I welcome Psychiatrist, New York Times Contributor, and author Dr. Pooja Lakshmin to discuss what real self-care really is.  Her book REAL SELF-CARE: A Transformative Program for Redefining Wellness (Crystals, Cleanses, and Bubble Baths Not Included) is out today and we discuss:

• The difference between faux self-care and real self-care
• What the wellness industry forgets when it comes to true wellness
• How to actually do self-care that is transformative
• Systemic barriers to self-care

Connect with Dr. Pooja
Buy Pooja’s new book REAL SELF-CARE: A Transformative Program for Redefining Wellness (Crystals, Cleanses, and Bubble Baths Not Included) here.
Sign up for Pooja’s free Substack email list, Therapy Takeaway, here.
Join Pooja’s community, Gemma, the physician-built women’s mental health platform here.

00;00;01;01 – 00;00;27;20

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

It doesn’t work if you take the rest, and then you’re just like trying to make up for it afterwards. We have to actually pull back and again, coming back to what you’re saying, Mona. We have to ask ourselves hard questions like, why is it that I only feel a value when I’m doing something for my family, right? Why is it that it feels like it’s impossible for me to take an hour for myself?

 

00;00;27;22 – 00;00;39;09

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

You know? What is it about the way that I’ve constructed my life that makes it so that me taking an hour off leads me to beating myself up for two hours?

 

00;00;39;11 – 00;01;16;27

Dr. Mona

Welcome back to the show. I am Doctor Mona, and I am so excited to welcome a repeat guest on to the show. Today I have Doctor Pooja Lakshmin. She is a MD psychiatrist, New York Times contributor, the author of real Self-care and the founder and CEO of On the physician led women’s Mental Health Platform. She is a leading voice at the intersection of mental health and gender, focused on challenging the tyranny of full self-care, Pooja maintains an active private practice where she treats women struggling with burnout, perfectionism, and disillusionment, as well as clinical conditions like depression and anxiety.

 

00;01;16;29 – 00;01;39;22

Dr. Mona

I think everyone can relate to this. Her first book, real Self-care A Transformative Program for Redefining Wellness Crystals, cleanses, and Bubble That’s Not Included, is available on March 14th from Penguin Random House. She lives in Austin with her partner, their son, and their two cats, and I am so excited to call her a social media friend and a repeat guest on the show.

 

00;01;39;25 – 00;01;42;15

Dr. Mona

Thank you so much for joining me today, Pooja.

 

00;01;42;17 – 00;01;48;17

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

Mona, it’s such a pleasure to be back. I have been just so excited to be in conversation with you again.

 

00;01;48;19 – 00;02;11;26

Dr. Mona

Yes, and so we are chatting all about things related to your book. I know that’s launching soon. Congratulations! I know that is not an easy feat, especially with a little baby at home. So really, truly and obviously you’re practicing as well. So congratulations on the book. And we’re talking about what is real self-care for moms. And I put that in quotes because there’s a lot of terminology around self-care.

 

00;02;11;26 – 00;02;22;07

Dr. Mona

And sometimes I feel like it can be more stressful than useful. And I know you can agree to that. So first, tell me more about yourself. And also what brought you to write this book.

 

00;02;22;10 – 00;02;50;01

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

Yeah. So I always like to say that you can’t meditate your way out of a 40 hour workweek with no childcare. Like, that’s just not how wellness works. That’s not how self-care works. And becoming a mother. You know, I’ve been practicing perinatal psychiatry for almost a decade now. And, you know, I’ve been writing about gender justice and paleo eve and the lack of support that we have in our society.

 

00;02;50;01 – 00;03;15;12

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

I’m a contributor for The New York Times, so I write about that all the time. But when I became a mom last June, I definitely saw firsthand none of the things that I do right now would be possible if I didn’t have reliable childcare. Yeah. And my son is almost eight months old and he is in daycare, and we’re so lucky to have a great daycare that is super close to our house, and we have a baby sitter that we love.

 

00;03;15;15 – 00;03;36;18

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

We had a postpartum doula, and I had the resources. You know, I have a partner who has unemployed position job that’s stable, that has great health insurance. So I’m able to be an entrepreneur and have my own private practice and write and do all of these things that are less stable and more risky, only because I have that stability and that safety net.

