Me – building capacity from inside out
 
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Self-care

 

 

Key concept  

 

“Self-care is the art and science of attuning and responding to your needs and desires moment to moment.” -Renée Trudeau

In the latest research self-care shows itself to be especially important in times of crises. When you take care of yourself, you will more likely be able to show up at work and in your community and be of help to others. A centred and peaceful adult is an invaluable resource for any young person living in a difficult situation. Also, if you enter a difficult day feeling strong and good about yourself, you will most likely be able to navigate through the day in a more sustainable way – and be able to show up to work tomorrow as well. An important aspect of self-care is also to recognise that we don’t care for ourselves only for the sake of our professional lives – but we take care of ourselves because we are all entitled to have a full and nourishing everyday life. We are all worthy of finding joy and reinforcing our own wellbeing in our free time as well as at work, however demanding our circumstances are.

Self-care means actions you take that enhance your physical, psychological or emotional wellbeing. It often starts with turning inwards and creating some stillness amongst the business of life to hear what you really need. Renée Trudeau emphasises this aspect in her beautiful definition of self-care: “attuning and responding to your needs and desires moment to moment”. The things that help you feel balanced and well, might not work for someone else. Also, what is working for you today, might not make you feel better next month. For this reason, the one most important self-care practice is actually checking-in with yourself: tuning in to recognize what’s going on inside you. You can incorporate this to your check-ins (“Taking a moment” exercise from the chapter Inner peace and resilience). And after recognising, you can ask yourself: what do I need right now? What could bring me joy right now, even just a little bit? And then taking action to make those things happen.

 

Exercise



What’s good for me?

  1. Make a list of things that are good for you / make you feel good about yourself. What can I do now that my future-self (even next week) will thank me for?
  2. Make a list of things that bring you joy in the moment. Think about one small step that would bring joy now / today. Take that step today!

Powerful and restorative self-care is a combination of these two types of activities (A & B): it increases your resources in the long run, as well as brings you joy in the moment. It is common that self-care becomes just another responsibility on your to-do list if you are leading a demanding life – you might think you need to go jogging 4 times a week and feel exhausted about it even before you start. Maybe your system needs something more relaxing? On the other hand, you might have “default routines” such as using a lot of time on the screen in the evening watching TV series. While there is nothing wrong with relaxing with a good movie or TV series from time to time, you might feel tired and numb afterwards if you spend too much time doing it. Maybe our body and brain need something more energising, or something that ignites curiosity to re-balance, instead?

A useful and restorative self-care practice is something that you look forward to – and you feel good about yourself afterwards. It doesn’t have to be big – it is often the little things that we do that make a huge difference.

Examples of small but potentially very significant self-care actions:

  • Instead of pushing through that final task on your computer, make yourself a cup of tea and take a small micro-break.
  • Use an extra 10 minutes to walk through a park instead of the quickest route to your next meeting.
  • Start your morning intentionally. Before getting up from bed ask yourself: How do I feel right now? What do I need today? Try to answer to the needs that you recognise during the day. This is a variation of the exercise “Taking a moment”.

As simple as it might sound, self-care means putting yourself on the top of your list of priorities. When you start showing up for yourself more and more, and taking small actions to prioritise yourself, you will be sending a powerful message to yourself: “I matter. And I can rely on myself”. This way, even really small changes in your everyday life will start to make a difference in enhancing your resilience and wellbeing. While self-care mainly means things that we can do ourselves to promote our own wellbeing, an important part of self-care is also noticing when you need help and getting that help – whether that means seeing a friend, a doctor, or a therapist.

Most definitions of self-care divide self-care into seven different areas. While these areas overlap partially, it might still be clarifying to consider these areas and explore their significance in your own life. The seven areas are:

  1. Physical self-care
  2. Emotional self-care
  3. Intellectual self-care
  4. Practical self-care
  5. Professional self-care
  6. Spiritual self-care
  7. Social self-care
 

Exercise



The areas of self-care (drag & drop)

Physical self-care
Emotional self-care
Intellectual self-care
Professional self-care
Social self-care
Practical self-care
Spiritual self-care
Taking care of the basic needs: nourishment & hydration, rest & sleep, movement.
Connecting with our emotions, validating our inner experience and processing emotions in a healthy way.
Cultivating a curious mind, exposing oneself to new ideas and expanding the horizons of one’s mindset.
Taking care of home, schedules and finances in a way that supports wellbeing.
Creating balanced working routines and feeling fulfilled in your career.
Attending to the soul and its needs. Sense of connection.
Activities that nurture relationships.

