In recent years, the idea of self-care has become almost unavoidable. Scroll through Instagram or TikTok and you’ll find endless suggestions: bubble baths, skincare routines, early morning walks, journaling, yoga, meditation apps. These can all be enjoyable and sometimes helpful practices, but they’re often presented as neat fixes — things you can do to tidy up your mental health, boost your productivity, or create a calmer lifestyle.

Because of this, some people wonder whether therapy has become just another part of the “self-care” trend. Is it simply another tool to help us optimise ourselves and manage stress? Or is there something different about what happens in the therapy room?

From a person-centred perspective, therapy stands apart from self-care in a few important ways.

Self-care is often about doing. Therapy is about being.

Most self-care practices are things you do: running a bath, practising meditation, or setting aside time to recharge. Therapy, though, isn’t something you can tick off a to-do list. At its heart, it’s not about doing at all. It’s about creating space to be — with your feelings, your experiences, and your own process of becoming.

In the therapy room, you don’t need to perform, impress, or meet expectations. The focus isn’t on getting something “right,” but on allowing what is already there to be noticed, accepted, and understood. That shift from doing to being can be transformative, because many of us rarely get the chance to pause in this way.

Self-care can be surface-level. Therapy goes deeper.

A long bath or a favourite treat can soothe you for an evening, but therapy goes beyond momentary relief. It’s a relationship that helps you explore the deeper layers of yourself — the patterns, beliefs, and feelings that shape your everyday life.

In person-centred therapy, the focus is on understanding who you really are, not just who you think you should be. The aim isn’t to “fix” or polish over difficulties but to support you in becoming more connected with your true self. That’s what allows more lasting change to unfold.

Self-care can reinforce pressure. Therapy offers acceptance.

The way self-care is often presented online can sometimes feel like yet another pressure: Are you doing enough to look after yourself? Are you getting it right? What was meant to be nourishing can become another source of guilt or comparison.

Therapy offers something very different. A person-centred therapist provides a space of unconditional acceptance — a relationship where you don’t need to be better, calmer, or more positive to be welcomed. It’s a space where all of your feelings are allowed, including the difficult or messy ones that self-care trends sometimes suggest we should push aside.

Therapy is relational.

Many self-care practices are solitary. That can be valuable, but there’s something uniquely powerful about healing in relationship. In therapy, the quality of the relationship itself becomes part of the process. Being heard with empathy and accepted without judgment can create a sense of safety that allows new insights and growth to emerge.

Carl Rogers, who developed the person-centred approach, believed that the right relational conditions — empathy, unconditional positive regard, and congruence — could support anyone’s natural capacity for growth. This is not a quick fix. It’s something deeper: the unfolding of your own potential, supported within a genuine human connection.

So, is therapy a trend?

The popularity of therapy has certainly grown in recent years, partly because of increased awareness of mental health. But therapy is not a passing fashion. Unlike self-care trends that rise and fall on social media, the therapeutic relationship rests on something timeless: the human need to be heard, understood, and accepted.

Self-care has its place. Sometimes a hot bath, a walk in nature, or a pause with your favourite book can be exactly what you need. But therapy offers something different. It’s not a quick boost or a lifestyle hack. It’s a space where you can bring your full self, be accepted as you are, and grow from there.