 

00;03;36;21 – 00;04;02;23

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

You know, this whole conversation of writing the book for me came from my clinical practice of having patients, women. I work only with women, and I would say probably about 80% of my practice is moms. People come in and be like, Doctor Lakshman, I’m so stressed out, you know, I know I’m burnt out. I’m not sleeping well, I’m not eating well and I feel like it’s my fault because I have this meditation app on my phone.

 

00;04;02;23 – 00;04;18;13

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

I know I’m supposed to be meditating, I know I should go to yoga, I just can’t bring myself and the burden of knowing or kind of feeling like it’s supposed to be just as easy as going to a yoga class, or it’s supposed to be just as easy of, like drinking a glass of wine and taking a bubble bath.

 

00;04;18;13 – 00;04;37;17

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

Like, no, that is not going to solve the childcare crisis in America. Like you, taking a bubble bath is not going to fix what’s wrong and then kind of pulling it back even more. This is a deeply personal journey for me. I really I started writing this book, you could say like a decade ago, even though it’s just coming out now.

 

00;04;37;20 – 00;04;58;27

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

I went through my own really kind of traumatic wellness journey. So the title of the book is real Self-care A Transformative Program for Redefining Wellness crystals, cleanses, and bubble baths not included. And that last little bit is because I and I write about this in the book followed, sort of like the traditional South Asian path. My father’s a physician.

 

00;04;58;27 – 00;05;24;13

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

It was always assumed that I go to medical school. I went to all the good schools. I did all the things I was supposed to. And then I found myself as a second year resident in psychiatry at a really prestigious program, totally burned out, and also really disillusioned with medicine, like you talked about this moment. You know, people come into the E.R. and they’re homeless and we’re prescribing Zoloft, but what they really need is housing, right?

 

00;05;24;15 – 00;05;43;13

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

Or like, you have a patient that has lost their job because they don’t have childcare. But as a physician, we’re not taught anything about how to fix those problems. And in psychiatry, we turn to medication. We turn to psychotherapy, which is very important, you know, and I’ve written for The New York Times about taking an antidepressant during my pregnancy.

 

00;05;43;13 – 00;06;11;25

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

Like, I’m not saying that those things are wrong or bad. There’s very much a space for that. But the deeper structural and cultural problems, you know, medicine didn’t provide a solution for that. So I actually dropped out of residency, got a divorce, moved into a commune in San Francisco, and not just any commune, but a commune that I studied, female orgasm, you know, as you do, and as your Indian parents are like shocked and horrified.

 

00;06;11;28 – 00;06;12;25

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

Yeah.

 

00;06;12;27 – 00;06;15;29

Dr. Mona

I had no idea about this, but such an incredible story. I didn’t know that.

 

00;06;16;00 – 00;06;45;14

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

Yeah, yeah. And so I spent two years with the two and worked at the Rutgers Orgasm Lab, where we put people in MRI machines and looked at their brains during arousal and orgasm. It was a really transformative, personal and professional time for me. But at the end of two years, I realized that there was just as many hypocrisies and contradictions in alternative medicine and in that sort of like spiritual woowoo space.

 

00;06;45;14 – 00;07;08;02

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

But I had to run there because I thought I could escape all my problems. I thought that I could find a wellness off the shelf solution, and I learned that doesn’t work. There is no external solution for your problems, like you actually have to be the one to fix your problems, and that sucks. And that was like a terribly hard lesson to learn.

 

00;07;08;02 – 00;07;36;13

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

I turned 30 in my old childhood bedroom, like completely depressed. I had just left that group and facing the prospect of coming back to the medical world and having to kind of like, admit failure. And ultimately, I mean, I found out many years later that through the media that the story in this group is actually much darker. And really it was a cult and sort of having to come to terms with the fact that I was affiliated with that group.

 

00;07;36;13 – 00;07;57;18

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

And, you know, I was in psycho analysis. I’m still in psychoanalysis, but I, you know, started seeing a psychoanalyst. I went three times a week for years. So it was a dark time in my life, but also so transformative. And that’s what really informs this book. Like the whole process of real self-care is that you actually can’t get it from a guru.

 

00;07;57;19 – 00;08;04;06

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

You know, you can’t get it from someone else. It’s something that you have to be able to build for yourself.

