first step: reclaiming the term self-care by imbuing it with self-knowledge, sustainability and joy.