New Delhi, April 23 -- A 43-year-old female client said in one of our sessions: "Social media is filled with ads, women at spas seeking beauty treatment-all tagged self-care. I wonder if we have oversimplified the meaning to self-care."

This is a concern I share too. The way self-care has been talked about over the last few years is doing more disservice than good. Self-care has become a hashtag and marketing bait, and this affects how it is understood. It is now used largely to describe acts that don't necessarily add to our well-being.

Historically "self-care" was a term used by medical professionals and doctors to help patients invest in their own health.

In the 1970s, the term was popularised in the US by the Black Panther Party, a...