 

00;08;04;09 – 00;08;31;15

Dr. Mona

Oh, I love the story. Thank you so much for sharing that, because I know you but didn’t know all of that. So now I can’t wait to read the book even more to learn just about how you got to this point and like I said, I feel like some of the most influential and powerful messages come from people who have experienced similar things or have gone through your own struggles with self-care and what that means, and, you know, you’ve come out the other side, even with your education as a psychiatrist, to say, let me bridge all of this together, right?

 

00;08;31;16 – 00;08;50;20

Dr. Mona

Obviously, like you just said, there is a place for medication, and I also have been on medication in the past. But is there also a place for understanding the individual changes? I need to do systemic changes that are there. It’s all a big picture. It’s not like a finger pointing of one thing and that’s it. Like it’s, hey, what are we going to do with the situation that we’re in?

 

00;08;50;20 – 00;09;02;15

Dr. Mona

What can we change? And I can’t wait to talk about that. What do you think the wellness industry has gotten wrong about self-care and wellness that you kind of alluded to already, but especially when it comes to moms and parents?

 

00;09;02;18 – 00;09;28;01

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

Yeah. So right now, wellness and self-care is completely commodified. It’s something that you buy or it’s something that you do. So in the book, I talk a little bit about this concept of like the quantified self and self-care, as it’s been sold to us right now, is very much kind of within that framework. It’s something that you have to check off the list.

 

00;09;28;01 – 00;09;51;18

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

You know, I went to yoga, I did my bullet journal. I may in my gratitude list and especially for moms money. You talk about this all the time like we know how heavy that mental load is. We have so many tasks over the course of the day, like there’s lots of research on this, but like, you know, by the time you even get to work in the morning, you’ve already done like hundreds of tasks, right?

 

00;09;51;20 – 00;10;20;20

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

Yeah. So like to add something else to the list. It’s just like, what’s how why. So the problem, as we all know, as your listeners, as the stock talk audience, like very much knows intimately. The problem isn’t that we aren’t doing enough. The problem is that the sources of support externally are not there. The problem is that, yeah, it’s so hard to find a summer camp for your kid because you have to, like, be on a waiting list in January up at midnight because it’s going to close.

 

00;10;20;20 – 00;10;25;07

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

It’s going to fill up by 1230. That’s the problem. That’s a structural problem.

 

00;10;25;09 – 00;10;25;22

Dr. Mona

 

00;10;25;22 – 00;10;41;18

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

But wellness is so slick. The marketing is so good. Like the branding the beige colors. And I think like for me like part of this is like coming from a place of compassion like in the book. You know it’s like I fell for it. Like I dropped out of residency and I joined a cult.

 

00;10;41;20 – 00;10;45;00

Dr. Mona

Let’s just say what it is. It happened. You owned it. It happened.

 

00;10;45;01 – 00;11;12;08

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

Inside. It’s like because I was also so desperately searching for a solution, for an answer. And so, like when you see that stuff pop up on your feed, when you see, like, those pretty vitamins that are like, branded so well and say that they’re going to help your anxiety of course, it’s so much easier to click buy on that than it is to have to like, sit on hold with your insurance company to try and fight to get your therapy visits paid for.

 

00;11;12;09 – 00;11;33;01

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

Like, of course. Right? Yes. And I do think a lot more people are speaking up about wellness now. But I would say what’s missing from that conversation is compassion, because I think there’s like a lot of snark and eye rolls about, like the goop’s and the all the nonsense that’s out there, which like to be thorough, like, yes, absolutely, 100%.

 

00;11;33;01 – 00;11;42;03

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

It’s nonsense. But the reason that it’s there is because we aren’t treating women well. Right. Like that’s why it sells.

 

00;11;42;03 – 00;12;10;02

Dr. Mona

Yeah. Well, it’s the same thing with like using that example for physical in pediatrics. There’s so many people who go to alternative docs, chiropractors, people who may not be trained in the educational area. And instead of Pooh poohing it, we have to tell ourselves exactly what you said. Why are they going there? What is it about our current system using the modern health care system for pediatrics that is pushing people away from pediatrician or away from what we normally used to, you know, do.

 

00;12;10;02 – 00;12;35;14

Dr. Mona

And I love that insight. Rather than getting upset, getting curious about, well, why like, why are we going there and really trying to explain it? Because I appreciate your again, going back to your educated lens, you have experience in mental health as a psychiatrist. I mean, you went to school for this stuff. I mean, this is your bread and butter, and then you also have the real life experience, not only as a mother, because you obviously treat a lot of families and parents and moms especially, and that adds value.

