The Wellness Industry Won’t Heal You

When Self-Care Turns Inward: Labubus, Skincare, Retreats, and the Market for Comfort

What do you do when you feel anxious, off-center, or overly stimulated by everything around you?

More often than not, the answer these days is: taking some me-time. Right, why not? Taking care of yourself, pampering your needs, staying in, lighting a scented candle, signing up for a sound bath session, or venturing to a retreat that promises to help you find closure, help you let go, and reemerge as a healed human being. This search for care is genuine, but the way it is packaged, sold, and delivered—or lack thereof—deserves closer attention.

Brands, more than anyone, have long understood their place in this. They see the market opportunity of those who are struggling to keep themselves sane or at least functioning, in what Polish-British sociologist Zygmunt Bauman called “Liquid Modernity”—a time characterized by instability, lack of cohesion, and precariousness of bonds.

In response to these times, people are looking for ways to manage genuine anxiety, overstimulation, and loneliness. This desire for care is universal, and commercialized wellness, though often limited by cost and exclusivity, is a reflection of a real need to heal and reconnect.

The Illusion of Me-Time

The wellness industry is no longer just skincare, though notably, the Korean beauty market has been taken over. Nor is it only meditation apps, mindfulness, or bullet journals. It stretches far beyond, commercializing nearly every form of self-care. From seemingly innocent trinkets to high-tech companions, nearly every method humans use to soothe themselves has been commodified.

Labubus, for instance, might look like a little innocent collectible toy, but it demonstrates a sense of comfort, a way to literally hold onto something in a world that feels futile. Can we blame anyone? Not really.

Photo by David Kristianto on Unsplash — Labubus, strangely cute, right?

Pets, both virtual and real, now even come with their very own longevity products. Yoga, meanwhile, has expanded far beyond its original philosophy, becoming part of a modern lifestyle that too often prioritizes convenience over depth. And then, of course, there’s AI—from platforms that match you with strangers in your city, like 222.place, to virtual companions Zuckerberg and others are developing, projected to become a $140.754 billion market by 2030.

While we’re talking numbers: as reported by McKinsey’s Future of Wellness study across China, Germany, the U.K., and the U.S., the global wellness industry is now at $2 trillion, with increasingly younger generations becoming its most important consumers.

Nearly 30 percent of Gen Z and millennials in the U.S. prioritize wellness “a lot more” than a year ago, versus up to 23 percent of older generations. Interestingly, they’re not only purchasing essential consumer health categories, such as oral care and personal hygiene, but also a wider range of discretionary products—health-tracking devices, massage tools, IV drips, vitamins, beauty, and mindfulness apps.

This is the main demographic of today’s workforce, with already high levels of burnout and stress, and increasingly reporting loneliness.

When Healing Becomes Isolation

Here’s the ugly truth: modern wellness packaged as self-care isn’t just commercialized — it’s also privatized. What gets marketed as “me time” is less about regeneration and more about retreat. It pushes us into bubbles of well-being that narrow our tolerance for others, lowering our capacity to live with friction and difference.

The irony?

While the wellness industry sells this isolation as an antidote to despair, it often perpetuates the very despair it claims to heal.

What emerges is not resilience, but a recurring cycle of consumption: a yearly retreat to feel whole again, retail therapy: a new gadget and toner promising renewal, a 45-minute run club class you slip in and out of. These rituals of self-care don’t break the pattern; they sustain it.

Set against rising loneliness, worsening physical and mental health risks, and the growing susceptibility to extremist or populist politics, the cost of this privatized model of wellness becomes stark.

Photo by Anis M on Unsplash

In today’s liquid modernities, caring for yourself can mean consuming yourself out of the present moment. It can distract you from the root of your discomfort and, in a way, pet your ego.

In other words, it’s the opposite of how self-care was defined by Black feminist activist Audre Lorde: self-indulgence.

Wellness itself emerged as a concept in the 1960s, later popularized through the fitness culture of the ’80s through the early 2000s, and the concept of “working on yourself.” Over time, it has become a competition—not just against others, but against ourselves.

When did self-care and wellness become just another item on our to-do lists? Another pursuit to optimize our lives so we can keep up with endless schedules and find solace amid crisis after crisis?

Loneliness researchers John and Stephanie Cacioppo highlight a crucial link: targeting self-centeredness as part of interventions may help break the feedback loop that worsens loneliness. Their evolutionary theory predicts that self-centeredness increases loneliness.

