As a women’s mental health specialist and board-certified psychiatrist, Dr. Lakshmin has spent thousands of hours taking care of women struggling with burnout, despair, depression, and anxiety in her clinical practice. In her new book she explains why our understanding of self-care is incomplete at best and manipulative at worst. Fixing your troubles isn’t simple as buying a new day planner. In fact, these faux self-care practices keep us looking outward, comparing ourselves with others or striving for perfection. Worse, they exonerate an oppressive social system that betrays women and marginalized groups. Real self-care is not a thing to do—it’s a way to be. When we practice it, we shift our relationships, our workplaces, and our broken systems. This long-overdue reckoning with the contradictions of the wellness industry presents a step-by-step program for sustainable change and solace.

Paige has spent the last month dating someone who often falls asleep when she is over his house.