WOW Self Care School -Self-care as infrastructure not indulgence

For too long, self-care has been misunderstood.

It has been reduced to indulgence, framed as an escape from reality, or offered as a personal fix for problems that are clearly structural. In high-strain systems — health, education, advocacy, social services, emergency response, justice — this misunderstanding has consequences.

People do not burn out because they lack scented candles. They burn out because the systems they work within place sustained ethical, emotional, and cognitive demands on them without adequate support.

WOW Self Care School exists to correct that narrative.

Self-care is not an activity. It is infrastructure.

WOW Self Care School treats self-care not as a collection of occasional behaviours, but as essential personal infrastructure — the scaffolding that supports health, judgment, and capacity over time.

Infrastructure is not glamorous. It is not always visible. But when it fails, everything above it becomes unstable.

In the same way, self-care provides the foundation that allows people to:

• remain grounded under pressure

• make sound decisions in complex environments

• recover without collapsing

• continue meaningful work without eroding their health or values

This framing is supported by decades of evidence across public health, occupational health, trauma research, and systems thinking: sustainable capacity is not built through resilience rhetoric, but through structures that reduce load, protect function, and allow recovery.

Why helpers need a different model of self-care

Developed 6 years ago, WOW Self Care School has evolved over this time, to deliver an immersive training for the helpers, healers, educators, advocates, and cultivators of hope — people whose work involves responsibility for others, exposure to harm, and ongoing moral complexity.

Research consistently shows that these roles carry elevated risk of:

• burnout

• compassion fatigue

• moral distress and moral injury

• nervous system overload

• long-term health impacts

These outcomes are not individual failures.They emerge when caring people are required to operate inside systems where values are compromised, harm is witnessed but cannot be prevented, and process routinely overrides people.

WOW Self Care School does not ask participants to push through, self-optimise, or reframe injustice as a mindset problem.

It supports people to build the internal and practical scaffolding required to remain human inside complex systems.

Evidence-informed, not performative

The WOW Self Care School methodology draws on established evidence from:

• health literacy and self-management research

• trauma-informed and nervous system-aware practice

• moral injury scholarship

• occupational health and safety frameworks

• public health prevention models

Self-care, when done properly, functions as early intervention and risk reduction. It strengthens agency, improves self-regulation, supports appropriate help-seeking, and reduces cumulative harm.

Importantly, WOW Self Care School is explicit about what self-care is not:

• it is not a substitute for medical, psychological, or allied health care

• it does not excuse harmful systems

• it does not individualise structural failure

It sits alongside professional care and systemic reform — supporting the part of health that remains within a person’s influence, even when systems are slow to change.

Retiring the fluff

We are on a mission to retire bath bombs and fluffy excuses for self-care.

Enjoyable moments have their place. But without the scaffolding that sustains health and wellbeing, they become little more than commercialised distraction, a narrative that has gone unchallenged for far too long.

Self-care is not a reward for surviving the week. It is the infrastructure that allows a life, and meaningful work to continue.

Foundations Training — starting 30 March 2026

WOW Self Care School Foundations training for helpers, healers, and cultivators of hope begins 30 March.

The Foundations program is delivered as a two-day intensive, supported by additional learning and resource modules that extend and deepen the work beyond the live training.

This beginner-level program is designed for those who want to learn and apply the WOW Self Care School methodology within their own communities, organisations, or practice settings.

Participants are introduced to the seven core plinths of self-care — the essential load-bearing elements that support sustainable health, agency, and capacity over time.

Each plinth is explored through an evidence-informed framework, with practical tools, reflective exercises, and real-world case studies.

The training includes comprehensive handouts and applied resources that can be adapted across diverse community and professional contexts.

This is foundational work: not simplistic, not performative.

Because care for others cannot come at the cost of care for self. And because self-care, done properly, is how people stay human.