 

00;12;35;14 – 00;12;57;02

Dr. Mona

So you have the educational and experience base to kind of say, let’s take all of it, you know, and I appreciate that you do that because I think a lot of times people will hear things like the goop’s and the alternative stuff and say, it can’t be possible. Nothing is right about it. And although I agree that there are some things that you’re like, oh my goodness, really looking into it, I’m like, okay, well what is this actually saying?

 

00;12;57;06 – 00;13;04;23

Dr. Mona

Does this make any sense? And explaining it to your followers and your community is so helpful. So I love that you approach that the same way as I do.

 

00;13;04;25 – 00;13;30;07

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

Thank you. Yeah. And I think like part of it too is stepping back and realize that one of the reasons that people are turning to those spaces is because they do want community. They want to feel seen, they want to feel heard, and those spaces can feel really welcoming. But then once you kind of go deeper down the rabbit hole, you kind of come to understand, wait, there’s stuff here that could be unsafe or could be dangerous.

 

00;13;30;09 – 00;13;53;13

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

But I think that when we approach these conversations with shame and judgment, it’s so much harder for people to be curious about their experience and then to even get to the stage of change or get to the stage of like, well, maybe there’s something else. So yeah. Yeah. I mean, just like with all of our kind of polarized environments, I think nuance is always lovely.

 

00;13;53;15 – 00;14;00;08

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

And that’s why having conversations like this and having a space on a podcast to be able to really talk is nice.

 

00;14;00;10 – 00;14;19;15

Dr. Mona

I completely agree with the concept of self-care. What you mentioned about not having the resources to do self-care, like from personal experience, we have had inconsistent outside help. Meaning it’s me and my husband with our son. We have no family here, nobody. And it’s just us two and our kid, and he’s in preschool. But we can help. Date nights.

 

00;14;19;18 – 00;14;30;28

Dr. Mona

I want to go get my hair done, like colored or get my nails done, like, I mean things like that, but I actually want to do for myself. It’s not like, okay, this is my self-care. It’s like, no, I just want a break. I want to go get a boba and sip some boba and have my nails done.

 

00;14;31;01 – 00;14;51;19

Dr. Mona

Nobody, right? Don’t be on my phone. Like, just literally stare into space and not have a toddler ask me when snack time is all that. But the reality is those things are more doable when you have the support. So I can only do those things and get true quiet and time off if I have my husband at home but he’s working, or I have a nanny, which is not very inconsistent.

 

00;14;51;19 – 00;15;12;14

Dr. Mona

So that reality is there. It is so easy to say, oh, I’m going to do all these quote unquote, the checkbox of self-care, but you have to have someone to help you. And a lot of families struggle. And I think that’s where I feel a lot of that stress comes between looking at self-care, seeing all influencers or people say, I wake up and I do this before my children wake up.

 

00;15;12;14 – 00;15;28;18

Dr. Mona

And I’m like, that is great for you. And I think we all have to kind of look at that. When we’re getting that information from influencers or other moms, their reality is different than you. I mean, I don’t have the same resources. I cannot wake up before my son. I’m so tired because I parent it without any help the whole day before.

 

00;15;28;18 – 00;15;48;03

Dr. Mona

So there’s so much comparison and self-care. There’s so much self shame. I think too, right? Do you feel like, look at that person. They have four kids and they are able to get up at 5 a.m. and work out, but they also probably have some help there. They also probably have looked at ways in their life to create a reality that that was a priority for them, but that doesn’t mean you’re not doing that.

 

00;15;48;03 – 00;15;59;28

Dr. Mona

And it’s not you’re not good enough or anything like that. And that self-judgment can be really hard. In your book, you distinguish between both self-care. So like, you know, that and real self-care. Why do you make that distinction?

 

00;16;00;03 – 00;16;24;04

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

Yeah. So I think this gets a little bit to what you’re talking about in sort of bridging the individual changes versus the systems change that needs to happen. So I distinguish between so self-care and real self-care. The metaphor that I use is methods versus principles. So I’ll give you an example. So I have a patient who her kind of self-care method is.

