In our society self-care is largely misunderstood.

Its narrow and inaccurate perception explains why many of us — women in particular — feel guilty about attending to our needs. It explains why many of us stumble around drained and depleted.

However, self-care offers a slew of benefits. And it feels good to nourish our needs.

Below, experts dispel seven of the most common myths surrounding self-care.

When we’re stressed, if often feels like everything begins to fall apart. It’s during stressful times that we misplace our keys, forget important events on our calendars, fail to call our mothers on their birthdays and leave important work documents at home.

Now, in addition to your original stressor, you’re under more pressure because you’re scrambling to find lost keys, dealing with hurt feelings or frantically reconstructing forgotten projects.

And on top of that, when stressed, our emotions are running rampant. That scramble for the keys is anything but calm and a remark from your mother about that missed phone call can send you deep into guilt.

In his book The Art of Uncertainty, Dennis Merritt Jones writes:

“Between a shaky world economy, increasing unemployment, and related issues, many today are being forced to come to the edge of uncertainty. Just like the baby sparrows, they find themselves leaning into the mystery that change brings, because they have no choice: It’s fly or die.”

For persons struggling with depression and anxiety — and for those of us who are highly sensitive — uncertainty is especially difficult. Forget about learning to fly. The uncertainty itself feels like death and can cripple our efforts to do anything during a time of transition.

I have been living in uncertainty, like many people, ever since December of 2008 when the economy plummeted and the creative fields — like architecture and publishing — took a hard blow, making it extremely difficult to feed a family. In that time, I think I have worked a total of 10 jobs — becoming everything from a defense contractor to a depression “expert.” I even thought about teaching high school morality. Now that’s desperate.

I don’t think I’ll ever be comfortable with uncertainty, but having lived in that terrain for almost five years now, I’m qualified to offer a few tips of how not to lose it when things are constantly changing.

Whether you’re experiencing anxiety, depression, anger, jealousy, envy, guilt, hurt or shame, you are most likely (perhaps unintentionally) perpetuating your problem by your thoughts. Let me explain.

When we function in a healthy manner, we don’t just experience joy and happiness, prancing around without a care in the world. We actually still experience a range of emotions, some of which can be very difficult to live with.

It’s absolutely healthy to feel anxiety, depression, anger, jealousy, envy, guilt, hurt or shame. But what makes experiencing these emotions healthy is that we don’t linger in them for longer than is good for us. We don’t demand that they ‘go away.’ We accept the appropriateness of how we feel, and do something about our situation.

Let me give you an example of how a person’s thinking can perpetuate depression.

Anger is a naturally occurring emotion. However, often people do not express anger in a healthy, appropriate way. They allow frustrations to build up, then reach a point where they erupt.

Over time, pent-up anger and resentment causes tiny problems to become big ones. Anger can become displaced or is expressed in a way that becomes problematic. Many people feel more upset when they realize that they overreact or explode with anger, especially if it causes hurt for themselves or someone else. Thus, it creates the terrible cycle of struggling with anger.

But there is help for anger that doesn’t require you to dig up your past, explore your thoughts, or send letters to a dead loved one. It’s called biofeedback, and it offers individuals readily-learned techniques that are safe and effective (based upon decades’ worth of research).

As I write this, our thoughts are with those in Boston who were affected by the bombings at the 2013 Boston Marathon.

In my 20 years living in the Boston area, I cheered on the runners on many occasions and now, even from far way, these events feel close to home.

Experiencing trauma can have a dramatic effect on our bodies and our minds.  And although it’s a different experience to witness a trauma on television, it still can affect us.

When you perceive a threat, the body activates the stress response. The stress response occurs in both your body and brain.

The body’s response to acute stress is a preparation for emergency.  Adrenaline and other hormones are released.  The body shuts down processes associated with long-term care.  When under immediate threat, digestion, reproduction, cell repair and other body tasks related to long-term functioning are unimportant.

