Ayishat Akanbi

Self-Care Means Refusing Misunderstanding Traps

Akanbi’s line widens the meaning of self-care from soothing rituals to strategic emotional boundaries. Instead of focusing on what feels pleasant, she points to what preserves your energy: not feeding conversations designed to drain you. In that sense, self-care becomes less about fixing your mood after conflict and more about preventing unnecessary conflict in the first place. From here, the quote invites a practical question: how do you tell the difference between a hard conversation worth having and a performative argument meant to keep you stuck? [...]