 

00;16;24;04 – 00;16;48;26

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

She really enjoys swimming. So swimming at the why. It’s like her way of working out. It’s her me time going a couple times a week. It just feels really good in her body. It’s good for her mental health. So she has been able because of the way her resources are set up. She’s been able to work her schedule so that she can go for a swim at the Y twice a week, and she’s arranged childcare and she’s kind of got everything coordinated.

 

00;16;49;03 – 00;17;21;02

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

So in this context, the method of self-care is swimming. But the principle are all of the decisions that she had to make. All of the hard conversations, all of the self-compassion that she had to give herself, the boundaries and the understanding that even though she’s in a system that is 100% in so many ways stacked against her, she could exert the small onus of agency right to make small choices to make this possible.

 

00;17;21;02 – 00;17;48;06

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

So when I say self-care, what I really mean is these are methods, right? It could be swimming one person, swimming another person’s peloton, another person’s sitting alone at a coffee shop and drinking the bobo and staring into space. Right? Yeah, yeah. But I think the reason that we need to focus on the principles is because in all these different phases of your life, the methods are going to be different, especially in on your parenting journey or motherhood journey.

 

00;17;48;06 – 00;18;06;22

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

I have so many patients who are like, well, I used to be able to workout in this way, and that was my self-care. And now I’m a mom and I don’t have time. Or even when I do have time, it doesn’t feel the same. Like it’s not that you’re doing something wrong or bad, it’s just that you need a different method and nobody can give you that method from the outside.

 

00;18;06;22 – 00;18;30;10

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

You have to work through the principles of real self-care, which I’ll just say, like, you know, our boundaries, self-compassion, really identifying your values. And in real self-care, it’s actually a very hands on book. I have lots of exercises and different sort of reflective tools that you can use. I’ve designed an exercise or resource that’s called the real Self-care compass, which helps you identify your values.

 

00;18;30;17 – 00;18;50;03

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

But that’s what has to guide your decision making. And then from there, that’s how you understand that you do have some power. Yes, everybody has different levels of power based on the color of your skin, based on how much money you make, based on the type of family support that you have and the level of education that you have.

 

00;18;50;03 – 00;19;12;04

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

Yes, all of that is true. And we can all make small micro changes to help us feel closer to ourselves. So when I’m talking about real self-care, I’m not talking about a task or a thing to do or a thing to buy. It’s really about a way of decision making. Real self-care is a verb. It’s not a noun.

 

00;19;12;04 – 00;19;25;07

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

It’s something that you actively participate in. And getting back to my sort of experience in my 20s again, nobody can hand it to you. Like, I’m really sorry that unfortunately this book is asking you to do more work like this.

 

00;19;25;13 – 00;19;30;28

Dr. Mona

So the action workbook. Yeah, it’s important that in order for change, you have to have the word. Actually it’s reality.

 

00;19;30;28 – 00;19;55;17

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

And you have to find your own answers. Right? Like you can’t come from a guru. It can’t come from just picking up somebody else’s solution. But the good news is that once you start to do that work, it stays with you. And then with each transition in your life, whether it’s motherhood, you know, your kids getting older or becoming more independent, whether it’s taking care of your aging parents, there’s always going to be like a new method.

 

00;19;55;17 – 00;20;10;04

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

There’s always going to be a new thing that you have to learn, but you build those skills. So I find that to be actually a really hopeful message and empowering message that we get to do it for ourselves, because that’s the work that actually lasts, you know?

 

00;20;10;04 – 00;20;19;11

Dr. Mona

Yeah, yeah, I love it. And you mentioned already some steps of real self-care, but you talked about boundaries, self-compassion, and are those the steps that you talked about.

 

00;20;19;13 – 00;20;38;27

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

So it’s off steps but it’s more like principles. So it’s kind of like you need to be able to set boundaries. Of course, that’s always the first sort of skill that you need to learn to be able to do any of the other things. And then self-compassion. So understanding how you talk to yourself and you know, that’s one that for me, that’s the place where I really struggle.

 

00;20;38;29 – 00;20;57;04

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

Yeah. You know, kind of traditionally I always sort of rolled my eyes at self-compassion because it always felt sort of blue and like, oh God, you’re just going easy on yourself. But this is like self-compassion, more from a psychological standpoint, like learning how to work with the thoughts in your mind. And then sort of the crux of getting clear on what are my values.

