Work, Mental Load, and Well-Being Mandates in Personal Development: What the Self-Care Discourse Really Hides

Is it really necessary to be perfectly aligned to be able to help?

In-depth decomposition of a heresy: "taking care of oneself to take care of others"

The idea that one should "take care of oneself to be able to take care of others" seems full of common sense. But upon closer inspection, it conceals a series of ideological presuppositions that are far less innocent than they appear.

First, it is a paradoxical injunction. By making personal well-being a condition for relating to others, it reverses the logic of care: it is no longer a relational act, but a normative demand. You must be well. You must be aligned. Otherwise, you become a bad helper. One more pressure, under the guise of benevolence.

This idea also relies on a confusion between condition and alibi. Behind the "I must first think of myself," there is sometimes a disguised withdrawal from the relationship. Yet, in the ethics of care, as Joan Tronto or Sandra Laugier remind us, it is the relationship that makes the care, not the personal level of emotional stability.

It also reflects an ultra-individualistic vision of responsibilities. It depoliticizes care, turning it into a personal effort instead of questioning the material and social conditions that prevent care: overload, precarity, lack of recognition. It places on the individual what the structures prevent.

This kind of discourse can even serve to justify inequalities. Those who do not have the resources to "regenerate" would therefore be unfit to care? This is exactly what care theorists denounce: a naturalization of roles, often to the detriment of women and the precarious.

We also forget that helping, supporting, accompanying... is work. Tiring, unstable, often invisible. Claiming that it is enough to be at peace with oneself to do this work well is to dismiss the efforts, skills, and contexts.

As for the millions of precarious caregivers, family caregivers, or caregivers under pressure, they often have neither the time nor the means to "take care of themselves." Yet they stand firm for others. The bond is not a reward for inner balance: it is sometimes what remains when everything falters.

To this is added a perverse effect: that of excluding from circles of solidarity all those who are not "stable," "at peace," "positive." Care becomes conditional. And humanity is measured by its emotional state, not by its actions.

Finally, it is a discourse remarkably compatible with neoliberal logic. Self-care, mindfulness, personal development become tools for adjusting to ever more demanding, ever more intrusive systems. It is not a critique of the system, but its extension.

Yet, care can be unconditional. And the true bond does not wait for us to be perfect to exist.

I articulate a good part of these authors in my latest work on disassigned professional orientation. A work in the process of completion, where I dismantle the false evidence of support and propose rigorous paths to think differently about the bond, the posture, and the real conditions of care - at work as in life.

For those who wish to delve deeper...

The imposture of self-care through the injunction: "Taking care of oneself to take care of others"

Anatomy of a gentle violence

The assertion that one should "take care of oneself to be able to take care of others" has established itself as a maxim of common sense in our societies. Behind this apparent wisdom lies a mechanism of power of formidable efficiency. This critique unfolds in three parts: first, an analysis of the ideological underpinnings of this injunction and its mechanisms of governance; then, an examination of its concrete effects on social relations and care practices; finally, its particularly insidious application in the field of professional support.

Governing through interiority: the power that does not speak its name

The assertion that one should "take care of oneself to be able to take care of others" is not part of popular wisdom but rather a particularly sophisticated technology of power. What presents itself as benevolent advice actually constitutes what Michel Foucault would call a "technique of governmentality": governing conduct by governing the possibilities of action, no longer through external constraint but through internalized self-restraint.

This maxim operates a fundamental diversion: it transforms a relational practice - care - into a device of subjective control. By conditioning the legitimacy of care on a prior psychological state, it installs a mechanism of self-surveillance of formidable efficiency. The individual becomes both the guardian and the prisoner of their own ability to help. No need for external surveillance: each person self-evaluates, self-disciplines, self-excludes. Power has found its most accomplished form: the one that makes itself desired.

Manufacturing powerlessness

Let's take the logic to its conclusion: if only "balanced" people can help, then suffering disqualifies. Depression forbids empathy. Exhaustion invalidates solidarity. Precariousness excludes benevolence. We arrive at this absurdity: the more one needs help, the less capable one would be of giving it. The more one knows vulnerability, the less able one would be to welcome it in others.

