'If It's Too Hard To Shower Today, Grab The Baby Wipes' — Counselor Shares Advice For People Going Through Tough Times
Bits And Splits | ShutterstockPeople tend to misunderstand that depression is so much more than just feeling sad. It makes it difficult to muster the motivation and energy to complete tasks that seem simple to everyone else, like taking a shower.
KC Davis, a licensed professional counselor and the founder of Struggle Care, understands this from both personal and professional experience. In 2023, she gave a TED Talk entitled "How to Do Laundry When You're Depressed." Davis offered sage guidance for completing basic care tasks when it's hard to do anything at all, and reminded everyone that they are not a failure if they struggle with these things.
Davis explained that there is nothing wrong with making accommodations for yourself when you need them.
Davis had tips for how to cook, clean, and maintain basic self-care for those struggling with depression, bereavement, job loss, or any other myriad of challenges that life might present.
"If it's too hard to shower today, grab the baby wipes," she urged. “It may not be the normal way to do it, but you deserve to be clean.”
While we all have to do things like eat to survive, Davis said this does not have to look perfect or be overly complicated. “If it’s too hard to cook dinner, get paper plates, heat up something frozen," she continued. "You’ll go back to cooking and washing another day, but the day is not today. And in the meantime, you deserve to eat."
“If you’re too depressed to do your dishes, get a two-gallon Ziploc bag and keep it in your bedroom, because if you put a dirty plate into a 2-gallon Ziploc bag and seal it, it will keep the bugs away. Because you deserve a sanitary environment even if you can’t get out of bed.”
It's easy to feel guilty when you can't complete self-care tasks, but Davis said there's no reason to.
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Davis explained that she works in the intersection of mental health and care tasks, and she’s uncovered a philosophy. “And it all starts with one simple idea. Cooking, cleaning, laundry, it doesn’t make you a good person or a bad person," she argued. "Listen to me: care tasks are morally neutral.”
In other words, completing those tasks doesn't define a person as good or bad. Those tasks just are, and even when you can’t get them done, you are still worthy of care and love.
“When we liberate ourselves from the idea that we are a good person or a bad person with care tasks, we can stop thinking about the right way to do things, about the way that things should be done, and instead, start thinking about what we can do with our current barriers to improve our quality of life today,” she stated.
Seeing care tasks as morally neutral allows us to stop measuring our worth based on anyone else’s standards and find what works for us as individuals.
This is far from a concept that Davis just came up with on her own. Psychologist Deborah Serani, PsyD, confirmed that dealing with depression can make these things that once felt minor suddenly seem "unattainable."
Despite some people's belief that depression is not serious, science shows that it actually changes the way a person's brain works. Serani explained that living with depression usually means your frontal lobes are not functioning properly.
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This part of the brain controls executive functioning, which includes things like judgment and planning. This is why it becomes so difficult to bring yourself to complete tasks that the rest of the world believes are no big deal.
Davis acknowledged that for people living in a world inundated with “perfect Pinterest aesthetic, that it can feel like struggling with these tasks is a moral failure. Like it’s because we’re lazy, or irresponsible, or immature.”
But that, she said, is completely wrong. “You have to give yourself permission to do a little. To do it with shortcuts. To do it while breaking all of the rules,” she said. “And replace that inner voice that says, ‘I’m failing’ with one that says, ‘I’m having a hard time right now. And people who are having a hard time deserve compassion.’”
Allowing ourselves to just be "good enough" when it comes to navigating an increasingly challenging world means giving ourselves grace and showing ourselves the love and care we innately deserve, something Davis clearly supports.
Alexandra Blogier, MFA, is a writer who covers psychology, social issues, relationships, self-help topics, and human interest stories.