 

00;20;57;04 – 00;21;24;21

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

So I’ll give you another example from the book. So with a patient of mine who had a story that’s very familiar to all of us, she’s like a mom of three kids. She works full time, she’s burnt out and working through this process in therapy with me. The thing that we came to recognize after she, you know, learned how to set boundaries, understood that that self-care critical voice was actually the voice of her mom that she had internalized.

 

00;21;24;23 – 00;21;46;12

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

She realized that she was actually holding a lot of resentment at her partner because her husband had actually never taken a paternity leave. He had are not asked for paternity leave. And so for her, the real self-care process led her to having some really honest and tough conversations with him so that when they had another baby, he actually went up to his.

 

00;21;46;12 – 00;21;56;11

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

He worked in a small startup and asked for leave, and his company actually offered to give him paid leave and they changed their policy.

 

00;21;56;15 – 00;21;57;17

Dr. Mona

Oh, amazing.

 

00;21;57;17 – 00;22;20;15

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

Wow. So that impacted all of the other parents that came after. And it was only because my patient took this whole real self-care process and applied it to herself. And that started with boundaries and compassion and led to changes that impact all of the other parents that are working at that company. So it’s about kind of being like, who are we?

 

00;22;20;15 – 00;22;43;09

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

Like, we can’t do anything. I’m not an advocate. I don’t know what I’m doing, you know? But no, you do like, you have power, right? And starts with actually in your own life and in your own relationships. So I think, yes, this is very much a prescriptive self-help book, but it’s not another self-help book. It’s really about how do we actually get to this place of systems change.

 

00;22;43;12 – 00;23;02;17

Dr. Mona

Well, I love that you are talking about how it’s going to be work when you read the book, because it is. I mean, we have to respect the fact. And it’s same thing in the parenting world, right? I can talk your ear off about picky eating, food refusal, tantrums, sleep regressions, all of that. But we have to get into the root of why are these things frustrating to you?

 

00;23;02;20 – 00;23;24;01

Dr. Mona

What is it about your child like pushing back that upsets you? Like there’s so much of the why which you can’t get in? Like you said, general Instagram accounts, right? It’s such a personal thing. And we talked about it already that it’s your situation, your reality, your resources, but also your upbringing from childhood. Like things come up, like resentment that’s created in your life that other people may not have.

 

00;23;24;01 – 00;23;40;13

Dr. Mona

And so I love it. I think that that work is so important. And although it may seem like work, it’s work that I think will really help people who read the book in the long run. Right? Like, what is the method I need in terms of self-care? What am I looking for here? What is going to bring me that sort of peace in my life with implementing this?

 

00;23;40;19 – 00;23;57;22

Dr. Mona

And so if we are going to start integrating real self-care into my life, for example, what’s one way to start doing that? And especially for all of my listeners who may be feeling more busy or they’re burnt out so they don’t look at this as a task, like you said earlier, and more of like just a part of life, if you will.

 

00;23;57;25 – 00;24;18;03

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And so I’m going to give a real self-care answer, which is that I can’t give you the tool or the answer. Right, because it can’t come from me. And it would be completely antithetical to real self-care for me to say, and I prescribe you this, but what I can say is, I’ll give an example of a conversation that we often have at Gemma.

 

00;24;18;03 – 00;24;35;04

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

Actually, that comes up a lot is a woman who, you know, is a mom is busy. Right. And you finally do find like that hour and a half where you’re like, I’m going to get a massage. And I’ve organized all the childcare, I’ve set everything up, I’m going to get this massage. And all you’re doing at the massage is just like worrying about all the stuff on your to do list.

 

00;24;35;11 – 00;24;55;11

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

And then you get out of the massage and you’re like, oh my God, now I feel like I have to be hyper productive because I took an hour and a half off and there’s all these things that are waiting for me. So the question is like, what am I supposed to do? So I would say the answer to that is it doesn’t work if you take the rest, and then you’re just like trying to make up for it afterwards.

 

00;24;55;14 – 00;25;27;08

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

We have to actually pull back. And again, coming back to what you’re saying, Mona, we have to ask ourselves hard questions like, why is it that I only feel a value when I’m doing something for my family, right? Why is it that it feels like it’s impossible for me to take an hour for myself? You know? What is it about the way that I’ve constructed my life that makes it so that me taking an hour off leads me to beating myself up for two hours?