This perverse inversion produces an insidious moral hierarchization: on one side, the "legitimate helpers" (aligned, centered, balanced), on the other, the "passive beneficiaries" (unbalanced, therefore disqualified for reciprocity). Care becomes a class privilege, not economic but psychological. Only the holders of the adequate "emotional capital" access the status of helper. The others are relegated to the rank of care consumers.

Pierre Bourdieu speaks of "symbolic violence": making a domination that is not natural appear natural. Here, the violence consists in making people believe that inequality in the face of care stems from individual differences in psychological balance, and not from structural social relations.

The economy of the self

This injunction is part of what Wendy Brown analyzes as "neoliberal governmentality": the extension of economic rationality to all domains of existence. Self-care becomes an investment, well-being a capital, emotional balance a product to optimize. The individual is summoned to become the entrepreneur of their own psyche.

Nikolas Rose, in Governing the Soul, demonstrates how contemporary "technologies of the self" - coaching, personal development, mindfulness - constitute so many tools of government at a distance. No need to constrain directly: it is enough to install the devices of self-surveillance and self-improvement. Everyone becomes the manager of their own balance, responsible for their own emotional employability.

Eva Illouz takes the analysis further: in The Emotional Capitalism, she shows that this psychologization of the social not only adapts individuals to the system but transforms their affects into productive resources. Empathy becomes a skill, benevolence a know-how, resilience a competitive advantage.

Assignment: double bind, double violence

Intersectional analysis reveals an even more perverse dimension. Women, historically assigned to care work - unpaid, invisible, devalued - are now subjected to a double bind: not only must they care, but they must do so from a state of perfect balance.

Christine Delphy and Helena Hirata have documented this "gendered division of labor" that relegates women to relational tasks. But the injunction to self-care adds an additional layer of oppression: it is no longer enough to bear the mental and emotional load of others, one must also bear it with a smile, in serenity, without ever faltering.

This double bind produces a vicious circle: the more women take on the care of others (children, spouses, aging parents, colleagues), the less time and energy they have to "take care of themselves," the more they are guilt-tripped for not being "balanced" enough to care well. Individual responsibility masks structural exploitation.

Evacuating power relations

Nancy Fraser, in Justice Interruptus, establishes that any politics of recognition (which includes the valorization of care) must be articulated with a politics of redistribution. Yet the injunction to self-care systematically evacuates the question of material conditions.

Take the example of nursing assistants in nursing homes or nurses in hospitals: they often work in chronic understaffing, with precarious wages, facing distressing situations that they cannot resolve due to lack of resources. Telling them that they must "take care of themselves" to care better amounts to denying that it is precisely the organization of work that exhausts them. The psychological injunction masks economic exploitation.

This depoliticization performs an ideological feat: transforming questions of social justice into issues of personal development. Instead of questioning the distribution of wealth, we optimize the management of emotions. Instead of questioning the relations of domination, we improve inner alignment. HR slogans hammer this conversion: "Take care of yourself to be more efficient," "Well-being at work is your responsibility," "Mindfulness and efficiency." The personal development shelves are full of promises of personal balance ("Find your zen at the office," "The art of balancing work and personal life"). Positive psychology translates into marketable methods what was once a political question.

The anatomy of a systemic violence

This injunction operates according to a precise mechanism that must be decomposed to reveal all its perversity. It first transforms self-care into a moral norm: you must be well, and if you are not well, you become irresponsible. This logic produces exactly the opposite of what it claims to aim for: increased stress and chronic guilt for those who struggle to achieve this fantasized "balance."

More insidiously, it naturalizes suffering and invisibilizes effort. The care of others no longer appears as an acquired skill, a complex work, a relational construction, but as a "natural" extension of the balanced self. This naturalization evacuates all the technical, emotional, and social dimensions of care to reduce it to a psychological state. Annemarie Mol has shown that the logic of care involves constant learning, permanent adjustments, a fine attention to situations - not an inner prerequisite.

