Demystifying Self-Care: A CARE4U2 Blog Post
As I was in graduate school preparing to become a mental health counselor, I took classes in various subjects to prepare for this role. Some were about theories, some about populations we would work with, and some were to prep us for the impact working as a therapist might have on our own wellbeing. I can remember sitting in one class in particular, and our professor asked us to consider how we could give ourselves more leisure time and engage in more self-care while being in school. Immediately, I became frustrated. I mean, I was in grad school with multiple jobs and tons of homework - how was I expected to find more time in my day for leisure? How was I expected to also care for myself while I was juggling multiple expectations and responsibilities? I felt defeated, angry, and annoyed.
I realized that my life will always be busy in some capacity. There will always be some excuse or some possible reason as to why I can’t take care of myself. And this is where my perspective on self-care was forced to shift significantly.
There will consistently be a barrier to self-care if we are unwilling to embrace the reality of our circumstances. Certain seasons will lend themselves to different types of self-care while others may feel more limited. Regardless of how it might look, what matters is that self-care is meeting a need you have in order to feel more regulated, grounded, and well.
It is essential that when we consider self-care, we embrace and accept our current realities. This looks like not only taking time to assess what areas of care we need to focus on the most, but also acknowledging what resources we have at this time to best care for ourselves. Setting realistic goals with self-care, like with any other area of life, enables us to actually be effective in attaining it.
I want to challenge the idea that self-care means doing more and acknowledge that a lot of the time, effective self-care might look like doing less.
Self-care is subjective. Taking care of ourselves can take the shape of whatever we need it to be in a certain season. And it can be tough, at times, to have to accept that our version of what self-care can be is not what we ideally want it to be. For example, you may not be able to take a week off work to go on a vacation, but could you take a break at work to go on a walk in nature or knock out some tasks that have been piling up?
Each individual’s needs might be different when it comes to self-care. Depending on each person’s stressors, their self-care may need to look very different, too. It is helpful to consider different areas of our lives that may need care at any given time, like physical, emotional, or financial needs. A helpful first step is to slow down and assess what areas of our lives need greater attention and care at this time. Then, consider what resources are available to help you begin to meet that need.
Self-care is subjective and it can be simple. How we are able to care for ourselves will change with our seasons of life. Assessing and honoring our individualized needs and how we can meet them will allow us to embrace self-care at any stage.
-Meredith Trank
Resource:
https://www.cityyear.org/care-force/stories/the-corps/self-care-home-edition/