{"id":275454,"date":"2026-01-09T06:03:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T06:03:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/275454\/"},"modified":"2026-01-09T06:03:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T06:03:13","slug":"the-science-behind-why-you-should-treat-yourself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/275454\/","title":{"rendered":"The science behind why you should treat yourself"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Treating yourself is important &#8211; especially when times are tough, a psychiatrist has said.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>With all the excitement and joy of Christmas behind us, January often seems like the most miserable month.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The weather is gloomy and spring seems far away.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>On <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newstalk.com\/shows\/lunchtime-live-234859\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><b>Lunchtime Live<\/b><\/a>, Trinity Professor Brendan Kelly urged anyone feeling a little down to treat themselves.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0\u201cThere&#8217;s a lot of good evidence that treating ourselves is useful for motivation,\u201d he explained.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt&#8217;s good for rewarding ourselves, it reinforces our self-worth.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo, I would agree with an awful lot of what&#8217;s being said, that it is good to set up a small indulgent treat that is dependent on you doing something else, perhaps.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMaybe it&#8217;s just getting through Tuesday, but also if you&#8217;re trying to achieve something, it&#8217;s good to reward yourself fairly clearly and fairly promptly afterwards.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Professor Kelly added that treating oneself is best done in moderation.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLike you could take this to extremes and spend all your money on small treats and then fail to do the things you want to in the long-term,\u201d he continued.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut it is very important that we reward ourselves and show ourselves some self-compassion, particularly when times are hard &#8211; you might be working hard, working at home, a lot of stresses.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Main image: A woman out treating herself to some shopping. Picture by: Leah Farrell \/ RollingNews.ie. 24\/12\/2021<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Treating yourself is important &#8211; especially when times are tough, a psychiatrist has said.\u00a0 With all the excitement&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":275455,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[9,10,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-275454","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland","16":"tag-latest-news","17":"tag-latestnews","18":"tag-main-news","19":"tag-mainnews","20":"tag-news","21":"tag-top-stories","22":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115863631017626036","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}