Stephanie Cacioppo explains: “It isn’t that one individual is sacrificial to the other. It’s that together they do more than the sum of the parts. Loneliness undercuts that focus and really makes you focus on only your interests at the expense of others.”

This perspective is one I also explore with physician and science communicator

Parneet Pal

in our conversation on The Oneliness Podcast.

The Commodification of the Sacred

This drive for healing doesn’t stop with products or apps. Increasingly, people seek something sacred, something that promises to transcend the self. But when such practices are uprooted from their contexts, repackaged, or stripped of their communal and ecological roots, they risk becoming just another form of extraction. One striking example is the case of spiritual tourism.

Heard of ayahuasca? Right. As Ecuadorian activists Nina Gualinga and Eli Virkina have remarked, even the term itself is a distorted modern translation. The medicine and the industry around it now largely serve visitors seeking healing and transformation during a few sittings in the Amazon forest.

Of course, there are always more and less respectful ways of participating. I’ve heard stories of people who found genuine relief or healing through such ceremonies, and I, too, have had my own experiments with mushrooms and psychedelics. Precisely because I know how real these shifts can feel, it’s important to name the tension: how practices with deep communal roots are being consumed through frameworks shaped by the same systemic issues and power dynamics that continue to dominate the world.

This form of colonial wellness resembles the forces that eradicated former, community-centered practices into hyper-commercialized experiences and products designed in the name of self-care and -optimization.

Photo by Deyrold Casinabe on Unsplash

Reclaiming Relational and Collective Care

So what might it look like to reclaim care beyond this cycle? Around the world, people are building models rooted not solely in consumption but in community, culture, and shared space.

Healing, after all, is deeply relational—we get our hearts broken and mended in relationships; we hurt and heal in relationships.

One starting point might be to refuse the shiny, seductive offerings of the wellness industry, at least once in a while. Then, to learn how to discern—for me, that means choosing consciously which yoga teachers and studios I go to, slowing down my impulse for shopping therapy, and trusting my body’s signals rather than health data on my phone.

And then, gently dissolve what we perceive as the separation between ourselves and others, the individual and the collective, the internal and external, the me and the we.

When we tend toward others while tending to ourselves—whether a plant, a friend, a person in need, a device, a group of people, or a body of water—we might discover that care for self is always care for others. If being well means that we all be well, we can start recognizing our true interconnection and interdependence, and see how self-optimization culture feeds inequalities and loneliness as the norm.

Despite my critique, I know there’s beautiful work being done. I’ve grown through different approaches to therapy, mentors, teachers, artists, as well as authors, poets, and movie characters I’ve never met. DJs and musicians have helped me reconnect with my body and the joy of movement. The teachings and practices of the Plum Village traditions guide me daily.

Where do you find this kind of care in your own city and life? I’d love to learn how you navigate well-being, both within and beyond the wellness industry. Do share!

Around the world, initiatives rooted in collective care provide accessible, culturally resonant, and relational approaches to well-being.

In Zimbabwe, psychiatrist Dixon Chibanda created the Friendship Bench, training grandmothers to offer evidence-based talk therapy on benches in local neighborhoods. I had the chance to speak with him on my podcast, so look out for that conversation.

Across Cuenca, Marseille, Barcelona, Prague, Helsinki, and Melbourne, the RECETAS initiative, whose leaders Laura Coll-Planas and Gabriela Elizabeth Garcia Velez I’ve also invited on the podcast, explores how prescribing activities like neighborhood walks, gardening, or group classes can reduce loneliness and strengthen bonds.

In Singapore, Stranger Conversations offers a public living room: group therapy talks, casual socials, workshops, panels, curated around connection.

A Call for Community as a Verb

I know I’m not outside of this story—I, too, in some ways move within the wellness industry. That’s why I’m consciously exploring how to contribute in ways that are meaningful.

Inspired by the models above, I’m piloting a 🟡 small online community format starting end of October: an eight-week experiment to test whether self-care and collective care can be one and the same. A space to practice reconnection—whether with ourselves, our bodies, our feelings, our minds, other people, communities, spirituality, politics, or the world. In short: community as a verb and a practice.

I’m looking for a small group of volunteers curious to explore this together—sharing feedback and helping to shape the space. If this resonates, reply to this email, and I’ll be in touch with more details.

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With love, as always,
Monika