 

00;25;27;11 – 00;25;56;04

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

And the answers to those questions might be things that feel a little bit scary. And the good news is, it doesn’t mean that you need to get a divorce and join a cult. Oh, you can have those hard feelings, right? Like you could maybe like, not like some of those answers that you get back and like, you can sit with it and you can say, okay, like there’s things that need to change and it’s one step at a time.

 

00;25;56;06 – 00;26;19;24

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

Real self-care needs to be, by definition, like a gentle, slow process. It’s not something that you can just check off the list and just be like, okay, fix that. Yeah, our feelings aren’t something that we can fix. So and coming back to like this message two of like we’re all part of this wider community, right. And you know, we’re hearing a lot about community care, right.

 

00;26;19;24 – 00;26;43;15

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

And how we’re plugging in and that this whole conversation needs to include the fact that when you step back and you start asking yourself these questions of how you spend your time and what you’re allowed to do or what you’re not allowed to do within your family or within your workplace, it also makes you kind of think about who is allowed to do those things, who is allowed to take that time.

 

00;26;43;17 – 00;27;07;03

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

And I think that the answers are not simple, but ultimately, the answers always come back to the fact that we have the capacity to make these decisions for ourselves, and that we can be part of the solutions to make different choices for ourselves. And then, you know, for our kids to write.

 

00;27;07;06 – 00;27;25;14

Dr. Mona

Are so important. I love this conversation. We had another recording that we did about mental health and in motherhood, pregnancy, whatever it is, wherever you are in your journey, breaking the stigma on maternal mental health, it’s okay to not be okay. That’s another episode we actually recorded probably two years ago, maybe two years ago, before you even think I was a baby through IVF.

 

00;27;25;14 – 00;27;45;16

Dr. Mona

Maybe that’s something even at the beginning. Yeah. But thank you so much for this conversation. And again, I am just so excited about your book. Doctor elections book is called real Self-care A Transformative Program for Redefining Wellness. Crystal’s cleanses and bubble that’s not included. She explained how that title came to be, and it’s actually available now, released March 14th.

 

00;27;45;16 – 00;27;45;23

Dr. Mona

Right?

 

00;27;45;23 – 00;27;48;03

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

Yes, until March 14th.

 

00;27;48;05 – 00;27;57;09

Dr. Mona

Tell us where people can find you, where they can purchase the book, any of the other resources you have. Because I know the book is just one part of the Puja Lakshman family, so I love it.

 

00;27;57;11 – 00;28;16;28

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

Yeah, absolutely. So the book is on sale March 14th, so you can go out and get it right now at my website. Puja lakshman.com real self-care. It’s also on Amazon bookshop, all the normal places. It’s also on audiobook and I did actually narrate the audiobook, so it’s almost like you’re getting a little mini therapy session with me if you like hearing my voice.

 

00;28;16;28 – 00;28;38;16

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

That was an interesting experience, but I think it turned out really good. And then my women’s mental health community, which is called Jama, GMR and we are at Gemma women.com, me and my colleagues also psychiatrist. And it’s a space for community conversation. We have a membership. And so if you like this conversation that’s just another place to go deeper.

 

00;28;38;18 – 00;28;46;11

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin

But Mona, thank you so much for having me. It’s always such a pleasure to get to chat with you. And and I’m excited to come back again.

 

00;28;46;13 – 00;29;01;10

Dr. Mona

Yes, I know you’ll be back again and again. I love chatting with you and I will be attaching all of those links to our show notes so people can access that. But again, follow her on Instagram as well as and we’ll put that up on the show notes too. And thank you again for joining us and for everyone listening.

 

00;29;01;16 – 00;29;24;02

Dr. Mona

Go get her book. As you can see, she’s a wealth of information, experience and education. I love that combination. So really help transform our motherhood journey. And if you like this episode, make sure to leave a review. Call a doctor Lakshman and the amazing information that she shared. If you got a chance to buy the book and started to read it, also comment on that and I will have another guest on next week.

 

00;29;24;03 – 00;29;39;25

Dr. Mona

Thank you for tuning in for this week’s episode. As always, please leave a review. Share this episode with a friend. Share it on your social media. Make sure to follow me at PedsDocTalk on Instagram and subscribe to my YouTube channel, PedsDocTalk TV. We’ll talk to you soon.