From board-certified psychiatrist and women's mental health specialist Pooja Lakshmin, MD, comes a long-overdue reckoning with the contradictions of the wellness industry and hands-on strategies for practicing real and lasting self-care 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. Dr. Pooja Lakshmin finds this cultural embrace of self-care incomplete at best and manipulative at worst. Self-care dogma says that to fix your troubles is as simple as buying a new day planner or signing up for a meditation class. But the game is rigged. The self-care fixes that our culture prescribes keep us looking outward-comparing ourselves with others or striving for a certain type of perfection. Real self-care, in contrast, is not as simple as a fancy spa retreat or a journaling app; it's an internal process that involves hard work and making difficult decisions. Real Self-Care shows readers the difference between the two, lifting the veil on faux self-care and reconceptualizing our understanding of what a real practice of caring for yourself could-and should-look like. Using case studies, clinical research, and compassion, Lakshmin provides actionable strategies