Instead of living deliberately, many of us live by default, according to Polly Campbell in her thoughtful book Imperfect Spirituality: Extraordinary Enlightenment for Ordinary People.  

She gives several powerful examples: We vote a certain way because our parents do. We work a numbing number of hours because we’re taught this makes us good providers. We sabotage our successes because we’re taught that wanting money is akin to greed.

In the midst of clinging to these old concepts, we forget the most important idea of all: living from our authentic values.

While the police are still sifting through the clues for information about who was behind the Boston Marathon 2013 bombings on Boylston St., it’s time for the rest of us to take a deep breath and start healing from this tragedy. With over 100 people injured — some quite seriously — and three people dead, that healing is going to take some time.

Other countries have long had to deal with seemingly random bombings in urban areas; the U.S. is relatively late to this particular brand of horror. I’m not sure how one ever gets used to the idea that by just going shopping or watching a parade or sporting event, something really bad could happen.

But life carries on — we cannot stop living out of fear.

“You’ve been uptight lately,” my mom said the other day over lunch. We were celebrating my twenty-second birthday.

Although I can’t stand spicy food, I dribbled Tabasco sauce over my fajitas and took a bite, eyes immediately watering, mouth burning. I have good reasons to be uptight, I thought, shoveling the spicy food into my mouth.

The past few weeks, life had seemed to be a constant stream of stresses, and I hadn’t handled them well. A new job was giving me a steep learning curve. Rush hour had been brutal. I wasn’t sleeping well. Freelance projects on the side took up all my spare time.

All this had contributed to irritation in my interactions with family and friends, frustration at things I couldn’t change, and super-sensitivity to any perceived failures at work or at home.

I’m sitting down for my yearly physical with the blood pressure machine in view. From the displeased expression on the nurse’s face, I gather it wasn’t a perfect reading. Instead of jotting the numbers down in her notes, realizing that I’m probably just nervous (because I do have “white coat syndrome”), she sighs and expresses the urgency to take my blood pressure again and again, until she’s satisfied with the result.

Then, I walk into the lab next door for a blood test and the line I hear is: “Oh, your blood pressure was high, let me see if I can draw your blood now.”

Wait, what? Do they actually think that these comments will make me feel more relaxed?

Ein-shei Chen was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease) in 1995. Yet she hasn’t let the degenerative disease derail her daily life or dull her dreams. Chen is the president of the Motor Neuron Disease Association of Taiwan. She’s given speeches at ALS conferences all over the world. She’s even convinced the government to build an ALS clinic in her city of Taichung — the second facility in all of Asia.

Chen can only move her big toe. She writes emails and communicates with others using special technology. Composing an email with five short sentences takes her 20 minutes. But she continues to email with her family, friends and other ALS patients. She also visits patients in person with the help of her caregivers and relatives.

Chen’s remarkable story is featured in Richard Cheu’s empowering book Living Well With Chronic Illness: A Practical and Spiritual Guide. Cheu provides pastoral counseling to patients in New York City medical and hospice centers. He helps patients find peace with their illness and live their lives to the fullest.

One of the biggest — if not the biggest — barrier to practicing self-care is guilt. Women, in particular, feel incredibly guilty for tending to their needs.

And it’s not surprising. According to Ashley Eder, LPC, a psychotherapist in Boulder, Colo., “We are surrounded by overt and covert messages that encourage us to minimize our own needs and feel guilty when we engage in self-care.”

Food and relaxation are prime examples. “Think how many times a day you see some kind of reference to a woman ‘indulging,’ ‘splurging,’ or ‘sinning’ because she meets a basic need like eating food she enjoys or taking time to relax.”

There’s also the belief that taking care of yourself leaves less time and energy for others. But, as Rachel W. Cole, a life coach and retreat leader, said, “self-care is other care.” In other words, practicing self-care helps us help others more effectively. Below, Cole and Eder share other powerful ideas to consider if the palpable guilt appears.