By Aisha Harris

The week after the election, Americans Googled the term almost twice as often as they ever had in years past. Many of them simply wondered, “What is this thing?” Months later, others still wondered where it came from.

Self-care originally caught on as a medical concept. Doctors have long discussed it as a way for patients to treat themselves and exercise healthy habits, most often under the guidance of a health professional. Prior to the late 1960s and early 1970s, these patients were usually mentally ill and elderly people who required long-term care and otherwise had little autonomy.

Later, academics began to look for ways for workers in more high-risk and emotionally daunting professions—trauma therapists, social workers, EMTs, and so on—to combat stress brought on by the job. The belief driving this work was that one cannot adequately take on the problems of…