Yeah, I said it. Greed. You need to be greedy. You need to put yourself first. Everywhere. Which, that’s kind of the point of radical self-care. When done right, there’s no guilt. But with a history of trauma, there’s a lot of it, even when done right. It takes practice, but once you realize that that feeling of being too greedy is actually you just doing what you need to do for yourself, the guilt will go away.
Hence, greed is on my list of things you need when it comes to putting yourself first.
Greed, in this instance, is the negative connotation that you are taking care of your basic needs despite the feeling that they are not accessible or available to you, because you think other people deserve it more. In early recovery, you have to untrain the part that tells you that you are taking too much for simply asking for or taking that which you need. I know that even now, seven months into active recovery, I’ll have days where I struggle with doing things I need to do in the privacy of my own home. I’ll worry about the fact that I need thirty minutes to take a shower (I rarely take that long), despite giving myself a two-hour window to get my whole morning routine in. Then I have to fight the feelings of guilt for feeling so much better after I take it anyway. To me, this is greed. This is me doing more than I deserve. I’m lucky that on most days, I can combat this feeling with some positive self-talk and encouragement, but I’m of the understanding that I will have days like the one where it’s damn near impossible to achieve basic things. That’s recovery in action, though. Where this used to be a daily struggle, or would come up several times throughout the day, it’s now sporadic, and something I can get myself out of most of the time.
PERMISSION TO BE GREEDY
But we who are learning about life after trauma need permission to be greedy in this sense. We need to learn that we are royalty in our own homes and in the spaces we take up. It’s not just about acknowledging ourselves as being worthy of what we need, it’s about actively making a practice of it. When I first got out of the situation I was in, I was really good at saying that I was worthy. But the fight of actually providing myself with what I needed took most of my energy. There was always an excuse to not follow through. Always something that kept me from the words that I would say.
The biggest hurdle for me is when my executive dysfunction would create a messy environment. The piling of physical clutter suddenly made my environment more important than my body, which would cause me to freeze even more. I feel bad for not taking care of my surroundings, which made me feel bad for needing to take care of myself, and now I’m struggling with everything. So what would have been a quick shower, then time to pick up a little bit, I would freeze for up to an hour, if not more, and then start shaming myself for not getting anything done. RIP my day. My walk-around was actually kind of simple and low-effort. I turned a small stack of notecards into permission slips. Every one was permission to be greedy. I added a space for the date and time that I was using it, a space to write why I felt I needed permission, and a reminder to look myself in the mirror and say “I love you.”
I made a dozen of them. And though it felt like I was rationing out my self-care, it actually helped me to put myself first, especially on days where I can’t.
Because where we see greed, most people see normal routines.
For what it’s worth, today is one of those days where I struggled to take a shower, this morning. On my permission slip, I wrote the date (12/15/2025) and why (dealing with executive dysfunction yesterday afternoon, which led to a messy house, and today I woke up with negative self-talk about having a single bad night after – I think – ten consecutive good ones). I went and told myself I love you, and jokingly said “you stink, let’s fix that.” My shower took a whopping 6 minutes, and I’m in clean clothes. My entire outlook is better. I actually have more energy to take care of last night’s dysfunction so that I can be in a cleaner environment. (Owen Wilson “wow”)