The notion of self-care—like its precursor, self-help—has emerged due to a spiritual vacuum in the contemporary world. The burgeoning mental health crisis that is prevalent today appears inseparable from the broader existential predicament facing humanity. Mainstream psychology and its therapies have not been able to address these challenges, in response to which we have seen the inevitable rise of self-care remedies. Across humanity’s diverse spiritual cultures, these have always been available, yet they were invariably grounded in a religious tradition and its sacred psychology. The more we are marginalized from such roots, the more self-care is required—our current obsession with which is the unacknowledged search for wholeness due to modern people having lost their sense of the sacred.

Why Self-Care Is Not Enough: The Nature of True Well-Being

Samuel Bendeck Sotillos, PsyD, LMFT, LPCC, CCMHC, NCC, CPRP, CCTP, MHRS, is a practicing psychotherapist in California, who has worked for many years in the field of mental health and social services. His focus is on the intersection between psychology, culture, and spirituality. He is a member of the Task Force on Indigenous Psychology (Division 32 of the American Psychological Association), an advisor to the Institute of Traditional Psychology, on the scientific board of the Knowledge and Hope Foundation, and on the editorial board of a few journals. He has written four books and edited one. His most recent work is "The Quest For Who We Are: Modern Psychology and the Sacred" (2023). He has written over five dozen articles and one hundred book reviews in a wide range of journals.