Finally, this injunction systematically shifts collective responsibility towards individual effort. It makes people believe that care comes through personal work on well-being rather than through public health policies, reduction of working hours, or recognition of invisible work. Yves Clot would speak here of a "hindered power to act": instead of transforming the conditions that prevent care, individuals are required to adapt to these conditions by "working on themselves."

The mechanism revealed by the absurd

Applied strictly, this maxim eliminates half of the care actors. Exhausted parents forbidden from the bedside, precarious volunteers excluded from patrols, caregivers in burnout deprived of practice, angry activists excluded from struggles. And the logic would have it that they be thanked.

This systematic elimination reveals the imposture: the injunction does not aim to improve care but to control it, normalize it, tame it. It transforms the spontaneous impulse of solidarity into a procedure of psychological evaluation.

Towards an ethics of unconditional care: subversive paths

Faced with this colonization of care by the logic of self-care, several resistances emerge:

1. Claiming imperfection as a condition of authentic care Annemarie Mol, in The Logic of Care, shows that good care is not that which emanates from a perfect subject but that which constantly adjusts to concrete situations. Care is groping, experimentation, sometimes failure. Accepting this is refusing psychological normativity.

2. Practicing shared vulnerability Joan Tronto reminds us that authentic care is born from the mutual recognition of our interdependence. Instead of the asymmetrical helper-helped relationship, cultivate spaces where everyone can in turn give and receive, be strong and fragile.

3. Politicizing the conditions of care Refusing psychologization and re-inscribing care in social relations: working hours, remuneration, social recognition, redistribution of tasks. Care is not an individual virtue but a collective function that requires means.

4. Degendering care practices Imposing on men their share of relational and emotional work, socially and economically valuing care professions, systematically and consciously refusing the naturalization of "feminine skills."

From care to support

This logic is found well beyond the field of traditional care. The world of professional support, particularly in orientation or help relations, is not immune to this insidious reconduction of self-care as an implicit norm. Trainers in counseling, supervisors, support referents hammer the same ideology: to support well, one must first be "clear with oneself," "have done one's own work," "be in a personal process."

Only who can truly boast of this, or even demonstrate it?

Professional orientation as a laboratory of resistance

These reflections find a privileged field of application in the field of professional orientation, which articulates different complex and moving dimensions. Too often, support practices reproduce this logic: the counselor must first "work on themselves," be "aligned," to be able to support effectively.

In my upcoming book on disassigned professional orientation, I demonstrate that this approach evacuates precisely what makes support rich: the unpredictable encounter between two subjectivities in motion, the emergence of unexpected possibilities, the collective creation of meaning. Support is not the transmission of knowledge held by a balanced subject to another in demand, it is a process of co-construction where possible futures are revealed.

By refusing the injunction to prior alignment, by assuming our own professional uncertainties, by accepting that our questions nourish those of the people we support, we open the space to authentically emancipatory support. Support that does not reproduce social norms but questions them, that does not adapt to the labor market but invents other relations to work.

Disassigned and balanced orientation then becomes a political act: refusing that individuals adapt to economic constraints and offering them the means to collectively reinvent the conditions of their professional fulfillment within their framework of possibilities. This is exactly the opposite of the injunction to self-care: instead of adapting individuals to the system within the framework of a logic of insertion, transforming the system and the framework so that it welcomes the diversity of human needs.

By re-inscribing care in its social, political, and relational dimensions: not a luxury reserved for aligned individuals who never really are, the self is neither unified nor stable (Gergen), and it is constructed in relationships (Singly), so claiming that one must first "be aligned" to be able to help is psychological illusion. We reveal its true scope, a lever for collective emancipation on the condition of breaking with the imposed norms of adjustment.

This text is just an entry point. The project is vast, and I fully open it in my next book dedicated to disassigned professional orientation, where I do not content myself with criticizing these injunctions: I propose concrete, political, ethical alternatives - for support freed from its false evidence and rearmed in the face of the real.