Who Are You When You’re Not Performing Wellness?

We’ve all been there.

You commit to a new morning routine, stack your wellness habits like you're playing Jenga, and for a while, it feels good.

Until it doesn’t.

Eventually, the rituals start to feel like obligations. The motivation fades. And suddenly, the practices that were meant to help you feel more like you are making you feel even further away.

That’s not laziness.
That’s a sign you may be performing wellness instead of living it.

What Is Performative Wellness?

Performative wellness occurs when self-care becomes a display—something you do to meet an internal or external expectation rather than something that’s genuinely nourishing.

It often looks like:

• Obsessively optimizing your time in the name of “alignment”

• Feeling guilty for missing a meditation or skipping your journaling

• Curating your practices to look a certain way, even if they don’t feel meaningful

• Repeating affirmations you don’t actually believe

This doesn’t make you wrong or bad.
It means you're human, trying to heal in a world that constantly tells you you're not enough.

How to Shift from Performance to Presence

If you’ve found yourself stuck in the “doing” of healing, here are three ways to gently realign:

1. Revisit Your Why
Ask yourself: Why did I start this practice?
If your answer has anything to do with fixing, proving, or achieving, take a breath and reevaluate. Start from curiosity, not criticism.

2. Practice Self-Honesty Over Self-Improvement
Instead of asking, “How can I be better?” try, “What’s true for me right now?”
Sometimes the most healing thing is to stop striving and simply witness what’s real.

3. Let Some Practices Go
You don’t need to do everything. Let go of the rituals that feel forced. Give yourself permission to release anything that’s performative, even if it once served you.

A Final Thought

Growth isn’t about becoming someone else. It’s about remembering who you’ve always been.

The practices that matter are the ones that bring you closer to yourself, not further into someone else’s idea of healing.

So if you’re feeling disconnected or stuck despite doing “all the things,” you’re not broken.
You’re just being called back to truth.

And that’s a really good place to begin.