Dr. Amanda Cassil emphasises the importance of the process of creating new routines slowly – not trying to fix all areas of self-care at once. If creating more permanent self-care routines resonates with you, we recommend revisiting this topic every three weeks for at least the following 4 months. In practice this could mean first evaluating which area of self-care feels the most urgent right now, setting yourself one small step to bring this area of self-care into action, trying it out daily for three weeks. After three weeks, then you can evaluate if this action is one that you wish to keep, or if you wish to change it somehow. If you feel you would like to add something new to your routine, you can introduce a new small step and repeat this pattern in a 3-week cycle as long as you are happy with your routine. Below you will find the specific exercises which will provide you with tools to create your own self-care plan.

There really is no ally better suited and informed about your special needs and wants than you yourself. With these exercises, you can intentionally start to build even more safety and joy in your own life – starting from within.

 

TIP! Working with the nervous system can be a very holistic self-care practice healing your physical, emotional, and spiritual side at the same time and benefiting the other areas as well. This is because the nervous system is the link between the body and the mind. Self-regulation of the nervous system can also be the one step you can take in case you find it difficult to know what kind of self-care you need. You can read more about regulating the nervous system in the chapter “Self-regulation during challenging times”.

 

Exercise







Self-care flower

You can do this exercise by yourself or with a group of young people.

For this exercise you will need crayons or other coloured pencils. Print out or draw the self-care flower (PDF) to your own notebook.

  1. Take out your crayons and go through the different petals of the flower (physical, emotional, etc.) systematically. Evaluate how these areas of self-care are represented in your own life. Do you recognise your own needs and wishes in each area? Are you responding to these needs at the moment as much as you’d like?
  2. Colour with green to mark the areas of self-care that are well represented and taken care of in your life.
  3. Colour with blue all the areas that you think would need more of your attention. Where would you like to have more colour in your life?
  4. Draw new petals growing from the areas to write down activities or routines that you already have belonging to that area. Remember that activities can also be something restorative such as a rest, nap, silence, or micro-breaks. You can also write down embodied exercises presented in this course (such as ”Taking a moment”). You can draw as many petals (activities) for each area as you want.
  5. Draw at least 2 new petals growing for each blue area, and write down activities or routines that would bring you joy, fulfilment or peace in those areas of self-care.
  6. Look at your flower. If you could “have it all”, what activities / routines would you still add to your life? Again, remember that different forms of rest are also activities. Draw as many new petals as you wish and add the activities.
  7. Finally, take out your crayons once more. Look at the flower and all your present and potential self-care activities and routines. Colour with red all the activities (or areas) that feel the most important to you that you want to keep doing or you feel that you would need to try / do more of.
 



Morning check-in

Before you get out of bed tomorrow, tune in and ask yourself and your body: How do I feel? What do I need today? Try to find a way to give yourself what you need during the day, whether it is a break between meetings, a walk in a park, or a tomato salad. In the evening you can ask yourself if you got what you needed. If not, could you do something for yourself right now? And then: how did this process feel? If this works for you, try repeating this routine every morning.

 

TIP! You can incorporate “Morning check-in” with the exercises “Taking a moment” (in chapter Inner peace and resilience) and “Check-in 2” (in chapter Self-regulation during challenging times).



Self-care plan

  1. Go back to your self-care flower. Take a look at the activities that you have coloured with red. Pick 3-5 activities that really feel important / joyful to you. Pick at least one activity that is new to you.
  2. TIP! If you feel uncertain about what activities you’d like to pick, you can incorporate this exercise with an exercise called “Bringing values to life” which you will find in the following chapter, My values.
  3. Take out your calendar. Pick your favourite activity from the list and schedule it down to your calendar for the following two weeks. Depending on the activity, you can try to do it 1-2 times a day. This activity can be something like drinking more water, or anything that you can manage to add to your day without it becoming a burden. Try to break the activity down as much as you can: instead of writing “exercise” or “rest”, write clear and attainable actions such as “go for a 20-min walk” for Monday, “take a 20-min nap” for Tuesday, etc. Give yourself enough time to take in new activities. If you pack your calendar too full it can feel stressful, which is not the objective at all. When you take in new routines at the pace that suits you and not too fast, they have time to form into routines.
  4. In two weeks from now, before you start with a new activity, spend a moment contemplating on the previous one: what did this self-care activity / routine bring to my life? Do I want to continue doing it? Do I want to make some changes in how I incorporate this routine into my day-to-day life?
  5. Then pick another activity from the list / flower and schedule it in your calendar, starting two weeks’ time from now. Then continue like this until you have written down all the activities in your calendar.
  6. Finally: put your self-care flower / list of 3-5 activities on your fridge so that you will better remember to also incorporate these ideas into your everyday life in the future.
 
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