Self-Care Is For UX

Why We Need to Talk About Spiritual Self-Care in UX

Nurturing our own values and needs will help us understand and serve our users

Vivianne Castillo
Modus
Published in
8 min readDec 17, 2019

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Illustration: Deb Lee

This story is from the Founder of HmntyCntrd and is part of Self-Care Is for UX, a series on the personal risks of working in design.

I was 22 years old when the doctor told me I was dying and might only have the next 15 years to live.

I was told that a rare, incurable kidney disease was what had kicked me from normal kidney function to kidney failure within a matter of days. My partner at the time and I briefly wept together in the hospital room, then spent the next six days in silence watching Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows over and over and over again. The only way I could reconcile with the grim news I had just received, that I was actually going to die sooner rather than later, was complete and utter avoidance.

Around day six, I finally began to process through some questions that I imagined myself pondering much later in life:

What matters to me the most, and does the way I live my life currently reflect that?

How, if at all, do my spiritual beliefs and values help me make sense of this pain?

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Vivianne Castillo
Modus
Writer for

UX Researcher. Humanity in Tech Advocate-Warrior. Founder of HmntyCntrd (www.hmntycntrd.com). Choosing courage over comfort.